Effective sales cycle management for Education

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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 welcome to sales lead dog today i have joining me laura kavanagh of ambassador education solutions laura welcome to sales lead dog thank you thanks for having me excited to be here yeah excited to have you here on the show so laura tell me a bit about your current role and ambassador sure glad to so currently i am the vice president of sales for ambassador education solutions and we provide course materials to colleges and universities and private k-12s all over the country so we're the largest provider for course materials in the career school sector and then we are also working nationwide with all of the not-for-profits universities and the private k-12s and so we work on providing textbooks anything that's required for course materials today so that students are able to access their materials for an affordable price and for in a very streamlined way so we make that process and that workflow very seamless for them for our schools and our clients yeah i it made me think back when i was prepping for the show um it made me think back to when i was in college there always seemed to be one class where we didn't the textbook was on backorder or there was some issue with your platform that's really just doesn't exist anymore correct well it does exist but if everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing on the school side of it on our side of it there shouldn't be much back order that you have to deal with yeah so and that's part of switching to more online bookstores more providing all of your textbooks to students prior to the first day of class that really helps stop any of those those late orders students showing up books are on back order they're not prepared for the first day so it's a win-win all around for universities for the faculty the students the staff yeah and also the ability to like my son's school they do everything on ipad so they have a combination most of the classes are done digitally over the ipad all their course content some of them are traditional textbook do you see that to be the trend moving forward definitely we still do have a lot of schools that still prefer the printed hardbound textbook but we're seeing more and more schools transition to the digital materials and even in light of the last 12 to 24 months with a lot of schools going online it really set up that process and most of these schools that adopt digital content in that format they don't typically go back to a physical textbook so we see more and more schools moving to that model providing more choices within that that model as well for their students yeah it's a better experience i was blown away when my son was showing me what he could do it's not that static piece of paper they can take a diagram like he had a picture of the heart and he was able to rotate the heart and look at it in 3d and things like that that just otherwise could never do with traditional hardbound books right there's a lot of digital content that's outside of the standard ebook that you receive you save so when it provides all of those interactive pieces for students so it's really just changing how students learn and there's a lot of moving parts when you look at combining all this technology providing provisioning the materials and delivering them to students are you delivering them to the lms system how are they accessing these pieces so that's what we do that's what we specialize in so we have systems built a system called rota that is built for that exact piece that really streamlines this process for everybody involved yeah there's so much complexity so many moving parts to that it's pretty impressive when you know i was researching your company it's pretty impressive what you guys have built thanks we're really proud of it it's wonderful it's very well received everybody loves it so we're very happy yeah that's awesome all right lord let's jump in when you think back over your career um what are the three things that have really driven and led to your success it's hard to narrow down or to pinpoint i would say really being motivated and driven really performing and delivering results and then really just networking and circling back to that just having a lot of drive to succeed having a vision of where you want to go and how you're going to get there and then in the sales industry a lot of things are all it's all really data driven you it's results-based so if you can perform and you can deliver those results it unlocks more and more opportunities for you in your career path when you were in college did you picture yourself being a sales leader in your career so when i went to school my freshman year i had my major declared i went in to public relations and communications journalism and i declared that on day one and i graduated with that stayed the course i actually picked my college based on that department i really like the faculty and involved so from there i moved into marketing and advertising working in the insurance industry for a large insurance company here in my hometown and spent a lot of time in marketing and advertising and pr and doing all these different pieces and then at some point over the decade plus it transitioned into more of sales and once i really got into sales i realized that this was really my niche and this is what i was really good at and this is where i wanted to focus my career and the path moving forward it's funny when i asked that question very rarely do i have someone say oh yeah that was my goal i wanted to be in sales right when i got out of school most people end up tangentially moving into a sales career well even today i feel as though people will say i'm going to go to business i'm going to go into business but it still could be sales it just depends but it's almost that you just don't start off think i'm going to be in sales but it's a byproduct or combined so i understand what you're saying yeah do you remember the first big success you had in sales gosh i do i you know it my path moved very quickly again with it just being such a results based driven place once you start delivering results more and more opportunities open up for you and so but there have been kind of monumental times over the last decade plus within the sales industry that i've been able to obtain really great sales or deliver really great numbers that have really been able to help me in my path to where i am today yeah um what was your first really big disappointment in sales well it's never fun not making a sale or not being chosen or your competitor being chosen and so that was something that you had to get used to and you had to get used to hearing the word no and you had to get used to people not always buying it even though that you think that they should and you know they would benefit from it but they just don't want it so i think it was just establishing a workflow and a mindset that it's actually when somebody tells me no or when somebody tells the sales rep to know on my team i i look at it as a win because we're completing the sale we're not spinning our wheels anymore we're moving forward we can work on other other um pipelines that would potentially want you so i i really just kind of switched the way you look at the negatives or the times throughout your careers where you you don't get things that you worked really really hard for and as some of you are aware some of the the timeline for the sales cycle can be months and months and months so it's it's difficult sometimes when you invest even a year plus into a deal a minute and not come oh yeah but you know to me i like how you phrase that that it's uh it's an opportunity to move on um you're not waste spending your whales wasting more time and it's also a learning opportunity could you talk a bit about leveraging those losses as a learning opportunity absolutely whenever i don't win something or whenever my team is not chosen i always would welcome and always ask for feedback as to why you know what did another company have that we didn't have was it just you liked their name better or was it just was a price i mean there's so many factors so i look at it as an opportunity to figure out why we didn't win it if we're lucky enough to get the feedback to know then we can take that back internally and we can then next time going out be able to adjust tweak pivot things where we need to so then maybe next time we won't we won't have to know so i use it as an opportunity to figure out what we can do better what we can do differently next time yeah um thinking back to when you first got your sales you started in sales and what you know now what would you like to say to that young laura just getting started in sales so that would have maybe made that path a little easier gosh it's it's to keep on going um keep on working hard even if you feel defeated even if you feel that you're not succeeding you will work with mentors to help you along the way that can be a great asset to have really good mentors in your in your sales career is extremely helpful you learn a lot along the way to keep trying to hone in on your skills and work on sales development as needed there's a lot of great platforms out there that offer sales training but really great material so just to keep working hard and keep looking for ways to continue to grow and learn even to this day today i'm i still like to learn new things and i still like to have conversations with other people and look at different ways that we could do things because everybody continually can get better and better what they do and learn from one another and so just to really take those opportunities when they present themselves that's great talked a bit about your transition into sales leadership what was behind that shift in career path from sales person to sales leader so and it is really a shift and it's something that um everybody thinking about or currently in sales leadership needs to really think about because in sales it can be very much an individual contributor role where you were basically responsible for your own results at a very high level and when you go into sales leadership you now are responsible for everybody's in results everybody's quotas and everybody's metrics and and goals and you can't always control their outcomes and so it's deciding how how much that that means to you are you okay with that are you okay with taking on additional responsibility and mentoring and growing your team and at the same time looking at where you're trying to scale and grow and so it's it's um it's more difficult but i also find it more rewarding but it's so wonderful to be an individual contributor and really to go out and just do amazing work so just really think about the bigger picture because you're taking on more responsibility and you're taking on responsibility that as much as you try to help guide and train and educate your staff and your team they at the end of the day they're going to make their contribution and then you're responsible for it you mentioned some difficulties what was the hardest part of that transition into sales leadership so for me personally it was really working on defining your team and recognizing individuals that you want to have a part of your team and then difficulty with having to maybe let some go that personally you really respected and loved working with so i would say really fine-tuning your team and making some difficult decisions and going back to looking at sales as a result based looking at the numbers looking what makes sense and being able to make those decisions make those pivots change things as needed along the way um so what do you think it was about you that made your boss at that time say hey laura we want you to consider this path did they ever tell you the reason why i they never really did specifically but um it just seemed as though in the different organizations that i've worked with over the years once i'm able to get in them in there and start delivering on results and start working alongside that the opportunities presented themselves for me which was wonderful so going back to having that drive and being able to have the statistics to support it and being able to grow and mentor along the way it's i always say this and a great there's a difference between good sales professionals and you know great sales professionals and when you find a really great great sales professional you want to hold on to them and never let them go and you can i've worked with so many different sales people over the years and on my team and you can make people better and you can educate them and train them and have professional development and you can do all the things you're supposed to do but they're and they're doing good but they're never going to be able to do that great i just feel as though the best of the best of the best are kind of innately born sales people and it's an innate ability to be able to do things like when do i leave messages when do i send an email what time time of day do i call how many times do i call before i leave a message what do i how do i need to package our product what are we missing here all of these these innate things that help and even just in terms of the ability to connect with people and to get past gatekeepers and to develop relationships with people so all of that combined into one along with being extremely driven extremely competitive it's like the trifecta of an amazing sales person and you want to launch them because they're going to do great things there's so much there to unpack you know in terms of what goes into a great salesperson um and you made an interesting comment that um you know you can put a person through a lot of training you can work with them a lot but they're only going to go so far they are going to hit a ceiling that may prevent them from getting to that that status of grade when you get into that scenario when you've got someone that's peaked you know what what's your approach there or do you have a you know plan for those individuals that you know that have peaked um you know how do you continue to manage them i do a lot of it is being making sure that they're in the right role they're in the right position that they are happy doing what they're doing and they are meeting their quotas and their metrics and their goals and their ote so they're meeting everything they need to meet but and they understand they don't want to be promoted they don't want to go into leadership they don't want to be an executive they don't want to start their own company they don't want to be a team leader you know that they're happy and fulfilled in their current position and if you can manage that and know that they're happy know that they feel as though they're they're um respected and appreciated and doing a good job i think it's great i think it's a win-win for everybody so it's it's when you have somebody who want has this trajectory where they feel that they want to go into leadership and they want to move on and keep moving up within the space but they they possibly won't ever get there or maybe they will but they won't be very good at it at that point it's it's having honest conversations and saying not putting them in this position finding somebody else who you feel is more qualified who has some of these abilities that you see that is needed in that role that this individual person may not obtain um what role does empathy play for you as a sales leader well it's important it's important in our daily conversations and it's important with the sales team it's important with our conversations with our clients our potential clients and our current clients and you know if anything over the years i've personally been to the point where maybe i'm being too empathetic or maybe i'm not pushing enough or and so that is something that i've had a balance over my career in leadership is learning how to manage that and when it's when it's within reason when it's warranted when it's positive and then when to um kind of turn it off and say this is now reached over and it it's factoring into business too much if that makes sense no it totally does and that i agree that's a hard balance that uh you know stuff happens to people they may have a lot of stuff going on in their personal life but bottom line the work still has to get done and uh so it can be tough to manage yeah not much much better of balancing that and having that firmer line right over the last decade so yeah yeah um did you ever make the mistake of of trying to be too close to your your team maybe early on in your career gosh there there was one earlier on very this was many many years ago but i was really close with one of my team members who when i started with an organization i i was in the same position but then over the years i moved up and i was then managing this team and i was super close with one of the women on the team who um and what did it have ended up happening is i ended up needing to let her go because she wasn't performing to where she needed to be and going through the whole empathy thing and and that was tough it ruined the friendship you know and even though it was just business and by the kind of that was a that was a difficult situation where we were too close but we were too close going into it because i used to be a co-worker but now i'm a boss and now i have to fire her so that was really tough yeah i can't think of a tougher thing that that's uh that's super tough oh um yeah um is that now that you're you've been in sales leadership for a while what's changed about your perspective compared to when you first came into your role as a sales leader a lot has changed even from the leadership standpoint even in terms of looking at all of the different platforms that are available to work on for managing your sales team all the different communication platforms out there that are used in sales so there's been a lot of change on in just the sales industry and the technology point of it and so that's something that's been interesting and when i think back to when i started in the sales and picking up the phone and making phone calls and doing things like that and where we are today with automated email sequences and campaigns and you know gone or recording of different meanings it's it's just very different and but i think for us and sales it's all very positive and i think it's helped make our jobs more effective and better and hopefully produce better better results i think part of being a sales leader is cultivating those people you also want to move into sales leadership what are you looking for what are those signs that indicate someone on your team should start considering that transition into sales leadership oh great great question so kind of even as i mentioned earlier being able to really see when you have some really well um qualified candidates on your team and wanting to hold on to them and wanting them to be fulfilled in their job and their responsibilities and i really look for team members that are hitting the results they're hitting their voters their goals they're exceeding them and they're not only exceeding them they're exceeding them by 150 200 i mean they're just extremely competitive they're very much a silk starter they don't need somebody looking over them 24 7 or running reports to look at activity they're very um trustworthy they want to grow they're open to um ways to get better ways to improve it's conversations on where they would like to see themselves in five years and ten years making sure you can try to align your paths and so it's really looking for somebody who is possessing a lot of great qualities and proving proving themselves day in and day out maybe a lot of sales people that are great working as an individual you know like you're saying kid at that 150 200 percent of quota they crush it as an individual what are you looking for in terms of their ability to collaborate and work as a team as part of that decision for a path to leadership they have to have the ability to kind of remove themselves from that and look at things in a big picture look at the company look at the growth look what the goals that we have company-wide and be able to take themselves out of their individual role many sales reps you learn your territory and you're very you're focused on your territory and knowing every ins and outs and every which way in sideways but being able then to now look at things differently be able to figure out what's working what's not working what should be applied company wide failed wide what shouldn't be what are ways that you feel things should take place what training maybe additional training may be different different products need to be changed being able to take um things that they're working on at a daily level and applying them to the big picture right uh think about of all the people you've hired um can you describe the attributes of the person that was your best hire and you know what were those attributes that really do you think contributed to that success she she's definitely my best hire i've i've hired her twice already to work on my sales team as i've moved along so i'm getting ready to bring her over for a third time so it really goes back to she really reminded me a lot of myself when i was kind of starting out and she is very much just very competitive very willing to learn very um willing to just have that drive in her where it's you want to just keep going and going and going until you feel like your pipeline is in a really good place or you have the deals closed and just having that that passion for it and every time i've i've had her on my team she always is amazing out of the ballpark great so it's finding that person who just possesses all those qualities that keeps on ongoing because with sales pipeline is key it's huge if you don't have pipeline you don't have sales and some people it really bothers if you don't have a pipeline i joke around with my family and friends saying well i i'm in a bad mood if i don't feel like my pipeline is exactly where i want it to be for my team i get fancy i start like twitching like this isn't working and i just we just have to put our nose down and get it to a place where like okay we can breathe and it's very much like that or you just had to keep going yeah how do you help your team keep rejection in perspective that's hard i go back to what i had said thing this is a completion this is good this is now we're not wasting any time spinning our wheels on this and we could be using that effort and talking to potential clients so i always go back to that because that is number one because that's huge people spend a lot of time going after clients in contact and they don't ever connect with them they don't they're not able to move on or they're going off the road out after their own people and and that's just wasted effort essentially so going back and honing in looking at who you're who you are going after different ways to perhaps bring other bring other pipeline into your system that would be more positive making pivots trying different different verticals if you have the ability to sell within different verticals as we do i try to encourage them different ways to make those pivots even throughout your day to get you kind of up and running again because they can be deflating for people absolutely um the uh uh i just i had a question around that uh what you're saying and i got so in trance of what you were saying i forgot my next question it was around the uh um [Music] when you're losing those deals a lot of the sales leaders i talked to like to do retrospectives on you know they'll pick out a handful of deals that have been lost yeah do you do you think that's a good idea to do those retrospectives i do i do we we do them i i do them primarily when i'm looking big picture when i'm looking at rfps that we've spent you know enormous amount of time responding to and crafting and pitching proposals and go back and okay we're going to look at the scoring system we're going to look at the comments from the committee we're going to do that work to see where we fell short where we could have support higher how can we make these changes so that next time we're better off so absolutely and i always welcome that especially in those types of situations when you're dealing with big deals and you have the ability to have feedback to have scoring systems to have common sub categories that's extremely valuable to me i love that you go you have your team go back and ask why and and because i know like you can't do the retrospectives unless you're doing that and you're really finding out exactly why you lost the deal what was it about your competitor that maybe was better if you don't know that how can you adapt and compete right you're guessing and it's good luck i mean it's it's difficult and you ask and sometimes you ask and they don't tell you or they don't respond or they don't want to share that information with you but other times they do and when they do that's super valuable so that you are able to make those have those conversations and make those changes yeah well i mean they're basically they're giving you uh it's not free advice but because you spent a lot of time to earn it but uh it's fully not because you spent all that time to earn it it's foolish not to capture it right and i'm very very big on transparency throughout my whole sales process being extremely transparent from beginning to end i'm very much in the school of thought that i deliver what i sell so i'm going to be very transparent very open make sure we cross every t dot every eye so that once the deal is closed and you're a client of ours that everything that we talked about throughout the entire sales process will come to fruition for you and as part of the the transparency that i i want to have with my relationships with my clients and prospects would be that feedback being able to share that with me and with my team that's great crm do you love it or do you hate it i love it i mean if you're still leaders need it for multiple different reasons sdrs sales reps rsns need it in a different capacity it's super important it's the hub of everything you're doing for sales so all of my my sales team they live and breathe in that in the crm it's extremely valuable and when it's going to make you a better salesperson if you manage it the right way oh for sure um [Music] when i when we implement crm we come in with a message to the sales team that we develop with our clients about the why why we're implementing crm and why we're using it and what's the benefits to them the front line what is your message when you have that conversation with your sales team it's extremely extremely important and i've been in different positions where i've had my manager or my executive come down and say laura you're behind on your pipeline where's your opportunities or update them and i know it's a pain and but it's still we need it for the scaling and we need it for a lot of different reasons but your sales team needs it to manage all the moving pieces things if you don't manage it correctly if you don't manage your accounts and your pipeline things get lost in the shuffle they fall through the cracks and you forget to follow up on deals and you forget to record different things you forget you've maybe even had a conversation with somebody it's you have to really live and breathe from your crm because you have to be able to see what your last conversation was who's the right contact person who's the competing vendor that might be currently servicing them all in one place but a quick glance to be off and running and work on your next your next sailfall we talked in our pre-show that you your company just recently transitioned to a new crm and your firm made the decision to self-implement and that there are portions of that that have been a struggle can you talk a bit about any lessons you've learned from those struggles absolutely having worked in several different trm systems over the years i was kind of in the mindset that they all were very customizable pretty user friendly my advice moving forward is to really kind of look under the hood in more detail i think where i made the assumption some of that transition and customization and reporting needs that i wanted and needed for implementing this within my team were much harder to obtain than i've had experience with previously so looking at what does their back-end look like what is that that implementation process looks like how hard is it really going to be to have customized reports done in in really you know we didn't account for some of the additional training and costs that came along with it because those pieces were very difficult to do on our own right so yeah that's really good advice and one of the areas that i see a lot i happen to be on a i had the privilege of listening to a group of sales leaders that were having a monthly meeting where they just basically share experiences and what they're doing what's working what's not and one person came on who was new in his role who was saddled with a crm that was chosen by his pres predecessor that couldn't integrate had no api couldn't integrate with anything else in the company and so they had this very expensive data silo that he was stuck with and and that's one of those areas that people overlook those back end type things they don't have to have and very important and i'm i'm i'm happy with our move and i did decide you know to make this migration and i'm very happy that we did it however really taking a bigger look at the back end in not making assumptions because it's a big name for example or thinking that's going to be easy this is easy you know really having to dig dig deep and be able to have a clearer picture of what all is going to entail to make that migration yeah well we're coming up on our time here on sales lead dog i really appreciate you coming on the show it's been great chatting with you if people want to reach out with you reach out to you laura and connect if they want to learn more about ambassador what's the best way for them to do that absolutely i will share with you my email um and my direct phone number my linkedin profile as well i'd be happy to talk to you about an ambassador and any other questions for me personally that you have within the sales industry happy to connect and i can share all of that information we'll put all that in the show notes so uh instead of you having to because i'm one of those people if someone's talking i can never capture especially email addresses right um you know so we'll put all that in the show notes that's very gracious of you laura to include all that absolutely so be sure to check out ambassador's website even if you're not in the market to be a customer your technology is pretty cool um and uh i guarantee you at some point if you have children they're going to be using their platform so oh yes for sure excellent well thanks again for coming on sales lead dog thanks so much 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 impellercrm.com forward slash sales lead dog salesly doug is supported by impeller crm delivering objectively better crm for business guaranteed 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