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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the WOMEN IN SALES Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Gina Stracuzzi on September 22, 2020. It featured Expel Sales Leader Denise Hayman.]

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EPISODE 277: Women in Sales Leader Denise Hayman Says These Critical Traits Will Help You Accelerate Your Sales Career

DENISE’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “I love the word ‘imagine’. If you are helping someone imagine a better outcome, not only are you problem-solving with them but you are taking them to a better world. It means that you’ve asked them enough questions that you can say, “Can you imagine a world where that is different? Can you imagine where those problems that you just talked about go away? What does that look like?” Sales professionals need to work on getting customers to feel that emotional connection, getting them to really feel the difference between just a regular conversation and one where you leave them feeling, “Yes, I can see a better thing, I can get there!”

Gina Stracuzzi: Denise Hayman is someone I’ve been waiting to have on the show because she’s such a fabulous example of a woman sales leader that has really made it to the top of her game and has a lot to share with us. Denise, welcome and tell us about yourself.

Denise Hayman: Excited to be here too, Gina, thank you. We’ve been planning this for a while so glad that it’s finally here. In terms of me, I’ve been in the sales leadership side for a while, a combination of startup companies and larger companies. I actually started my sales career at Symantec on the security side and grew up with them, went off and did startups and I find myself here at another startup in Virginia at Expel as the Chief Revenue Officer. I grew my skills over time and plied my wares across different types. What I love about sales – if I could divert for just a second – is the thing that we do around translating technology needs into business buyer needs, that whole translation is really what makes it a fun scenario. The building teams around it is what I’ve enjoyed over many years doing this.

Gina Stracuzzi: I was looking at your bio and it’s really amazing all the things you’ve done and the level of experience and responsibility and how you’ve grown so much as a leader and throughout your career. I think that’s the kind of growth that everybody wants but sometimes eludes us. I think what we’re going to talk about today is a perfect setup for the conversation because women have what they need, but they don’t always use it from what I can see and what my guests tell us. Let’s just talk about all the insane changes that have happened over this year, it has been something no one could have predicted and if they wrote a book, everybody would say that’s just unrealistic, but here we are. Why don’t you take it from your perspective as a boss, as a manager, as a team leader, what the biggest shifts that you witnessed have been and what they mean for everybody?

Denise Hayman: There’s definitely been a lot of conversation about this. Here we sit in the end of September with no real change in sight, we’re definitely prepping for this being long-term for how we sell. The big shift especially for organizations that have large field organizations is just the fact that face-to-face is gone. Yes, there’s occasionally things that are coming up but the face-to-face, the trade shows, the ability to have lunch with prospective clients, all of that overnight went away. Then we started interacting in front of this TV screen like we’re doing today, so all of our interaction is 100% in whatever size monitor you have. How do you shift your selling game for that moment, for that time?

We’re big Zoom users and everybody uses a different platform but Zoom has democratized selling so it’s the same opportunity for everyone now because it doesn’t matter if you’re local, it doesn’t matter what your age is, your religion, your gender. All of that goes out the window, everybody now has the same opportunity to be able to sell in this platform. Then it becomes about how you engage and ensuring that you are engaging, that’s hard to do in this scenario. I know you have another guest happening later on this week that’s talking about how you use acting in the context of it. A lot of what we do around that engagement is asking questions and engaging and listening and really being there with the prospects and customers breaking this barrier and trying to figure out how you reach in and actually have a conversation with somebody over a screen. It’s changing everything in terms of how we interact.

Gina Stracuzzi: It is something that some people find far easier than others, some people are really great on the phone, other people aren’t and then you have people who just freeze in front of the screen. We had a guest a little while ago who told us all about how to be more animated, that really makes a difference especially now that people are fried on video. We have to find a way to keep moving forward in terms of what we do. Let’s flip that a little bit and talk about how the buyer’s needs have changed in relationship to what we’re trying to do through selling.

Denise Hayman: Good question. The way I think about it is buyer’s needs have been changing for a long time, the more accessible information is, their peers, their networks, they’re on our websites or from third parties, the less it becomes about the salesperson ensuring that they are talking about features and functionality and the more it becomes the salesperson’s job to add value in the process. That means for a prospective buyer, they’re trying to figure out how can what we’re doing or what we’re offering out to them be collaborative in nature to help them solve a problem? Because they’ve already figured it out at that point for the most part, maybe there’s some nuances in things they need to understand but for the most part they already know what they need. It’s up to us to be listening – again, the whole listening skills thing we’re going to talk about a lot here in terms of traits.

Listening and really being able to add value to that scenario. This is the beginning of my conversation around there are so many traits that make it really important for sellers right now and there are a lot of those traits that are historically better as females. That’s just in part of our nature and part of what we are, not to say that men don’t also have some of these traits but in my experience, it just comes a little bit more naturally to women sellers. We’re typically more listeners, we’re typically more about trying to problem-solve, trying to get in and really collaborate. We’ll talk about those traits as we go forward here but this is why I think right now is the absolute best time to be a woman in sales, because again, the screen means it’s absolutely up to us to find those things that break that barrier and then the kind of things that are important right now for sellers. Listening to buyers and collaborating with them are also natural traits that women tend to exhibit.

Gina Stracuzzi:  As you say, the age-old everybody talks about it when they talk about the best helpers are the best listeners and women are – generally speaking – better listeners than men. Let’s go onto one of the traits that you feel are most inherent to women that they can capitalize and leverage. Tell us a little bit about what they are for you and why you think they’re so important.

Denise Hayman: Right to the heart of it, Gina. First of all, I think it’s important to understand the difference between a trait and a skill. A trait by definition is something that a person exhibits that is just part of their personality, it’s not something that can be taught, its who they are. It’s something you have or something you don’t and not to say that you can’t get better at traits, you can’t enhance your skills and enhance certain areas in this, but from a trait perspective, it is very specific to that. I think about things like are you patient or not? Many people will tell you that I am not, that is just something about me, I have a high sense of urgency, my team that are listening to this are all laughing at me now. Are you thoughtful or not? Are you optimistic? Are you driven? What are those things that make you a part of that personality? As opposed to a skill which is something that can be learned, can you close? Are you good at prospecting? Are you a fast runner? These are all skills and things that typically can be taught. Then there’s always experiences that play into it as well which is how have you applied those to a certain situation? As I look at candidates, I look at traits, skills and experiences, it’s the combination that really makes the whole person.
You asked about traits, so specifically when I think about traits that make the best sellers – again, never mind women or men at this point, but the traits that make the best sellers – I think about three main things. #1 is curiosity and when I say curiosity I mean the ability to ask a question and listen to the answer so that you’re not queuing for that next question. You are listening and following along, you’re engaging, you’re creating that conversation, you’re not going through a list. I told a story on one of the other podcasts earlier this year with you all where early in my sales career I had been taught that what we do when we get a potential prospect on the phone is, “Here are the 10 questions that you need to ask.” I had been chasing one particular prospect for many weeks, finally got them on the phone and started down my questions, I was really excited. “Here’s question 1, question 2, question 3” and he stopped me in the middle and said, “I’m sorry, is this a survey?” because I wasn’t listening and that was my natural gift. It is one of the things I consider myself to be really good at is listening and understanding and forming the next question based on that and I wasn’t using my natural talent.

Curiosity is really a combination of listening and asking good questions, not just yes/no questions, there’s arts to questions and all of that. The other thing about curiosity is that there’s this survey I saw recently where it was saying that 74% of buyers were more likely to buy if they feel like they have been listened to, not just sold to, not just talked at but actually listened to. You can’t really listen to somebody unless you’re asking them good questions. At Expel we track the amount of listening time versus speaking time – there’s a lot of great sales conversation tools out there, in particular we use Gong – and it’s got a range. 43% is actually the number you need to be at in terms of percent listening versus speaking so we track against that, it’s very much a trait and a thing that we want to continue enhancing. So #1, curiosity.

Number Two is problem-solving and collaboration. We talked before a little bit about the whole ‘where buyer’s needs are today’ in terms of they come already understanding already what they’re looking for, so it’s up to us to enter into it with them in that point and help them collaborate through to their problem-solving. I’m in technology sales, I’ve been in technology sales pretty much my entire sales career and we’re dealing with a lot of logical buyers, these are people that for the most part, come up from some sort of engineering side and they need data, they need logic, they need step-by-step, they need to understand it. The interesting thing is that even in that world, people buy emotionally still. Even in that situation, so problem-solving but making sure that we are enabling that value and in my world, that’s reducing risk, that is enhancing productivity, it’s things that are part of their problem, being there with them, showing them that you’re there.

The Number Three trait is a one that I know you all have talked about before, which is emotional intelligence. This has been talked a lot about this year in particular because it’s been such a trying year for everybody. Let’s define it, I think about it as the ability to manage emotions no matter what life has thrown at you which we’ve certainly seen a lot of this year. It means that you have to be aware of those around you, you can’t just be dealing with your own emotions, you’ve got to be dealing with not only what’s going on for you but what’s going on for them. In sales, we deal with this all the time. We have issues come up, we have last-minute purchasing situations, contract situations, we’re dealing with some of those right now and it’s all about how you deal with that. Do you go into tell mode? “I’m going to tell you how you need to change this” or do you go into, “Hang on, let’s back up here and have a real conversation about what it is we’re all trying to accomplish and where we are”, tying them back in. That ability to step back with some maturity and use your emotional gifts, your intuition gifts to be able to change that situation around, these are all things that are break-through situations around that engagement. Those are my top 3 traits that I believe make the best salespeople and there’s all kinds of studies out there that show it.

If you think about it – again, I’m not making any big judgements here – curiosity, problem-solving, collaboration, emotional intelligence tend to be traits that women have great expertise in. Again, not to say that men don’t have it, I’ve met plenty of men that have all of these scenarios as well but they’re gifts that we have as a woman that are not fully utilized in the sales scenario. It’s my belief and I believe that right now is our exact right time as women in sales to be using those because of this screen that we’re interacting in, because of the need to engage, because of the need to be able to collaborate with where buyers are. Everything has gone back to a playing field so it’s our time to use our gifts to change and break that Zoom barrier that we have.

Gina Stracuzzi: Thinking about all these points that you raise and all these traits that are inherent to women, why do you think that more women or perhaps more sales teams are not encouraging women to use these more often? Why do you think they get stuck with the process more than the manner?

Denise Hayman: I’ve always believed personally that there’s a combination of art and science in sales and I think what we’re talking about here is the art of it that is also backed up by science, there are lots of studies out there that we can talk about if you want. The art of it in terms of the ‘how we engage’, I think this is really coming to life now. Most sales process methodologies don’t cover that, they cover the, “We’re going to teach you how to close, we’re going to teach you how to negotiate, we’re going to teach you how to position our product features and sometimes benefits” – hopefully more benefits than not – but very rarely do we talk about the how, the emotional interchange, the engagement, great story writing.

At Expel we talk about we make space for people to do what they love in security which is very much an antithesis with what security buyers in general think that they’re looking for. There’s no one that’s like, “Let me search for the thing that’s going to help me love doing security again.” It’s not a thing and it’s been two years now that I’ve been here, when I first came to the company I thought, “This is such a weird thing for us to talk about.” Then as I got more engaged with it and understanding that really what we’re doing is we’re helping them fall in love again with the thing that they decided to do. We’re using that emotion and the more we talk about it, the more we engage to – you can talk about it as engaging to your purpose, to your why – again, this year if it hasn’t shown us anything else, it’s about making sure that we’re engaging around what’s important. Helping our customers and our buyers also engage around that area, being vulnerable and open and really engaging emotionally. It’s just a perfect time for women to use these gifts in this scenario to be able to engage at that level. I just thing the sales process methodologies haven’t caught up yet for the most part.

Gina Stracuzzi: I tend to agree. In the Women in Sales leadership forum we have a whole session on emotional intelligence and then another whole session on trusting your intuition. When women move away from that and they don’t, your intuition told you that you shouldn’t be just asking this slew of questions…

Denise Hayman: [Laughs] well, my prospect told me that, too.

Gina Stracuzzi: You did what you were told. I think it’s giving yourself permission to listen to what you know is right and measure that situation for what it is, and then utilize it, go with it. The results are bound to be better than if you read everything off a script.

Denise Hayman: It’s courage to do things differently and follow along with your intuition, just believing in yourself in that moment.

Gina Stracuzzi: Let’s get back to the traits a little bit and why women make the absolute best sellers. Can you compare and contrast natural traits with men’s natural traits and how they differ? You hit on it a little bit but let’s take it maybe a step further, and how women can use their natural traits and gifts to really fly ahead in terms of selling.

Denise Hayman: I don’t necessarily like to think about it as differences, I think about it more as areas for any individual person to shine. From a traits perspective looking at how you improve your listening, how you improve your questions, that could be for a man or a woman, it doesn’t really matter. If you follow along and you’re now asking the next question based on what the prospect answered, that’s a totally new game.

I was on a sales call not with my team but somebody who was trying to sell me something a couple of weeks ago and we were just catching up at the beginning, asking questions, figuring out where everyone’s from and I answered his questions. Then he asked me the same question again and I expanded on the first question, and then he asked me another question as if he hadn’t even heard my answer. Right away trust is gone, the whole, “Are they ever really going to listen about what it is we’re trying to accomplish?” I don’t believe that person ever will, it’s a game changer in this environment where all you have is this engagement, you have no other way to tell how you’re going to engage. I think whether it’s women or men, there’s a lot of game that is won and lost based on listening and asking questions 100%. It just happens that women have some more natural talents in this area, I’ve seen it over and over again and studies show it over and over again that this is something that we’re naturally good at. It’s a trait of ours.

Gina Stracuzzi: Can you talk a little bit about some of the studies that you’ve read and some of the numbers that you’ve come across that back this up?

Denise Hayman: There’s a study that was done by, I think it’s ZS Associates which is an HR consulting company and it was talking about emotional intelligence in selling. Again, not mattering whether it was women or men, views of who has most. The study showed that the salespeople that had high emotional intelligence outperformed people who did not have or were slightly less – they called the moderates – by 50%. 50% in my world is a lot of difference so 50% better at outcomes, at hitting quota, at all of that, just with that emotional intelligence piece. The ability to manage your emotions, deal with things as they come and be mature in that moment, that was #1, emotional intelligence.

The second one is, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it exactly, there’s a sales compensation software, I think this was a study done last year. They have 300,000 salespeople whose compensation they manage, they’re a SaaS platform and they compared women sellers and men sellers and 86% of the women that they tracked in their sales software had made quota in this last year compared to 78% of men who made quota last year. 8% difference between men and women in terms of their ability to make quota. You could say the sample size is smaller for women which also makes it harder but for sure, in my world it ends up being 80% or 90% men and very few women which is something you and I’ve talked about, working to change that scenario. That study was really interesting because they had a great cross-section of all types of products, all types of scenarios, all types of solutions and 86% of women versus 78% hit their quota showing outperformance there. Those two studies, I think validate what we’re talking about in terms of women and their gifts.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s pretty amazing. Let’s talk about how a client responds to listening. Do you have any numbers about the difference between if a client feels like they’re being listened to, how more often they’re buying from salespeople that are known to listen better?

Denise Hayman: I was talking about Gong, I’m a big analytics person, it’s the science part of the ‘art and science’ piece of it. Their studies, what they do is they look at all top sellers and say, “What are the traits and skills of all top sellers?” Top sellers outperform moderate sellers by significant amounts. In the listening world, again this percentage thing, 46% of the time listening is what top sellers accomplished. It was much higher, like 67% for less successful seller so that again proves to me that the listening piece and making sure buyers are heard is extremely important. That other study that I was talking about saying that 74% of buyers were saying that they were more likely to buy from somebody when they felt like they were listened to. It’s hard to measure feelings but you can look at how long somebody speaks, how long they answer, how they engage, what words they use, all of those kinds of things are important in that engagement especially in this screen that we’re talking about.

Gina Stracuzzi: All of those things are really important to know. I want to ask you, and this might be an opinion but you’re also an employer of the people so you have background to back this up. If women have all these traits that make us so good at selling, why are the number of women in sales and sales leadership so low?

Denise Hayman: That is a great question and one I think about a lot. We’re a fast-growing company and I would like nothing better, this would give me an advantage, as you can see the numbers show and the analysis shows it, to have more women on the team. It is really hard to find women sellers who have stuck with it, have gone through the early phases of selling and decided that this is a profession they want to be in. Again, as you said, these are my opinions but my opinions are that there’s two things that make the difference. #1 is for me, I was lucky enough to have people early in my career that helped show me the differences and were celebrating the things that made me a good seller, that happened to be a lot of these things we’re talking about.

At the same time, they saw it as an advantage, not a disadvantage. They weren’t looking at gender, they were looking at success and continued to support me in that scenario. I can think of three or four people along in my early career who did that for me, so then I started believing in myself and understanding that I had some talent in this area to be able to continue to expand on. I’ve said this on a couple of panel discussions before, for me the difference when I look at those people that were supported versus not, there tends to be strong women in their life. It is a strong relationship with their mom, with their grandmother, have daughters that they care about so they have exposure to strong women and understand our gifts as opposed to see it as different. There’s definitely been a pattern, I can take you through it on another occasion.

#2 is that dogged persistence. For me, my choice in being in sales is about having the freedom to be able to create our own income. For me, that freedom piece was really important and I tapped into that and understood that early on and then have developed that not only in me but in those around me. I knew somebody early on that said, “I was a great salesperson, I don’t know if I was an excellent salesperson. I’m a much better leader than I was an individual contributor” so it’s about following your gifts and having mentors and people that support you along the way.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s two of the things that the women leaders that we’ve had come in and present to the forum have really talked about. One thing that you struck on is having a mentor. Having a mentor really is the one piece of advice that every leader that’s come through has talked to us about, finding that can be sometimes difficult and sometimes it has to be outside your firm. The other thing they talked about was the financial freedom, but it’s also the freedom to get up and go to your kid’s afternoon event because as long as you’re making your numbers, you’ve got the freedom to stop at 3 o’clock if you want to. That’s something that most women can’t get if they’re in a regular job. I think if more women could start to appreciate that they already have a lot of the gifts they need to be successful and it can give you financial independence and a certain amount of family freedom, then maybe it looks more attractive.

Denise Hayman: Excellent point. This is the only career I know of that the more I spend my time and my energy at, directly affects the amount of money I make so it’s my choice.

Gina Stracuzzi: There are a lot of hardworking people in the world who don’t get equally monetized for their efforts, selling is just one of those beautiful things for sure. What else would you like us to think about when we think about how to make curiosity, collaboration and emotional intelligence work for us? What would your advice be to women who are already in the field? How can they start putting these things to work for themselves right away? How will they see results?

Denise Hayman: I feel like a little bit of a broken record [laughs] but this whole listening and asking questions thing. That is something that everyone can improve on, making sure that you are continuing to expand your gifts in that area and really honing in on that and practicing collaborating, practicing problem-solving, those are extremely important in life, never mind in sales. It will only make you a better salesperson.

In the art and science of things there are a couple of other things that I have found to be really important in terms of, let’s talk about them as pronouns. The words that people use especially in this scenario become really important and from a scenario of collaboration, we talked about that collaborating right now being really important not only for women sellers, for all sellers. Coming to the table at that moment where somebody’s looking forward to having you help solve their problem versus just telling them what you think. There’s a big difference between being able to engage someone in a collaborative way when you are speaking to them as opposed to speaking to something generic. The difference between saying, “Your users will get benefit because…” and saying, “You will actually get benefit”, really digging into that personalization. Direct, “This is what you will get out of this” versus something generic that might be written from some copywriter about what your solution actually does. This is a big difference in that engagement theory, being able to really engage at an individual level with what an individual person will get out of it as opposed to the company or whatever other scenario there. That’s one, really paying attention to utilizing your pronouns.

There’s a second word that I really love which is this idea, I was telling you before about how Expel talks about making space for doing what you love, I love the word ‘imagine’. If you are helping someone imagine a better outcome, not only are you problem-solving with them but you are bringing them to a better world. It can’t be you’re telling them to imagine, it means to be that you’ve asked them enough questions that you can say, “I’m putting this together, stay with me for a minute here. Can you imagine a world where that is different? Can you imagine a setup where those problems that you just talked about go away? What does that look like?” Getting them to feel it, that emotional connection, getting them to really feel the difference between just a regular conversation and something where you leave them like, “Yeah, I can see a better thing, I can get there.

Now I’m going to do something about changing that.” I love those two words, it’s just thinking about using those two words, doing a direct ‘you’ and wording everything that way and then taking customers and prospects into an imagination, a vision, a future state place. They’re huge ways that you can implement pretty easily because you can’t do imagination without asking good questions, you can’t do imagination if you’re not listening, you can’t do imagination if you’re not collaborating. You can’t speak to someone unless you’ve broken this Zoom barrier down and engaged them, you have to have accomplished that already. I like those two as quick and dirty things that people can do to make a difference.

Gina Stracuzzi: You had mentioned those to me when we were first talking and they’re words that you incorporate. Can you share with the audience what you shared with me in terms of the kinds of increased sales happen when you use these two words?

Denise Hayman: I can tell you that when I’ve correlated those words – again, you have to have some sort of conversational intelligence situation to be able to look at this or something that can track the words – I definitely see a correlation between people that are using direct personalized conversation and also people that are using words that are helping prospects and customers get to the next better place. That might be imagine, it might be vision, it might be some other conversation. Those two things are very highly correlated, at least in my experience, to our best sellers. Those are the people that not only get customers on board with what they’re trying to do but also that means they’re achieving quota, they’re creating stickiness with those customers around having trust. I talk a lot about trust, that’s the other thing is that if our buyers don’t trust us, then it’s really hard to have stickiness over time. Creating trust in that relationship is really important.

Gina Stracuzzi: The numbers that I was teasing out of you a little bit was you had said that there was almost a 30% increase in using the word ‘you’. In combination with ‘imagine’, that went up exponentially more. Those are the kinds of things that people can implement immediately and see some kind of result.

Denise Hayman: Thank you for bringing that back around, you’re right. One of the studies that I’ve seen talks about this and it’s direct personal conversation increases the sales success by 30% which is fantastic, anything that changes something that dramatically is something worth doing. It’s an easy thing to do and that visioning collaboration is another 20% or so, so having those two would have huge impact in terms of outcome for sure.

Gina Stracuzzi: Unbelievably, we’re just about out of time. This conversation was riveting. You and I talked about maybe having you on again at some point and talking about hiring and retaining women salespeople, and that’s something I really hope we get a chance to explore because I think you’re not the only one to be struggling with trying to find women who want to sell and who are good at it. All of us could be good at it if we accepted it and embraced it, but where do you find them? Then once you do, how do you hang onto them? I think that’s an important conversation for the VPs of Sales and the CEOs that listen in on these webcasts that IES does every week. I hope you will come back and talk to us about that. People can find you on LinkedIn, correct?

Denise Hayman: LinkedIn is a great place, email is always good, it’s denise.hayman@expel.io, that’s another way to reach me.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 277: Women in Sales Leader Denise Hayman Says These Critical Traits Will Help You Accelerate Your Sales Career first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: We conducted this interview in January 2020. Since the show was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked Denise what her advice is for sales professionals during the pandemic. She offered the following:

• “This is the perfect time to practice your research, personalization and empathy, all elements of a Sales Done Right approach.
• Business is still getting done, but needs have changed.
• Make sure to take the time to find out what has changed and work to adjust to meet your prospects and customers’ needs. What a great time to create trust and loyalty!

EPISODE 219: Expel Sales Leader Denise Hayman Explains Why It’s the Perfect Time to Apply a Sales Done Right Approach to Be of Service to Your Customers

DENISE’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “It’s Sales Done Right. Nothing takes the place of you doing the work. Athletes practice no matter how great they are, lawyers practice before they go into the courtroom, we have to practice. We have to be good at our elevator pitch, we have to be good and know the questions ahead of time, we have to be prepared with understanding who we’re talking to, we have to know how those people want to be talked to and talked with, what are the best ways. The biggest tip that I would say is do the work, prepare and do the work.”

Denise Hayman is the Chief Revenue Officer at Expel.

Prior to coming to Expel, she was at Neustar and Symantec and was a sales leader for a lot of exciting startup companies in the tech space.

We spoke about the difference between working as a sales leader for a large company and for a small company.

Denise can be found on LinkedIn here.

Fred Diamond: How did you get into sales as a career?

Denise Hayman: I did not come up from a traditional place to get into sales. I have an interesting background, I actually started out as a special education teacher and there are lots of jokes about that as you might imagine, that dealing with salespeople is a lot like dealing with special education people. I think the main thing for me that came out of that is I really understand how to evaluate individual performance. The ability to ask questions and ascertain where someone is in their current state and help them, lead them and motivate them to get to the next place is a key foundation of what has made me be a great sales leader over the years. After that, of course I had to figure out what I wanted to be once I figured out that I wasn’t going to be a special education leader. I sort of fell into it, I think we’ll talk about that in a little bit here.

Fred Diamond: Usually I ask the question, “What are some of the lessons you learned from your first few sales jobs?” and you have eluded to it, what are some of the key things that you learned as a special educations teacher that you apply today?

Denise Hayman: The difference between a special education teacher and a regular teacher in a big classroom is that as a special education teacher you’re dealing with people that are coming at you from all different places. You might have children that have difficulty reading, difficulty with math, dyslexia, attention issues so you’re having to deal with everyone individually and differently. I learned early on that you had to really not look at everything as a whole but look at everything as an individual. The ability to create sales programs, to do motivation by an individual rep, all of that really came from my original teaching experience.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about Expel, tell us what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Denise Hayman: We’re selling what’s called a transparent managed security solution. Why that is important is because there are millions of open cyber security jobs out there today and organizations that really want to be best-in-class in terms of how they deal with their security internally at their organizations. What we’re doing is bringing that expertise to the masses so we’re able to allow any organization to be able to purchase a service from us that has full on credibility and full on access to the best-in-class kinds of security in their management of their solutions internally.

Fred Diamond: A lot of people, when they listen to the podcast, they want to know who you sell to. What types of positions purchase your solutions?

Denise Hayman: Many people think that what we’re doing here is selling to smaller companies and it’s amazing, every size of company has this issue so it can be smaller companies, it can be huge companies that are either extending their security posture or they are replacing what they’ve got internally already. The primary people that we are selling to, it’s a head of a security operations center, it’s a head of a security architecture type of team, it’s a chief information security officer, the people that are the custodians within an organization of what happens to the security internally and sometimes out to their customer base as well. That’s who we’re selling to.

Fred Diamond: Tell us how you first got into sales, how did you make that transition from special ed to sales?

Denise Hayman: Accidentally. When I knew that I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore, what I really tried to figure out was, “What’s next?” The best opportunity was go figure out some things so I took a job selling advertising, 100% commission selling advertising for a trade show book. This was just testing my skills to see what I wanted to do and what I learned from that has taken me to this day which is, first of all, in a job like that it’s all about you. You’re not making any money until you make a sale so the scenario of having to really grind it out and do the work was very apparent.

Then I also learned that I really loved getting the sale, the aspect of targeting and really going after a specific person, a specific company and the thrill of the chase, the success of what happens when you actually get to that place, that was interesting during that part of my career. Now overtime obviously that has changed and the things that excite me now about sales are more about the building of the team and the impact on the organization both from a company perspective as well as the individual sales rep perspective. I love being able to – maybe this is some of my special education stuff – take an individual and really help motivate them to a new place that they didn’t even think they could accomplish.

Fred Diamond: I’m curious, again at the introduction we talked that you worked at Neustar which is large company and we actually interviewed a couple of the sales leaders from Neustar, we’ll put a link to the show that we did with Dorean Kass who now heads sales there and also Craig Pentz, but you also worked for some exciting startups like we mentioned in the introduction. What do you like better? Tell us what excites you about selling for a large company versus selling for an exciting startup.

Denise Hayman: First of all, the job is very different at both of those companies. The mission when you’re at a small security company sometimes can be about getting those first customers, sometimes it can be about trying to figure out product market fit, you’re in the early stages of trying to decide whether there’s a ‘there’, there, whether that thing that you think is going to be out in the marketplace is going to sell. Then you get some momentum and you start building out the team so it’s very much about proving the theory of the marketplace. When you’re at a larger company it’s much more about scale and about maybe new opportunities, about organizing and operational efficiency, those kinds of things. It’s a lot more about building the management structure and building the capabilities within the team than it is necessarily about finding those first customers.

Fred Diamond: You did both.

Denise Hayman: I have.

Fred Diamond: Did you enjoy both? Now obviously you’re with Expel and we’re doing the interview from your offices today, and by the way, for the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe we’re located about 20 minutes outside of Washington DC, not too far from the Dulles Airport. There’s a lot of tech around here, a lot of cyber companies that we’ve also interviewed for the podcast. Tell us what excites you about working for a large company versus working for a small company like this.

Denise Hayman: They’re both awesome when you get to lead a team of people that is motivated to hit targets and see that growth. To me, again it’s less about the size of the company than it is about the team that I get to lead so it really has to do with the individuals and their motivation to grow and learn. If I can take somebody, like I said before, to a place that they didn’t expect that they could get to, motivate them to get there, that’s a huge win for me. In larger companies I’d say that’s harder to do sometimes than at startup companies. I have tended to lean into startup companies, I think that’s more my wheelhouse around the being able to build and really that intuition of understand when you can find a customer niche and be able to match that niche. It’s a lot harder to do that at a large company although they have their benefits as well, I’ve had a couple of big companies in my career and I’m back at a startup. I think this is my eighth startup now so I seem to lean in this direction [laughs].

Fred Diamond: We have a lot of Sales Game Changers listening around the globe and we get two types of questions – we get a ton of questions, but one of the questions we get from our listeners is, “I work for a small company, how can I work for a larger company?” and then we also get the converse, “I’ve been working for a large company for 20 years, I want to try a startup, a high tech, sky high flying type of company.” What would you tell someone who works for a large company about going into a small company? Not a leader per se, but a rank and file individual contributor who’s been with an Oracle or a Microsoft or an HP for 20 years and now they want to take a shot working in something a little more energetic.

Denise Hayman: I would ask why. The first question is, “What is it that attracts you to this? Is it just because you think there’s some big payout at the end and so you’re just in for that?” Because the work is totally different at a startup than it is at a large company from a rep perspective. What I interview for and what we look for in terms of individual sales reps has to do with, “Have you built a territory from scratch? What would it take? Have you targeted accounts within? Who do you know within those accounts that you get going quickly?” It’s less about, “Is the organizational brand going to help you bring into those customers?” What if you had no customers in your territory at all and you had to start from scratch? We’re lucky enough to not be in that position, we have customers I think in every territory but the building of a territory is totally different than a servicing of a territory, that’s #1. #2 I would say the pace is totally different.

Again, making a generalization here but at a startup company the pace around what happens when a lead comes in, when you’re going to an event, the pressure on ensuring that you’re making the most of every moment, one of the other things that I interview for is a bias for urgency. The whole idea of, “If you had a situation come up that you need to take care of and these other things came in mind, tell me how you would prioritize those.” What happens if the customer is pushing you off? How do you create that urgency? It’s a lot more about the hand-to-hand combat at a small company than at a large company, it’s more about making the organization operationally efficient to be able to deal with that customer.

Fred Diamond: Tell us what you’re an expert in. Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Denise Hayman: Brilliance [laughs] this is always a weird question for me. In talking to my team and hearing from them what they would like to have more of from me as well as what they think I’m good at, what frequently comes up is that they tell me that I am really good at asking questions. It’s sales skill 101 but there is absolutely an art to it to not have it be just a list of questions, to have it have context, to really be curious and it’s not faking curiosity, it’s more, “I am here and I am asking you questions because I am interested and I’ve thought about these other questions that might come up.”

The ability to not only ask an easy close-ended question but a hard, challenging question because our prospects and our customers sometimes need us to do that. They don’t know everything, we’ve seen lots of things that they don’t see. Sometimes we need to be mindful of asking not only the easy questions but the hard questions. What my team tells me is that I am really good at doing that with them as well as with prospects and customers from a place of not putting them on their back feet, not ruffling their feathers. It’s really because I am curious and I think it comes across.

Fred Diamond: I want to ask you a question. You just brought up something that hasn’t really come up all that frequently on the Sales Game Changers podcast. You talked about you asking your team for guidance on what you’re doing well and what you can improve on. Talk about that for a little bit, talk about how you as a sales leader solicit that type of advice and guidance from your team members.

Denise Hayman: As you might imagine, it’s for them maybe not the most comfortable position because they don’t know why I’m asking. To your point, it’s an unusual thing to make sure that is happening but I am their leader. I am not an elected official, I am in a scenario where they are only as good as my ability to serve them and to serve the organization on their behalf. If I don’t know what is going on for them that is working and not working or what I’m doing or not doing well, then they will never be able to be better. I have had to get them used to the fact that I’m asking it genuinely and openly and honestly, I actually just did a round with my team where I asked for some specific feedback and as you might imagine, some people are more comfortable at doing that than others. But again, using my questions I’ll dig in and ask questions and ensure that they’re getting what they need.

Fred Diamond: I really applaud you for that. We talk a lot about the people in the team continuously learning and we also talk about the sales leaders we interview on the podcast continuously learning but we very rarely bring up that aspect of getting input from your team on how you can become a better sales leader. You’ve worked for some great companies, a lot of high flying startups and large companies as well. You must have had some impactful mentors along the way, why don’t you tell us about an impactful sales career mentor or two and how they impacted your career?

Denise Hayman: This is personally a very big subject for me because I believe that mentors can be game changers for all of us but really hard to find that person that you really connect with that has your best interest at heart. I was lucky enough early in my career at Symantec, I had two people who I still consider to be mentors although we’ve all scattered into different places, one who was my immediate manager in a sales management role that really taught me about negotiating from a win-win perspective.

You go through a whole bunch of sales training and you learn the textbook thing to say or the question you should ask or make sure you’re getting everything from both sides, but she really did an amazing job at A, asking questions and B, really teaching us all about the importance of making sure everybody wins in a negotiation. It’s not just about us getting what we need, the customer needs to get something out of it as well and as a sales leader I’ve definitely continued on that path with her. Another one also at Symantec, at the time he was my VP of Sales, his name is Phil Dunkelberger.

Do you know Phil?

Fred Diamond: I worked at Apple Computer with Phil.

Denise Hayman: Years ago, absolutely.

Fred Diamond: ‘Dunk’

Denise Hayman: ‘Dunk’, yes. I was in California at the time and Symantec was there and he taught me so many things about sales management, how to interview, what to look for, how to test certain skills. He’s at the time a big person in the Xerox way of selling so there’s a lot of structure in terms of how do you go about the sales process. He did an amazing job at not only teaching but also he would go on the field regularly and make sure that he was taking those same skills and bringing them out to the individual reps. I worked for him again, actually at PGP when he was a CEO and I was a VP of Sales, so I got to do it in a different elevated role but same sort of thing, great mentorship.

Fred Diamond: I have a little Phil story. I was with Apple’s Federal Systems group in the late 80s, early 90s and then I moved to Apple in corporate. Real briefly, Phil was the director of federal marketing at one point, this would have been 1988 through 1991 and I was in field training for the federal marketplace. We had an offsite probably in California and I was off sitting by myself and Phil came up to me and for me, it was my first job so it was like, “Phil Dunkelberger is coming up” and he sat down and he talked to me for an hour and he kept asking me questions like, “How are you doing? What can I help you with?” and I was thinking, “This is the director of marketing for the organization.” I was intimidated at first, but then the way he just came up and started asking me, an average rank and file person who didn’t work for him, questions. Thank you for bringing up Phil’s name, I’m getting chills thinking about that interaction and he definitely had an impact on me as well. What are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Denise Hayman: Let’s talk about the job of sales first. From a sales rep, how do we make sure that we can get through to customers so that they understand what we have to offer? It is such a crowded market out there and it is littered with bad behavior on the sales side so that it does not necessarily engender from a customer’s side that they’re going to be totally open and willing to talk to every salesperson that comes their way. I think the biggest challenge and one of the things that we’ve been doing here is this whole idea of sales done right. I believe that our sales team is one of our differentiators.

Obviously we’re a technology company so the solution, the service and the offering is absolutely one of our differentiators but I’m a believer that in order to truly differentiate ourselves at the beginning, it has to be the website, it has to be the first interaction they have whether it’s an SDR or whether it’s one of our event people. Then the interaction that they have with us on the sales side has to be different, we have to be showing them transparency and openness and we have to be an extension of what’s going on with the service when they actually get the opportunity to indulge in it. I think one of the challenges in that scenario is how do you do that? How do we use some traditional kinds of techniques yet approach it from a different kind of way so that we are seen as being different, consultative, open and transparent? I think that’s a huge challenge in the market and we’re using that as our differentiator, one of the major things to go about with.

Fred Diamond: Do you have another one you want to mention?

Denise Hayman: This is a challenge and an opportunity. There is tons of information out there to be able to utilize. I’m a big believer in doing research and planning your calls, understanding you’ve got a set of things that you’re trying to get to and a set of questions knowing where you’re going not being random in it. How do you figure out what information to believe and not believe and where to go to for it and what’s going to make you most efficient? You could spend all day doing research and not make a single phone call and you have failed.

Fred Diamond: We call those people librarians.

Denise Hayman: Exactly, so balancing the two. I have an early story from my sales career that has informed that position for me, one of my early sales things. Again, when you’re a sales rep you’re taught here the 12 things that you do and I had a targeted account that I was going after and of course I had my list of questions and I had been trying for months to get to this account. Finally, one Friday afternoon they picked up the phone and I was like, “This is awesome, I have the opportunity now to ask all of my questions” and I proceeded down my list of questions with this particular individual and he stopped me in the middle and he said, “Excuse me, is this a survey?” Again, the difference between being able to do the right kind of research but know intuitively what kinds of things you need to do to guide the conversation is the art and the science of what we do.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point because a lot of times we give younger or junior sales professionals a script and it’s interesting, you were so excited when you finally got them on the call 2:00 o’clock on a Friday. You see that a lot with a lot of newer sales reps because people don’t return their phone calls and it’s hard to get through to people. When someone gets on the line they’re thrilled, “My god, we’re halfway there to the sale just because I got someone to pick up the phone” but that must have been such an impactful statement, “Excuse me, is this a survey?”

Denise Hayman: We learn from our mistakes, I’m a big believer on that, I’m a constant learner, I hire people that are like that as well. We learn from our mistakes and we learn from our wins.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, do you remember that prospect at all? Did they become a customer, did you shift or was it just a random example that helped you along the way?

Denise Hayman: I definitely shifted my entire approach based on that. They did eventually become a customer, we laughed about it later. I don’t know where he is right now, but from that perspective I definitely shifted how I thought about the whole sales game.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us about the #1 specific sale success or win from your career you’re most proud of?

Denise Hayman: From a sales career perspective I think the things that I am most proud of are not the individual sales. The thing that I am most proud of, as I was saying before, is my ability to impact where a person goes in a sales career. It’s a much bigger impact, they talk about the whole, “Are you impacting for today, are you impacting for the future?” One of the things that I’m most proud of in my career to date is an opportunity that I had years ago at Symantec to create a team from scratch that had never been done before.

I had been doing field sales, I had moved into inside sales, I was doing management on both of those sides and I had an opportunity to build a team wherever I wanted to for inside sales. I chose a location and I got to build a team in Portland, Oregon, I ended up moving up there with it. I started with zero people, just a whole bunch of empty offices and I built it up to a hundred people within six months. It was an amazing build and the impact that it had on people’s lives at that time, it was a while ago but I’m still getting choked up about it because for a lot of them, they felt like they got to rejuvenate a career.

We gave them a place and a set of tools and training and motivation and a team to be a part of that they had never experienced before. It wasn’t one of the things that I set out to do when we set out to create it but we had a tradition where we wrote limericks and poems to each other as part of a Christmas holiday thing. I still have the limerick that was written about me at that time and it was all about rejuvenating careers and filling the hallways and impact on lives and I’m still in touch with some of those people because of the impact I was able to have at that particular point in time. Impact for me is the most important thing.

Fred Diamond: It’s a great point that you brought up because when you think back on a lot of the great parts of your sales careers, it was with the teams. It wasn’t you individually, it wasn’t this one achievement you made but it was being part of the team that built the Symantec inside sales team. You mentioned again, you were with 8 startups so you must have had some successes along the way and when you hit the home run or something you remember the people you worked with, you remember the circumstances. Before we take a short break, again you’ve had a great career, you told us some tremendous stories. I’m still thinking about Phil Dunkelberger and that moment that we had, I think it was somewhere in Santa Cruz or something like that. You started off as a special education teacher. Did you ever question making the move into sales? Did you ever think to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s really just not for me”?

Denise Hayman: I think every sales leader has that question at the end of a quarter or at the end of a year. [Laughs] I had a previous sales manager, we used to sit together and talk about, “Wouldn’t it just be great to be a cashier at a grocery store right now? You don’t have to think about anything, don’t have to bring anything home” but obviously from a choice perspective, that wouldn’t be what we would do. I think there are moments where we have questions. For me, again, as long as the mission is clear about what you’re trying to do in terms of building, growing and impacting, I haven’t wavered from that. Again, we all have moments, those difficult losses that happen occasionally but there’s always a win around the corner.

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Denise, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the sales professionals listening around the globe to help them take their career to the next level?

Denise Hayman: One of the things, Fred, that I am seeing more and more is because of the plethora of information and the amount of access to tools and everything that people have, sometimes I’m finding that there are people who think the tools do it for them. I think the biggest thing I would say is nothing takes the place of you doing the work and I know you’ve heard this from lots of other sales leaders, but it’s a profession. This is a profession I’ve chosen, athletes practice no matter how great they are, lawyers practice before they go into the courtroom, we have to practice. We have to be good at our elevator pitch, we have to be good and know the questions ahead of time, we have to be prepared with understanding who we’re talking to, we have to know how those people want to be talked to and talked with, what are the best ways. The biggest tip that I would say is do the work, prepare and do the work.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us about one of your selling habits that has led to your continued success?

Denise Hayman: I would say it’s not necessarily a selling habit. If you would mind me going off script for a little bit here, my assistant likes to say I have a lot of fire in me, that means that it can go both ways. Fire can burn hot or it can burn softly so from the standpoint of I have a strong bias for urgency and I need to get things done immediately, anyone who’s listening to this that knows me will be laughing right now because this is what I’m known for. I think the important thing as a leader is not bringing that to bear every day on the team across from you and the team underneath you across the company. So one of the skills that I am learning right now, not necessarily a sales skill but it’s helping me at sales, is really those things that keep me calm and centered and not fiery.

This may be my California time but I do meditation every day, I’ve been doing a lot of things. There’s a training that I just brought to the organization called Pacific Institute that I’ve done that is all around ensuring that you have a growth mindset, retraining your brain on positive thinking and understanding where you’re trying to go to, having goals and that kind of stuff. The thing that I am doing right now that is most impacting my sales leadership are a combination of those things as opposed to a specific sales skill because when I am calm and centered I am my best self, it means I’m able to coach, it means I’m able to work collaboratively, it means all of those things and when I am fiery like Liz tells me sometimes, I’m not my best self. I think that applies to everything.

Fred Diamond: Growth mindset comes up a lot. As a matter of fact, the Sales Game Changers podcast, a lot of times we use the hashtag #GrowthMindset and the podcast always trends on LinkedIn on #GrowthMindset. I want to ask you a specific question, when do you meditate and how do you meditate? It does come up not infrequently on the podcast, we’re not getting too personal into your practice.

Denise Hayman: I’m fine with that.

Fred Diamond: When do you do it, how often do you do it, how long do you do it?

Denise Hayman: Every morning. I get up at 5:30 in the morning and I do 30 minutes in a quiet room. For me, a quiet room means I put my headset on, my Bose headphones and sometimes I do it with music, sometimes I do it just in the quiet with a specific thing that I say to myself. It might be gratitude, it might be a specific thing that I’m working on, compassion or something else but I’ll meditate on that for 30 minutes. I notice now on the days that I don’t do it because I’m a different person, I’m just a better person when I do that.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success.

Denise Hayman: Expel, right now we’re in explosive growth and it’s extremely exciting. We’re doing a lot of hiring, we’re doing a lot of expanding the team, I have actually just brought on a sales management team so I now have three brand new sales managers. It used to be about me and the individual team, first line manager and now second line manager and probably soon third line manager based on how much we’re growing here, but the major thing that I’m working on are the things that will allow us to scale.

This is a well-worn topic among leaders that are in high growth companies but I’ve seen it before, again, both at my large companies and my small companies so I know those things that can get in the way of scaling and I know those things that need to be invested in now to ensure that we’ll be able to scale. At Expel we do a lot of investment, we actually just rolled out a brand new first line management program, we have a learning and development person, for our size that’s nearly unheard of and the scenario there is that we are training our first line managers to be the absolute best managers they can be. We’re not doing it accidentally, we have a very specific scenario and I’ve done this over and over again as well with first line managers to ensure that they have the right tools to be able to really impact. Impact, hire in the right people, sales enablement and then impact deals and sales as I go.

Fred Diamond: Why have you continued in sales? Again, you started off as a special education teacher, what is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Denise Hayman: This is one of those things that I meditate on, actually, talking about what are the things that are important to you. Over the years I think I have learned about myself that I love the impact and the influence components of it. There’s no other career that I have found so far where the ability to get paid based on my choices of my actions every day is the difference maker. If I do not apply myself, I will not do as well. If I apply myself, I do extremely well. In my household my husband has been a stay-at-home dad for years, it’s been just me in terms of bringing in the money in the door so that has been really important for us, the ability for me to really impact that.

Fred Diamond: Denise, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. Again, we have listeners around the globe, why don’t you give us a final thought to inspire them today?

Denise Hayman: This sales done right thing that I’ve been talking about, it’s really a great compilation of not only diversification in sales, obviously I’m a female sales leader, I am one of a small percentage of female sales leaders that are in this kind of role. It’s a growing field, thank goodness. We have the most difficulty finding people with diverse backgrounds to be on the sales team and I’m looking for that specifically because we have different people that we’re selling to, we have different talents, I’m a big believer in multiple types of experiences make up the great teams.

The thing that I would say to people is I’ve been doing a lot of interviewing and I am, quite frankly, kind of disgusted with what I hear out there about how companies treat their salespeople. Not everywhere, of course and absolutely we are not that way but the amount of times that I hear that companies have lied about a comp plan, about the stock position, changed the comp plan when a big deal comes in, all of these things, every single person has a story that I’ve interviewed. I’ve probably interviewed 300 people in the last year, every single person has that and the push that I would say is you don’t have to put up with that. You absolutely don’t and this is becoming a bigger and bigger deal for companies to have integrity around how they deal with sales. We absolutely do that, the way that we approached it, set up the comp plan, everything, that is not our culture, we’ll never expand to the sales team but I would just implore people, “Don’t put up with it.”

Fred Diamond: The Institute for Excellence in Sales who is the sponsor of today’s Sales Game Changers podcast, they launched the Premier Sales Employer program at the end of 2019 to reflect companies that do what you just said, that treat their employees right, that are great places to work for people in sales.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 219: Expel Sales Leader Denise Hayman Explains Why It’s the Perfect Time to Apply a Sales Done Right Approach to Be of Service to Your Customers first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Become a member of the elite Institute for Excellence in Sales.

Please register for Creativity in Sales: Six Things Sales Pros Need to Do for Success During the Coronavirus on Friday, Mar 27, 2020 11:00 AM EDT at: here.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on March 25, 2020.]

EPISODE 216: SALES GAME CHANGERS LIVE LEARNING EVENT: Sales Transformation and Solutions During the COVID-19 Panel Discussion

MAJOR TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Empathy is the key right now.“

Darrell Gehrt is the Vice President of Sales, Mobile Solutions at Cvent. Listen to his podcast episode here.
Randy Wood is the Vice President of Web America Sales at Akamai Technologies. Find his podcast episode here.
Denise Hayman is the Chief Revenue Officer at Expel. Her show will broadcast in April.

Fred Diamond:  Alright, welcome. This is Fred Diamond of the Sales Game Changers podcast and of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. This is our first Sales Game Changers live learning event, it’s 2:00 o’clock Eastern Time. We’re going to be doing these every week, every Wednesday at 2:00 o’clock featuring Sales Game Changers podcast guests. Because of all the people working from home and because of all the stress being put on the various online networks, there may be a challenge or two with the broadcast. It seems that everything is good from an outage perspective so we’re just going to get going. We’re going to be recording this as well. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this, you’ll get some value out of the next 15 minutes or so. We’re broadcasting from typically Northern Virginia, Washington DC area. Luckily on the Sales Game Changers podcast we’ve had great world-class sales leaders featured twice a week on our podcast which has had over 300,000 downloads. Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to feature three of them discussing what they’re doing to motivate and elevate top tier sales teams.

Today we have three great guests, we have Darrell Gehrt with Cvent, we have Denise Hayman from Expel and Randy Wood from Akamai. Darrell and Randy have both been guests on the Sales Game Changers podcast, Denise’s show is scheduled to come out some time in April so we’re excited about that. Here’s how we’re going to do this, we’re going to get right to the questions so that you can follow along. I’m going to be posting each question in the chat box and I’m going to send that to everybody. We have a couple questions here prepared, we’ve gotten some great questions from our guests on LinkedIn and from IES members around the globe. If you have a question, you can type it in the question box and we’ll try to get to as many as we can. We have a lot of great questions already here that we’re going to get to, we’ll do a poll or two as well.

This webinar will be recorded and transcribed, there’s a good chance we’re also going to offer it as a Sales Game Changers podcast as well. Here’s what we’re going to do first, why don’t we just do this so we can see who’s on the call? We’re going to launch a very simple poll. The question is: how many years have you been in sales? More than 20 years, between 5-20 years, 1-5 years, less than one year and you’re not in sales, just so that we can see who’s on the call here. It looks like tonight’s an even mix between one third of the audience ‘more than 20 years’, one third of the audience ‘between 5-20 years’ and 26% of the audience ‘between 1-5 years’. That being said, let’s get right to it. Once again, I am going to be posting the questions in the chat box, I’m going to be sending them to everybody. First question, let’s get right to it. What are your top priorities right now? This is for the panel. Darrell, why don’t you take us first?

Darrell Gehrt: My name is Darrell Gehrt and I’m the Vice President of Sales at Cvent for our global division. First of all, I hope everybody’s safe and healthy out there and the goal today is just to share some tips. That really is our top priority right now, we really are focused on stabilizing employee base making sure our employees have what they need making sure that they’re comfortable, making sure that they’re stable. We’re prioritizing that even over our customers now. Of course, we have to develop but the focus has to be on our employees and what we’ve told them is, “You have to be able to control what you can control. There’s a lot of things that are out of your control and there are things that you can influence.” That’s been the broad message to our employee base.

Fred Diamond: Randy, you’re with Akamai, you guys are involved with some of the highest performing websites on the planet. Obviously, your customers are impacted but tell us what are your top priorities right now.

Randy Wood: Fred, I would give you that answer in two perspectives. First of all, let’s talk about customers. With respect to the Akamai customers, you said it, we’re the world’s largest content delivery network provider so we’re focused on business continuity, maintaining business continuity for our customers first and foremost. That really boils down to maintaining the integrity and the reliability of our customer’s websites and even things like their mobile application delivery and that’s across all industries.

Then second in the context of customers, to Derrell’s point it’s about keeping our employees safe and productive. Safety first and foremost and then with respect to being productive, obviously we’re in a work from home environment and with that, we’re focused on creating and maintaining successful business outcomes. The business can’t stop but at the same time we’ve got to create a safe environment for our employees. Just a final thought here with respect to a top priority for our customers, back to that first priority, this is really a time to be a friend to our customers and not a vendor. This idea of reasonable person theory really needs to apply, there’s plenty of opportunities to be a vendor and to manage our customers but we really need to focus on being a friend right now and realizing we’re all in this together and these times will pass.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Denise, how about you? What are your top priorities right now?

Denise Hayman: Hey Fred and everyone. I’m Denise Hayman, I’m the CRO at Expel. At Expel we’ve always had a mantra around servant leadership and what that means for us from an overall company values perspective is the idea of leadership takes care of its employees first, always and forever will be. It’s the Richard Branson scenario that says, “If you take care of your employees then your employees take care of your customers and then everything else happens as it should.” Nothing about what’s going on today changes that for us. I think it makes it first and foremost in every single conversation and I’m ensuring that our employees, #1 are safe and psychologically safe, not only physically safe. In lots of different ways we’re doing that and I know we’re going to talk more about that. Certainly that’s #1.

Number 2 is ensuring that we’re doing everything we can for our customers because right now this is not only a stressful time for us in the sales industry but also for a customer to maintain everything that they were doing but in a remote environment. It becomes wildly stressful so what kinds of things can we be doing for them? Then looking forward, what does this mean? Starting to put some theories together about things that we might need to change. Does that mean our go-to-market changes? Does that mean we’re looking at things in a different lens with different types of customers? Lots of forward looking discussions that we’re having right now.

Fred Diamond: One of the words that comes up frequently over the last week or two since everything has shifted is empathy, it comes up a lot as it relates to sales right now. Actually, on the Sales Game Changers podcast ’empathy’ used to come up all the time: be an empathetic seller. Now it’s even more pertinent. How do you be empathetic and move the business forward? DG, why don’t you start with that?

Darrell Gehrt: I’ll start with empathy right now as table stakes, you have to have that. If you’re a sales professional and you can’t wrap your head around that then that’s probably a bigger issue. I had an interesting conversation with one of my reps the other day who said, “All the conversations I’m having right now, they’re empathetic people saying yes, great, thank you and let’s talk again in a couple of months.” In essence, what happens is they’ve gotten stuck in the mud and I think one of the things that we’re seeing right now is decisions and pivots are happening on the hour, not on the day or the month. I think the best way to avoid getting stuck in that mud, first of all you’ve got to have the honest conversation.

I love what Randy said about being a partner and a friend first and a vendor second. For us, Cvent, we’re in the events industry which is arguably, I would say the second hardest hit and the first hardest hit being the hospitality side. Avoiding getting stuck in the mud is really about serving before selling, so you can’t lean into these conversations like, “Hey, can I show you some technology?” or, “Can I talk about how we can help you?” The way that we’re approaching it is, “Hey, we see that in the event industry a lot of people are asking a lot of questions and if you’d like me to share with you what we’re hearing, I’d be happy to do that.”

It’s an empathetic way to continue the conversation because that’s what people want right now, they want to hear from thought leaders, they want to know what their peers are doing. That’s what we’re trying to serve up and if it’s valuable to them, we hope that they’ll invite us in for a further conversation but it’s helping us move conversations along. Maybe they’re not as quick as we’re used to, but we’re able to execute on that friend concept first.

Fred Diamond: Denise, how about you? When we did your podcast we talked about empathy a couple of times, and again your show is going to come out in April. What does it mean to you and how can you be empathetic today while moving your business forward?

Denise Hayman: It’s a big topic and I love, Darrell, what you had to say about how to take it forward with customers. I think I would add to it being authentic, this is a moment in time where you have the opportunity to create more loyalty by not trying to push forward something that is maybe not of the time from a sales perspective, but being relevant about what they are looking for and the kinds of things that are important to them. Just asking a few simple questions up front. “Has anything changed for you? Has anything accelerated? Is there anything going on with your business right now that we might be able to assist you with that maybe even wouldn’t have been thought of before?”

Just being really open and authentic and as Darrell said, recognizing thought leadership right now. “Here’s what other customers are starting to do, here’s the kinds of things that we’re talking to other people around.” In our business we are very much around enabling customer’s security organizations or security operation centers. Right now they went through a huge transformation, everyone working at home not used to having the same tools and elements that they had before so it can be as simple as, “Would you like to hear how we did? We moved our SOC to a totally virtual environment in 36 hours. I can get you on the phone with the person who was in charge of that, that managed that. Would that be interesting?” Thought leadership, educational scenarios without jumping on the opportunity as of right now.

Fred Diamond: Randy, what do you think are the main concerns right now for your people? Actually, all three of you have managed hundreds of people but Randy, why don’t you take this one? What do you think are the main concerns for your people? And let’s break it down, how are your younger people handling this new world and how about some of your more seasoned and senior people?

Randy Wood: Fred, what I’ve seen now in three weeks with respect to people’s concerns boil down to one thing: it’s uncertainty. We can deal with bad news, we can compartmentalize bad news. It’s very difficult to deal with uncertainty. Just last week I had an opportunity to address my sales force, I’m responsible for the business in North America, it was about 350 people, it was an unrelated topic that we were discussing but I took the opportunity for the first 5 minutes to talk about the situation and to try and put things in perspective, and to try and help people deal with the uncertainty. It was remarkable the response from the team back to me in real time on my cellphone, the messages just kept coming in about how comforting that was, how much people needed to hear that.

What I began to understand is what we as leaders need to do right now more than ever before is to create belief in the idea that we’re going to get through this, we’ve got some hard medicine to take along the way and to help deal with the uncertainty. That really provides steady reassurance and it can’t be a one-time thing, it’s got to be something that we do along the way, that we do in a predictable, repeatable, simple and compelling way. With respect to the demographics of age in the workforce, I think older people are more comfortable with things, they’ve seen this before. People in my generation have lived through 9-11 which I think is an obvious and easy comparison here. I think for the younger people in the workforce it is finding ways to help minimize or to deal with the uncertainty that they have and the fear that comes with that. With fear comes some level of paralysis and as leaders we’ve got to work through that to keep people safe like I said, but also productive and working on behalf of our customers to keep moving the business forward.

For me it’s just about dealing with uncertainty.

Fred Diamond: Randy, we’re not going to talk about it on this call but for those listening to the webinar today, a little bit of a trivia there as you’ll hear on the Sales Game Changers podcast with Randy, you actually started your sales career on September 12th, 2001. I don’t want to go into that story right now, you tell it beautifully on the podcast. Everyone on the line, take a listen to Randy’s podcast and talk about being thrown into the fire, you literally started the next day after that tragic event.

Denise, Randy just gave a little bit of a good explanation of what the people are going through. How often are you communicating to your team? Before you might have had remote people and obviously you manage a remote team, people around the country, but you also have people in the office and you would go see them. Now everyone’s at home, I presume, all across the country and the world. How often are you communicating to them and how? Are you using online materials like Zoom or you’re calling? Tell us how you’re going about that today versus how you were a couple weeks ago.

Denise Hayman: We were early to the kicking people out of the office and having everyone move virtual, so we’ve been virtual for a little over three weeks now. The learning that took place with first of all, the isolation, we’re salespeople, we’re used to being out and talking to people, we’re extroverts in the whole, “How do we harness that in this scenario?” recognizing that people needed more communication, not less, in this moment.

As a company we’ve done a couple of things and then I’ve done a couple of things on the sales side as well. We’ve been having an every Monday morning management across the company meeting with our CEO and other executives talking about what the topics are of the day, whether it’s around how to achieve work-life balance, what we’re doing in terms of prioritization, what’s going on with cash flow. Any of those things get discussed in that moment and then a weekly Wednesday Zoom that we’ve been doing, so you can tell we’re using Zoom, where again it’s the CEO talking to the rest of the company.

Again, we’re very transparent, very open culture so it’s a half hour, “Here’s what’s going on this week” kind of scenario. It’s been really fantastic. Then I’ve been doing two other things outside of the regular meetings, I’ve been having sales Hangouts and it’s not meant to be a, “Let’s go over this deal” or, “Let’s talk about this new program.” The first time we did it I had everybody bring a joke and we just sat together and told jokes. The second time we talked about different things and different opportunities that we were seeing in the market where we might be able to reach out to customers in different ways.

Earlier this week we did a session where it was just everybody bring either one personal win or one professional win from the previous week and share it across the team. It’s a half an hour of connection as opposed to a work thing or a specific thing that we’re trying to move forward. We did a Zoom contest where we had fun backgrounds this past week, just trying to add a little bit of fun because everywhere you look, it’s negative so adding a little bit of fun and competition and excitement to the path is what we’re trying to do at the same time.

Fred Diamond: Here’s what’s going on now, we’re getting a whole bunch of questions from our attendees and it’s about to get serious right now. There’s basically two audiences for you as a sales leader, there’s your people – how do you manage and how do you motivate them and keep them elevated today? But we’re getting a slew of questions coming in here asking about how are you dealing with your customers. We’re going to do a very short poll right now and then we’re going to take some questions, we’re going to modify a little bit and ask some questions.

Let’s go off script a little bit here and let’s talk about the real world. Again, there’s managing the people and there’s the real world of customers. Randy, you’re nodding your head. What are you doing? Again, the question was are you making any exceptions or payment plans for customers that have invoices that are past or due?

Randy Wood: This is very timely. This one phenomena is happening at a breathtaking pace. At Akamai we serve some of the biggest brands in the world in commerce, retail, travel, entertainment, the cruise lines, for example and hotels and airlines who are all dramatically impacted by this. At the same time we serve other brands, media streaming brands, online gaming brands which are frankly doing quite well right now for obvious reasons.

With respect to the brands that are impacted, we are being as creative and as good a business partner as we can be by doing things like extending payment terms, in some cases 90, 120 and 180 days by providing other concessions such as contract production on a monthly or quarterly basis. The idea is this, we need to invest with our customers in the good times and celebrate the good times and the joint wins and at the same time we need to make equal commensurate investments in the bad times as they work through these troubles.

There’s no alternatives, this is what it means to be a good partner, to be an essential partner and to make our customer successful. I think this pays dividends along the way and I want to go back to a point Denise made because I think it’s important. The opportunity here is to be nothing but real and authentic, we are all human beings and we’re all in it together. Listen, ethical leadership is important and I think this touches on ethical leadership. At Akamai, ethical leadership means having profits and purpose and not compromising one without the other and we’re in the business to make money, let’s be clear, returning shareholder is important but purposes is important.

Right now I think purpose outweighs profits and just about anything else so stay true to your purpose, let’s be very close to our customers. For us, pricing concessions are top of mind. I’m approving five a day right now for some pretty large brand and pretty large monthly spend.

Fred Diamond: DG, I’m going to ask that question to you as well. Another question came in via LinkedIn which is along the lines of this and I’m going to speak to the question, it’s really about how do you help your customers. A quick note, my apologies, we accidentally hit the poll close button too soon but I’m going to guess the stress level with customers is pretty high. This is for DG, it’s a follow onto the question we just asked and then Denise, I’ll ask you as well. Are there any programs as a company that you’re doing to help your customers that are suffering from anxiety, uncertainty during this time?

This is getting in the way of my productivity at times, for example, when big news is released such as Marriott furloughing or laying off people. Again, DG, we talked about this in the beginning. Your customer serves event planners and actually, the Institute for Excellence in Sales, we’re a customer of yours and we do 50 events per year, we don’t do some at the level of some of your big customers but how are you guys helping your customers who are dealing with anxiety, stress, layoffs, furloughs, etcetera?

Darrell Gehrt: I think, Fred, when all of this started to take shape, one of the things that we did was we formed a SWAT team to deal with customers who have requests like Randy was talking about. We serve the hotel industry, we serve event planners and they’re being heavily impacted and they’re coming to us and they’re saying, “How can you help us?” Rather than trying to train up a sales team of 850 people to have those conversations, we created a SWAT team that can help handle those questions. It allows us to be consistent, anytime you do something a lot you get better at it so we’ve done all kinds of things, every situation is different, everybody has different apps. From a business perspective, one of the things that is actually coming out of this is that people are saying, “Can we extend our contract with you? You’re proving to be a great partner, thank you for these concessions.” Purpose before profits, I love that, Randy. I think what happens is when you put purpose before profits you get long-term profits so yes, we have to have these conversations. We are doing things for our customers, they’re all unique. I hope that answers the question, Fred, I’m not sure if there was another component for that or not.

Fred Diamond: Denise, I’ll ask you the next one. The person who asked that question, thank you. It was a two-part question, how are you helping customers and are you doing anything special for employees, your sales team? We’ve talked before and we’ll talk a little more about ways you’re coaching them but how about if your salesperson is selling to Marriott or some of the companies are Disney or some of the companies like that, that are just pure and simple shutting down? They’re not going to reopen for let’s say best case scenario weeks but probably months. You’re selling to the entertainment industry which is almost totally shut down. Denise, is your company or are other companies serving their employees with EAP programs or extra counseling or something?

Denise Hayman: Absolutely, there are a myriad of programs that are being offered to everyone, everything from free class pass stuff for exercising, meditation live, there’s obviously telemedicine options via our healthcare providers for the people who don’t feel like they have to go somewhere. If you need somebody to talk to, you need some stress relief, there’s been really interesting things that have come up across the company as well, people are doing Zoom sessions around happy hour kinds of things or stress relief scenarios. There’s a yoga class that’s happening a couple times a week, meditation classes starting to happen, there’s a lot of people who are pitching in to try to help others where they have time as well as recognizing – I think we’re going to talk about this.

The big thing that we’re seeing right now is the impact to people whose kids are not in school anymore, the scenario of not only being working from home and maybe two parents working from home but maybe two or three little kids who are having to be supervised around a school program means that work has to suffer. We’ve been very implicit about saying family comes first absolutely in this situation, if this means that you’re not going to be able to get all your stuff done, we just want you to have a conversation with your manager and figure out if there are other people that can step in.

Our employee experience team just did a survey around understanding where people are against their full productivity and if they have extra space to be able to offer up to others as well. People offer grocery shopping, people offer, “I could teach this, I could take this thing off your plate” just really coming together as a community and remembering that everyone is in it together is the most important part right now.

Fred Diamond: We have a follow up that came in from LinkedIn as well and I’ll ask this to DG and Randy. DG, by the way, is Darrell Gehrt with Cvent, he’s known as DG. On the Sales Game Changers podcast right before we take a break I say, “Sales is hard, people don’t return your phone calls or your emails, why have you continued?” and most of the Sales Game Changers talk about service. “We’re providing a service, we’re helping our customers achieve their mission, we like the challenge, we like the money” or whatever it might be. Now at this moment in time we’re adding the stress level of this, of having to deal not just with sales being hard but the whole Covid-19 which we don’t know where it’s going to end. DG and Randy, what added things are you having to do or hasn’t kicked in yet to guide your people along? DG, you have a lot of people who are first or second job out of school. Randy, your organization is a little more widespread but are you having to be more of a coach, more of a therapist, if you will, at this time versus just a sales leader? DG.

Darrell Gehrt: I’ll pivot from Denise’s message. We talked about empathy at the top part of this call, yes, we’re doing a lot of programs for employees too but the thing that overrides all of that is the human connection, the empathy, we have to have empathy for our salespeople and understanding that they’re hurting out there, too. Deals are pushed and of course business is still moving forward but you’ve got to have empathy for them and that empathy can come in a lot of forms. Two of my senior managers both just had kids so they’re dealing with that and yes, we have to be flexible, we have to be empathetic to what they’re going through and I think if you’re open and you’re communicating with your people then those problems can all be solved. That really has been a big focus of ours, that’s a message from the top down and something that I’m telling my leaders, too. Get on the phone, get on the Zoom. Get on there, show your face, let them know you’re real. As a senior leader, we need to make sure that we’re talking to our folks one-on-one and hearing them individually.

Fred Diamond: Randy, how about you?

Randy Wood: Fred, as a leader I believe that the role of the leader is to see the organization not as it is but as it can become and to get focused on the future. For me, that’s either creating or in this case reinforcing a vision that you can create by and for, that helps people put this situation into context to deal with the situation again to provide some reassurance in a time of uncertainty. With respect to seeing the organization as it can become, to me that’s certainty. Let’s talk about certainty, there’s a lot of talk about uncertainty here in these times of uncertainty and I sent an email out to this effect earlier this week to my team.

There’s a lot of uncertainty but let’s talk about what’s certain, I’m certain we’re going to come out of this, I’m certain we’re going to be better as people, as a society, I’m certain our customers are going to be better off and in a better position in maybe not too much from now, but I’m certain about that and I’m certain there’s an opportunity here for us to be better advocates for our customer. Let’s focus on what the organization does look like when we come out of this, that’s the role of the leader. Also, just in terms of clear, compelling and simple communications, this is something new that I’ve started doing. For me it’s about creating a rally cry or a mantra for the organization, something that the people can say to themselves as they try and deal with this and take care of themselves and at the same time take care of their customers and get back to work.

What I settled on in Akamai in my role is the idea that tough times don’t last, tough people do and by tough I don’t mean physically tough, let’s get spiritually tough, let’s be mentally tough, let’s be physically tough and let’s be tough for our families, for our customers, for ourselves. That seems to be a rally cry, a mantra that my organization has bought into, it’s the hashtag #ToughTimesDontLast, it’s about creating that vision. I’ll say it again back to Denise’s point, it’s about being authentic. People need authenticity.

Fred Diamond: If you have a question that you’d like to ask the panelists, Denise Hayman from Expel, Darrell Gehrt from Cvent, Randy Wood from Akamai. I want to thank our panelists for giving such great insights here. We’ve got a couple more questions here that have come in through the internet and these are all similar so I’m going to ask all three of these questions. It’s a good question right now and it deals with the whole concept of calling into new prospects.

Do you think cold calling people right now and let’s just say prospecting versus cold calling, cold calling people who don’t know you right now is a good idea or should we ask our team to stop that for the time being? If you do encourage them to be cold calling/prospecting, what guidance are you giving them regarding prospecting right now? DG, why don’t you start with that and then we’ll ask that to the panel? Should you be cold calling, prospecting? We talked about reaching out to your existing customers and seeing how they’re doing, empathy, etcetera. Should you call brand new customers today? If so, what should you be saying?

Darrell Gehrt: Our sales organization is bifurcated into two groups, one that focuses on existing customers, one that is out looking for new customers. Yes, we do still need to do that. Part of that is to Randy’s point, tough times don’t last, tough people do. One of the things I’ve been very bullish on saying is it is not business as usual but it is business moving forward and those cold calls that we’re making have to sound different, everybody has to pivot their message a little bit right now. It comes back with the servitude, I think Denise had mentioned this earlier as well, servant-based management and that’s to our customers, too.

What we’re doing with our cold calls is offering up, “If you want to hear what the industry is saying and what customers are doing with their events, we’ve got 20,000 customers so we’re in a unique position to hear a lot of things. If you’re interested in that then let me know and I’d be happy to schedule some time with you.” I’m not begging them for meetings, I’m offering to share with them. Sometimes with salespeople, we’ve got to think of ourselves as educators and that’s really the cold calls that we’re making, again with an end goal that hopefully they appreciate the relationship that we’re trying to build with them and they invite us back in for further conversations. If they don’t I’m instructing my team to move on and talk with some other folks and it will heal, but I guarantee you, those folks that you’ve cold called if you did it professionally and without the normal push that we might have as aggressive salespeople, they’ll remember that a month or two months from now when you call them again. I guarantee we’ll have people say, “Hey, I got your message before, thanks for reaching out. Timing wasn’t good but yes, I’d love to hear what you have to say.”

Fred Diamond: Denise, how about you?

Denise Hayman: I love the idea of first of all, changing the messaging. Clearly the message has to change, you can’t just do what was done even a month ago and I think it’s really all about selling right now or positioning to the need as opposed to the situation. In our business we’re very much against things that are called ambulance chasers, in the security world when you hear something bad and lots of people swoop in to take advantage of that. In this particular situation we’re doing things like our normal program is an annual program and we’re saying, “Maybe you have shorter term needs that you can’t even see a year out, maybe you can only see a month out. Let’s talk to you about something that you might be able to do for a month or two to get you through with where you are.”

Fred Diamond: Randy, how are you coaching your team right now to have those business conversations to new audiences?

Randy Wood: Good salespeople focus on ways to create and communicate value and positive business outcomes. I think there’s an opportunity here to create very positive business outcomes for our customers using our technology harnessing innovation. The amount of innovation that’s emerging from this situation is breathtaking. If there’s innovation, solutions and technologies that are relevant, that are pertinent to creating positive business outcomes for our customers then we absolutely should bring that to market but we need to do that as Darrell and Denise said, in respectful ways.

We need to be respectful of customer’s priorities and maybe right now it’s not the time to have that conversation but there are even in Akamai very compelling solutions that we can bring to market today, and in some cases in the free scenario that make a real compelling difference to our customers. We’re looking for opportunities to have those conversations but again being very respectful of where our customers find themselves and what their priorities are.

Fred Diamond: Once again, if you’re listening in we have time for a couple more questions, we have a few more questions we want to get to. Again, I want to thank our panel today, Denise Hayman, Darrell Gehrt and Randy Wood for really giving us ideas. We didn’t expect to have to shift our sales approach like this, it wasn’t part of the plans but what’s something new that you’re now doing as a response that is actually working well that you maybe see becoming part of your usual process? Denise, why don’t you get us started?

Denise Hayman: The biggest thing for us is I think the one that I just mentioned, changing our licensing model from an annual only or even a multi-year scenario to shorter terms, and even doing pieces of an architecture that we’re covering versus the entire thing. Really just flexing and as a component of that, I’ve done a thing where we’re putting in a triage sales deal desk because I can tell you, this past week there have been so many that are unusual deals that trying to figure out, “Do we want to do this one? Does this one sound interesting?”

One of our values is meeting customers where they are so trying to meet them where they are means that we need to figure out which things work for us and which don’t so this triage deal desk scenario we’re putting in place to be able to cycle through and filter out the ones that work for us. That’s a big one that we’re doing.

If I could add one other tip to the things that we were talking about in terms of the cold calling and the ways that we’re going about it, one of my sales guys came up with this and I thought it was brilliant. He has been sending out coffee gift certificates or gift cards and asking for a 15-minute coffee with people via Zoom and it’s a light touch, it’s collaborative, it’s different. I don’t know how many of you have gotten those, I actually got one the other day that was meant to support the local community, I thought it was great. Just doing things in a light touch collaborative way and getting our message out, it’s definitely working.

Fred Diamond: Randy, how about you? Anything new you’re doing that’s been responses?

Randy Wood: Good, I want to use that idea, I’ve got a bunch of ideas about that. I think one of the biggest things that’s come out of this for us at Akamai is that we are beginning to really engage customers in a new digital way. Not that we haven’t before, but digital marketing, digital connection, an increase on social marketing is really the focus right now. We cancelled our live events globally through July at this point and it may extend into August and September. There’s a lot of sunk costs there so we’re not flush with cash on recouping that money from those events so we’ve got to find new ways to connect with customers in very relevant and compelling ways.

For example, on April 7th we’re having a digital, virtual Akamai Edge event and right now I think we’ve got about 1,000 customers enrolled and it turns out that it’s a fantastic lightweight, compelling, immersive way to connect with customers and to bring them very timely, very relevant, very useful content that they can apply now in the current situation. I think for us, that’s one of them and I think in terms of transformation, Fred, the world will change dramatically. What we’re doing right here is compelling. I have a college junior home right now who’s doing all course work online and I told her she needed to be off the internet at 2:00 o’clock, she was doing office hours to make sure I had sufficient bandwidth but that’s one example of, “We’re doing work, we’re communicating, we’re collaborating.” I think this is compelling so in a digital way the world will transform to the positive and dramatically.

Fred Diamond: Before we get to our final question, again I want to thank our panelists Denise Hayman, Darrell Gehrt and Randy Wood. Today is March 25th and for a lot of companies that’s what I like to call 6 days away from the end of the quarter. This question came in from the internet for DG and I’m going to ask DG this question, then we’ll go to the final question. I love what DG – Darrell Gehrt – said that business is not the same but there needs to be business continuity. With the end of the quarter approaching us, what are some of the best practices you’re using to bring deals across the finish line?” End of quarter usually this week, a lot of companies are chugging away trying to get some extra things in, obviously it’s a unique situation. DG, why don’t you take that? And then we’re going to ask the panel for their final thoughts.

Darrell Gehrt: I think one of the things that we’re stressing around Cvent is this is also an opportunity for us as sales reps and I’m talking introspectively, here. It’s an opportunity for us to all sharpen our sales skills so Fred, I think what you’re doing with the Sales Game Changers putting this together, giving thought leadership, I too have taken a couple notes, this is great, I’m enjoying the rock stars that I’m sharing the webcam with. But we have to sharpen our skills and I keep telling my reps, “If you want to close deals in Q1 you need to listen better.” I think sometimes we move too fast. Listen, what is it that they really want? What is really in their way? In today’s day, what is really giving them pause? What are you concerned about? Randy is a good example, he’s got events for the first half of the year that are gone, they’re not going to do it anymore and they have to pivot so we’re pivoting on virtual events but we’re also doing some things contractually. We’re allowing our reps to put some line within the agreement that says, “If there is an event you have to move, maybe you have to move that September event that you’re still planning on having today, you want to move it, how can we work with you to get the right kinds of concessions proactively so that you can sign this agreement and still have the comfort level that you need if this should extend out a little bit longer?” We still have to close business but we have to listen to our customers.

Fred Diamond: Again, I want to thank the panelists, I want to give them one final question. Also want to thank all the people listening on today’s webinar, I’m looking at the attendee list, we have people all over the world. A nice mix of IES members and people that have found us via LinkedIn and probably people that are also big fans of Randy, Denise and DG, Darrell Gehrt. Final question here. Last week everyone was dealing with the newness of working from home trying to adjust using Zoom and a lot of other remote technology. Again, we’re going to be doing this webinar every week for the foreseeable future with three different Sales Game Changers podcast guests but what do you think the challenges will be in the next week as we lead up to next Wednesday’s productivity webinar? Denise, why don’t you get us started here? What do you think the challenges are going to be in the next seven days?

Denise Hayman: I think since we’ve been at this as a company for three weeks we might be at the tip of the spear on this. One of the things that we are starting to see is this balance of life spirit. In the beginning it was like, “Mom’s home” or, “Dad’s home” and that’s nice, we can have access to them. Now kids are getting bored and babysitters aren’t showing up, daycare isn’t happening and life has changed. One of the things that we’re talking about regularly as a team is, “What do you need covered for you so that you can take care of your family today?”

This balance thing, making sure we have internet during the time when we need it, that was my biggest thing. I had to read the riot act to my family, “Everybody leave between two and three, you can’t get on, no Netflix, I don’t want the dryer buzzer going” all of that is just different. Balancing and recognizing new rituals and this has really been my mantra this week, talking about rituals. What are those things that you used to be able to count on before that are no longer true? What’s your new ritual for that? What does your new morning look like? What does your new lunch look like? What does your new time that the family knows that you can’t be disturbed? What are those rituals to make it feel more consistent?

Fred Diamond: Randy, how about you? What does the next weekend look like, what are the challenges?

Randy Wood: I think very much in step with Denise and what she communicated. I’m concerned, Fred, that we’re going to migrate, evolve from this idea of exuberance to disillusionment and I’ll give two metaphors here. What I mean by this is last week this was exuberant, this was exciting, the hard times notwithstanding and it’s new. In a week, two weeks from now I think we run the risk of hitting some level of disillusionment. If you remember the Tom Hanks castaway movie, that moment of disillusionment was when he began to talk and interact with a volleyball, with Wilson.

Metaphorically, I think we need to make sure our employees don’t begin to interact with volleyballs and I think that’s a real concern. We need to communicate in predictable repeatable, simple, compelling ways. The final metaphor I would give – and this is for everybody – I’d go back to the continental army and George Washington and the Revolutionary War. In that final winner they set up camp in Valley Forge and that army could have done two things, they could have hunkered down and waited for spring to come or they could have done what they did which is get out of their tents and they brought in, I think it was Baron Von Steuben who drilled that army every day and taught them how to fight. In the third week in June they went on to have their biggest defeat I think in Monmouth, New Jersey and that’s the opportunity. That’s the metaphor, that’s what we can do here.

Let’s not talk to volleyballs, let’s make sure our customers, our employees aren’t doing that and at the same time let’s get out of our tents and let’s prepare ourselves for the summer and the spring that’s ahead of us that’s going to bring the good times back.

Fred Diamond: Darrell Gehrt, DG, why don’t you bring us home here with the same question? What’s the challenges of the next week and what do you think people should be doing?

Darrell Gehrt: I was going to say fatigue, some part of what Randy is saying. Part of running a race, to use a sports analogy, is understanding how long that race is. The way you run a 10K is different than you run a mile sprint and there is some disillusionment I think still that, “Hey, we’re going to have this for a couple weeks and then I’m going to be back in the office” and I don’t know if that’s going to be the case. This might be more like a six week run of work from home.

To Denise’s point, you have to find your routines and I actually sent out a note to the sales team yesterday about, “Here are some tips for working from home.” They weren’t necessarily mine because I don’t normally work from home so I too am having to get educated on how to run this 10K. Finding your own space, finding a way to communicate, getting out and walking. I think people have to pace themselves and be realistic with how long we might be in this situation. Let me pair that with the opportunity which is to try to continue moving business forward. It’s not business as usual, it’s moving business forward and what I’ve been really encouraged by is as we’re talking to customers, they too want to keep moving business forward.

Again, empathy is a table stakes, you have to have that, you have to be authentic. Denise, I love that word as well. What I love about sales and at least I’ve done it for 30 years is that every day is different and everything is different. Our CEO said, “Don’t bite this, embrace this.” This is an opportunity for all of us to learn and to grow and as long as I’ve been around, I’ve never dealt with this and everybody on this phone call is in the same shoes so while I hope we provided nice tips today, understand you too, we’re all trying to figure this thing out. Together we’ll win.

Fred Diamond: Once again, the Institute for Excellence in Sales is going to be holding two webinars per week every Wednesday at 2:00 o’clock Eastern, we’re going to have three Sales Game Changers podcast guests. I want to thank Randy Wood from Akamai, Darrell Gehrt from Cvent and Denise Hayman from Expel who will be on a Sales Game Changers podcast in April. Every Friday we’re going to have a little bit of a different twist at 11:00 o’clock Eastern Time, we’re going to bring one of our Institute for Excellence in Sales sales expert speakers to do a 45 minute webinar on creativity in sales. It’s one of the key themes that just came up from our three leaders, you’re going to have to figure out how to be creative, how do you modify your day, how do you change up your conversations with your customers. We’re going to be talking about how you become more creative in sales especially over the next couple of weeks. Tom Snyder will be the guest on Fridays. First we’re going to be doing those every week, have Andy Miller, Bill Cates and John Asher, people like that on that particular webinar. You could find out how to register on the Institute for Excellence in Sales website, I4ESBD.org. One more time, thank you so much to our esteemed panel for the great insights. My name is Fred Diamond, now go out there and go sell.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 216: SALES GAME CHANGERS LIVE LEARNING EVENT: Sales Transformation and Solutions During the COVID-19 Panel Discussion first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.