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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers Panel Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on April 1, 2020. It featured sales leaders Eric Trexler (Forcepoint), Jennifer Ives (3Pillar Global) and Matt McDarby (Fidelus).]

EPISODE 222: Sales Game Changers Learning Event: Sales Transformation and Success During COVID-19 featuring Jennifer Ives, Matt McDarby and Eric Trexler

Watch the webinar here. Listen to Jennifer Ives’ Podcast . Listen to Eric Trexler’s Podcast.

MAJOR TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Be incredibly empathetic to the challenges that they might have on their plate today, those challenges are going to be different from 8 weeks ago and be very aware of it. Do not waste your customer’s time, understand where they’re coming from, add value in that conversation.”

Fred Diamond: Today we have three great sales leaders on the panel, Jennifer Ives is with 3Pillar Global, Matt McDarby with Fidelus Technology and Erix Trexler with Forcepoint.  What are your top priorities? Jennifer, let’s start with you. What are your top priorities right now as a sales leader?

Jennifer Ives: It’s the health of our own internal teams as well as of our clients. If our team members aren’t being cared for and if they’re not being supported and if they’re not taking care of themselves and their families it’ll translate to our clients. One day this pandemic will end and we’re going to come out of this on the other side and we’ve got to be caring for our teams and our clients along the way. The help, the insights, the knowledge shared now more than ever is important and we’ve got to take time to take care for our teams, they’re on the front line, they’re with our clients every day, they’re under a great deal of stress, the clients are as well as our teams in order to pivot our business in the current environment.

We view this as an opportunity to lean into those conversations with our teams and our clients so I really want to touch on both of those, it really is taking care of your team, taking care of your clients. Give straightforward, simple advice, simple reminders are so powerful, they’re more obvious than you would think. During this time those teams and clients are going to remember you one of two ways, that you were either trying to help or you took a backward posture and weren’t there for them. It’s really about leaning into teams and clients making sure they both have what they need to be successful during these unprecedented times.

Fred Diamond: Eric, how about you?

Eric Trexler: I couldn’t agree any more with Jennifer. Customers and employees. I was reviewing our values the other day and optimism, trustworthiness, commitment to the customer came to mind. We’re spending a lot of time – all of our time, quite frankly – understanding what they need and helping them. Customer priorities are changing right now, I do a lot of DOD and intelligence business internationally and in the US, there’s a lot of fear out there, there’s a lot of uncertainty. We’ve got an aircraft carrier parked off the lawn right now which is basically combat ineffective because of the virus. Understanding what these customers need and responding to it in the way they need, not bothering them when you can’t help. Those are the big ones for me, customers and employees.

Fred Diamond: Matt, you’re in a relatively new role, you’ve been a sales leader before, you’ve been an independent. By the way, Matt is also a twice published author, so it’s good to have you on today’s webinar but how about you? What is your #1 priority right now?

Matt McDarby: It does tie into what Jennifer and Eric have said, it’s keeping the team focused on executing our sales process as effectively as they can in the current environment. If that sounds in any way self-serving or too inwardly focused, the thing I’d have to add is our sales process is a distinctly client-focused process. The entire thing is driven by an understanding of how buyers make decisions and where do we have opportunity to create value for them. At a time like this, because a lot of our clients are ranging from concerned to panicked about the state of our business, we can get pulled into the very same sort of behavior. I think maintaining the rhythm and focus that we have which is very much about executing that sales process with excellence, planning, executing, reviewing some more planning, it’s just maintaining that steady rhythm. That’s really my top priority, it’s very easy for us to lose focus and go off in a direction that we don’t want to head.

Fred Diamond: One of the key words that’s come up a lot over the first week of the transition is empathy, be empathetic to your customers, be empathetic to your partners and we’re going to shift. One of the interesting things is we also did this webinar last week, we had a great panel of three sales VPs and we’re also going to do it again next week and the week after. Things evolve, things change, empathy was a big word but how do you be empathetic and at the same time move business forward? We just ended a quarter yesterday, March 31st, we’re doing today’s podcast April 1st. How do you be empathetic but still moving the business forward? Jennifer, why don’t you get started with that one?

Jennifer Ives: I mentioned before it’s about sharing simple perspectives. Empathetic leadership and empathetic sales, you need to be human with your teams and you need to feel where your clients are and understand from a human perspective and from a business perspective where they are, where’s their pain, their pain may have shifted from the pain they were in 6 months ago to where’s their pain today. You’ve been working with them, they’re your current clients, you know better than anyone what they were experiencing in the past and then where they are today and if not, then it’s really important to be part of those teams, their tiger team almost, and really lean in and help them understand and help guide them through that.

I would say that persistence, persistently check in with both your teams and check in with your clients. We’re hosting lots of conversations with our clients, we want to be sure that we’re offering the simple pieces of advice because many times when you are in a state of crises or you’re in a state of panic, and it really depends on the client, sometimes those simple reminders, simple pieces of advice are really important. The simple advice doesn’t mean that it’s not complex and that’s why they’re having challenges thinking through that. Actively make offerings, don’t just say, “Is there anything I can do to help?” It’s, “Here are the things that I see that you are struggling with, here’s what is going on in the industry, here are the ideas that I have for you” and I think it’s really important to always talk about, “Here are the four things we’re seeing, here are two that apply, how can we help you implement these?”

To be honest, it’s not about growing the business, it’s about supporting them and understanding where they are and making sure that you can add value to those conversations. Again, be proactive, do not wait for the call, call them, it’s empathetic leadership. Call them, hear where they are today, really understand where they are today and make those very specific offerings. It’s really going to be interesting because there’s going to be a before COVID-19 and then after COVID-19. You want to be sure that both your internal teams and from a business perspective the clients that you’re working with, that they don’t sit back at the end and say, “Where were you?” You want to be their first call and if they’re not calling you, you need to call them. You need to help them through this.

Fred Diamond: I want to go back to your employees, to your staff. The first question we asked, all three of you said that your #1 concern is your team so what do you think are the main concerns for your people? I’m curious, how are the younger people handling it? This is the third week that we’re involved with this so the whole newness of working from home and everything with Zoom is kind of worn off at this point a little bit. There’s different challenges, how about your more senior people? I want to pose this question to Matt and Eric. Matt, why don’t you take it first?

Matt McDarby: We happen to be in position to help clients who are dealing with a lot of that remote work, work from home issues because we’re in the remote work collaboration and communication business. The main concern that I have for my team is their ability to respond to clients’ needs. Some of those clients, by the way are literally on the front lines of the health crisis in New York, how do we use the precious little bits of time that we have with our clients to help them? I think Jennifer said it earlier, they are absolutely going to remember what we did for them in this time or what we didn’t so balancing all the demands, servicing immediate needs and being responsive to all of our clients is tough, that’s tough for everybody.

For the younger people on the team, I think we have to remember younger people maybe haven’t been through anything like this before. For those of us who lived through 9-11, super storm Sandy, the global financial crisis, any one of those, we know that we will come out of this, it’s a question of when and how it will be different but we really have to help our younger teammates prepare for when we do because we know it’s going to happen. Keeping them focused on what is it going to take to make sure we come out of this a little bit stronger, a little bit better, a little bit more close with our clients, I think that’s the thing to get them to zero in on, rather than worrying about, “My god, is the sky falling? There’s no precedent for this.” There is, we will get through it.

Fred Diamond: Eric, how about you?

Eric Trexler: When I look at the main concerns of my people, it’s been an interesting three weeks or so. They’re worried about their customers, they’re worried about their health, they’re worried about their family, they’re worried about their jobs. What I’m not saying is they’re not necessarily worried about burning out, we have tons of people that are on Zoom 12, 14 hours a day back to back or go to meeting or whatever it may be, they’re working too much, they’re not exercising. You mentioned younger people, we’ve seen an interesting dynamic that we’ve observed in our business where a lot of our younger employees who traditionally don’t need as much assistance from HR, from the business, they don’t necessarily have parents who are ill, they don’t even have kids in many cases where the kid’s sick and they’re staying home from work, they live in high rise apartments and they’re scared to go outside. They can’t go outside depending on what state they’re in to exercise. They may have a balcony or they may have a room, depending on what city they’re in and the dynamics have really changed on the impact. They’re cooped up.

I’ll tell you, in a conversation with my son Michael who’s 12 today, I said, “Do you miss your friends?” and he goes, “No, I talk to them all the time.” The younger personnel are different in many ways but they’re cooped up and they want to get out so we’re watching that very carefully. We’re mandating breaks, one of the early on observations I made was our executive teams working like crazy right now trying to adjust to our customers and everything. The younger employees, the individual contributors are modeling that and they’re burning out, they don’t want to stop working, they don’t want to plan for breaks because they see their boss is not planning for breaks and they’re scared. That over-communication is really critical, I think as we go forward here a couple weeks in were going to start seeing people who have family illnesses, they have illnesses themselves and we’re going to see the concern change and we need to be available for them and for the business.

Fred Diamond: What are you hearing from your customers? Again, we asked the question in the very beginning, “What level of stress do your customers have?” and 94% of the people on today’s webinar said it’s either somewhat or extreme. Jennifer, tell us the actual conversations you’re hearing from your customers. Are they communicating this stress? Obviously everyone’s going through everything, we’re all going through this in the world unlike some of the previous examples we talked about before. You might not have felt some of the things outside of DC or New York around 9-11 after it happened. What are you hearing from your customers? What are they telling you? Then we’ll get to Matt with this question as well. Jennifer, you go first.

Jennifer Ives: It’s a great question. Our culture is one that both internally and also with our clients, we’re very open, we’re transparent, we have very deep relationships as I think that Matt and Eric do as well. We’re trying to one, as I mentioned before, proactively reach out, not wait for them to call us because if they’re under a great amount of stress and pressure sometimes it’s hard to figure out which way to go, which way is up on that. We’re calling, we’re making proactive calls, I think it’s really important, I believe in that strongly, I recommend it strongly to everyone listening today. Proactively reach out, understand, have those conversations because again, we’re either going to emerge from this with a better relationship or a more disconnected relationship and you want it to be on the better side, you want to be the call that they made to you.

We build digital technology, we build digital software so we’re working with companies that have digital products in the market that are consumer driven so many of our clients are actually doing really well, they are needed right now. Some of them have virtual platforms, some of them are in healthcare IT, the list goes on so they need us because they need to double and triple down on their digital product in the market. We have a few customers who are related to hospitality in some industries that are really hard hit. Those conversations are about how can we keep product going for you and how can we be supportive? How can we strategize with you? How can we offer some of our brains on from conversations, some of our really smart and talented people that maybe you haven’t had contact with before because you haven’t needed them. Putting them on the phone for half an hour and then of course I think everyone probably will touch on this on the call and in future conversations, but what do you do about the contracts and payments especially when you’ve got clients who are really going through major changes in their industry and their industries in particular have been hit hard?

Our conversations are really centered around how can we lean in, whether that company is actually doing better because their technology or their digital product is needed during this crisis or if it’s not needed, how do we lean in and share those ideas and thoughts with them to help them through this? Again, I’ll just repeat: don’t wait to be asked, don’t be generic, be really specific in your offers of help and help them gain clarity whether it’s contracting, whether it’s pricing or whether it’s ‘what do I need to do next’. Be very specific and proactive in those conversations.

Fred Diamond: Thank you. Matt, how about you?

Matt McDarby: Our customers are asking them to help them pivot a bit. We did our jobs really well going into this year, we were clear about what their big strategic initiatives were and what the big issues were in their environments and what they were trying to achieve over the next year or two and lo and behold, three months into the year all of that had to shift. What we’re hearing from some of our clients, and this is true where we have our strongest relationships with people at senior executive levels, is they’re saying, “Look, we clearly have to rethink what our priorities are. Can you help us?” That’s a great conversation to be invited into.

No organization would have that with every client, but they think about the mid-level managers, the director level folks that we work with saying virtually the same thing. “I know what I said I was going to be able to commit to mid-year or later this year, but that has to change.” We have a choice, are we going to try to push them if that change doesn’t suit our own agenda or are we going to stop, listen and try to be in position to offer ideas even if it means we don’t necessarily have a solution then and there because we know that they value those partners who are really focused on helping them achieve whatever outcome they want to achieve? That might mean backing off, that might mean helping them to reprioritize so I think that’s the thing that our customers are looking for from us right now.

Fred Diamond: What would you say the #1 skill you would tell a sales professional who works for you should be. If you had to tell them one, what should they focus on right now, today April 1st, 2:21 Eastern Time? Eric, how about you? What’s the one thing you would tell your people to work on?

Eric Trexler: I think you should know it, I’m not sure about learning it, but I think setting goals. The whole world has changed, come into each day, each week, month, set a goal for that day, set a goal for that week and make sure you’re on it because we’re working a lot. The question is are we working on the right things, are we doing the right thing? That forethought I believe for a sales professional is the most important thing they can bring to the business right now. “This is what I plan to accomplish today” and then evaluating and the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of that month, “Did I accomplish that?” The world as we know it has changed, what we did three months ago is not going to work today, we’ve got to evolve and we have to do it quickly so I think setting goals and holding yourself accountable measuring is probably the one thing I’d recommend.

Fred Diamond: Matt, how about you?

Matt McDarby: This one is universal, I think listening. Really listening, understanding what your clients are saying, why they’re saying it, what do they really mean. I think that’s a skill that all of us, even those of us like many of us on the line here have been selling 10, 15, 20 years, it’s the thing that separates really great sellers, people who execute great sales calls consistently. It’s not about my value statement or the question I plan to ask, it’s “Am I really tuned into the answer? Am I present?” In a time like this it’s especially important, “Am I really hearing what my customer is saying or am I drowning it out because there’s something I’d rather hear?”

Fred Diamond: Jennifer, how about you? What would be the #1 skill you would tell people to work on?

Jennifer Ives: Eric and Matt just hit on two incredibly important skills and I think this makes a nice layer on top of it, get really comfortable at on-camera conversations. That might not be a skill, it’s more of a tactic, it’s more of something very easy to learn. Understand where your computer is, understand where that video camera is, understand what sound is like and isn’t like, understand the bandwidth in your house. I think those are really important tactical pieces not just in sales but everyone really needs to understand over the last couple of months as everything has turned virtual.

Fred Diamond: Jennifer, I have another question. We just got a question that came in from one of our listeners and again, if you’re listening to today’s webinar just submit questions through the panel. This is a great question. People aren’t meeting right now, you’re not going to meet someone for a cup of coffee, how would you approach new partnerships? How would you reach out to someone pretty new that may be ahead on your list that you have no contact with, maybe you’ve seen them on LinkedIn but they’re brand new. Is now the time to reach out to new people to start developing those types of relationships? Matt, I see you shaking your head so I’ll get to you after Jennifer but Jennifer, why don’t you take that?

Jennifer Ives: I say yes. You should be talking, sharing knowledge at all times whether we’re going through COVID-19 or we’re going through virtual meetings instead of in-person meetings. A good sales leader is a good leader as a good leader is a good networker. Continue to build your network, I continue to talk about freely giving your information and your insights and your advice, your thoughts, continue to do so. I would be very careful about how you reach out to new prospective clients at the moment.

One, you want to be really hyper-focused on your current clients and two, if it makes sense to reach out to new, I’m SVP of Global Partnership so my job is to reach out to new all the time and I’m finding that those conversations are very different. Knowing the industry that he or she is focused on, but what I would suggest is really understand what that industry is going through and come to that conversation listening, empathizing with where they might be and I would go in with a warm introduction or leveraging LinkedIn and understanding how you’re connected, why they would want to talk with you at a time of crisis, why is it that they might want to give you 30 minutes of their time even more so than 6 or 8 weeks ago if you were calling into someone new for the first time. I would approach the conversation differently, again, be incredibly empathetic to the challenges that they might have on their plate today, those challenges are going to be different from 8 weeks ago and be very aware of it.

Do not waste their time, understand where they’re coming from, add value in that conversation. These are things I would recommend 8 weeks ago, more so now but understand where they are today.

Fred Diamond: Matt, how about you?

Matt McDarby: That’s good advice from Jennifer. I think the key is it’s tempting but we can’t get into the idea that people don’t want to talk right now. I think about conversations I’m having with colleagues and every one of us has some version of, “You know what? I thought to pick up the phone and call so-and-so, haven’t talked to them in a long time.” I know the question was about new people and that does carry a certain degree of requirement for prep and really being tuned in and trying to understand where this person is coming from, but think about also that next level or next layer of people in your network that you just haven’t engaged with in a while who might legitimately value the call.

This is an unprecedented time, I can’t think of a time when I’ve been secluded in my office by government order and there are a lot of people right now who are looking to stay engaged. Just because they’re prospective buyers doesn’t mean that they’re off-limits, they may very well value the human interaction so I think it’s a really good idea to reach out and let’s face it, the thing that’s still true is people love to chat especially if they can talk about something that’s important to them. Combine that with everything Jennifer said about prep and understanding the market, I just think it’s as good a time as any, maybe a better time, in fact to have that live interaction with people because we need it.

Fred Diamond: Eric, I’m interested in your thoughts on this. Today is April 1st, happy April Fool’s today, everybody. We’re all essentially living through the biggest April Fool’s joke in our history. Prospecting, today’s the first day of the new quarter, I wonder how many companies were paying attention to the fact that it was the end of the quarter yesterday and a lot of companies traditionally do. Are you directing your team to prospect for new business and if so, what are you telling them to do?

Eric Trexler: I am but you have to be very careful here. I fully agree with Jennifer and Matt but you have to be very careful, we’ve seen in the cyber security space a lot of what’s appearing to be profiteering, a lot of people who are out there just trying to take advantage, we’re seeing it from the adversary, we’re seeing it from the companies. We have a very strict policy, anything we’re doing whether it’s sales plays, you name it, has to go through the CEO at this point to ensure that we’re not coming out and looking like we’re taking advantage of that because trust is so valuable to our business.

You’ve got to provide value, if I gave you one word it would be value. If you’re going to talk to a customer or prospect, you better understand what that value proposition is. You’re sharing something somebody else in the industry is doing like them, you’re bringing them something that you perceive to be value. If you’re calling up and saying, “Hey, I don’t know you but how can I help? What can I do for you?” I probably get five of those calls a day, they’re a total turnoff for me, I’ll never do business with that company again unless I don’t recognize that they called me during this time. I need value and I need it now and I think so do our customers.

Fred Diamond: That’s a common theme, of course. There’s a couple common themes that frequently come up on the Sales Game Changers podcast, adding value is by far #1 and #2, Matt brought this up before, is listening. Matt, you spent a lot of your career as a sales trainer working for some very successful sales training companies. Let’s talk about new prospecting right now as well, what is your opinion? Are you directing your people to do new prospecting?

Matt McDarby: I am. We have to do the work now to make sure that we’re in position to grow when we come out of this. We are coming out of this, we can’t simply turn off the pipeline development effort. There’s another way to look at this, we all are probably getting messages in our inbox and in our LinkedIn message stream from people who are hitting us with very much messages entirely about them. Every once in a while they’ll get creative and they’ll start a message with, “These uncertain times” or, “COVID-19” as the subject line and it has absolutely nothing to do with my concerns in this current environment, it’s just a cover for their very seller-centric message.

If we pay attention to their examples it gives us a very clear vision of what not to do and what not to do is approach people with what is clearly a blanket message that is clearly meant to take advantage of a topic and a subject line that everybody is going to automatically pay attention to because COVID-19 is everywhere. Instead, what I’m recommending the team do is we’re taking rightful shots here for lack of a better analogy, we have to reach out to the right targets with messages that are relevant. If they have a tinge of how to address a problem that our customers are dealing with right now and this everybody-working-from-home environment, that’s cool but let’s get to the point really quickly right in the very first sentence, keeping it above the fold, as they used to say or as my old [Inaudible 30:42] would call the KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid. First sentence, you’ve got to be talking about something, that there’s an outcome they can’t achieve or there’s an issue you know is going on in their industry. Say it quickly, do it in a way where you avoid using the ‘I, me, my’ language and you have a shot. If you don’t do that, you’re going to end up in the trash like most of the other prospecting messages that we’re getting today.

Fred Diamond: Once again, if anybody has a question, feel free to submit it to the panel. Right now you know where everybody on your team is, everybody is at home. Maybe they’re going for a walk or something but for the most part we’re getting government mandated orders to stay inside unless it’s essential, so we know where everybody is. Everybody is in their home office or probably looking at a screen so you know where everybody is. I’m curious, let’s start with you, Eric and then Jennifer, I’m interested in your thoughts on this. How often are you now communicating with your team? Do you stop everything at 5:30? I’m just curious, how are you communicating to your team? You know where they are, you know that nobody is on physical sales calls, nobody is going to events, nobody is going to meetings. Let’s start with you, Eric and then Jennifer, take it. How often are you communicating to your team and how?

Eric Trexler: I used to go to the office 4 to 5 days a week. Obviously the method of communication has changed drastically. Fortunately, I have team members across the globe so we’ve always communicated via Zoom and phone, we’re having a lot of Zoom sessions as I’ve mentioned, as we’ve talked about here. The first thing I’m doing is keeping the standard weekly support cast calls, one-on-ones, leadership team calls. What we’ve done after that, though is we’ve added fun, we’ve added happy hours, we’ve added biweekly lunches where we don’t talk business, we just talk about what’s going on. I just got a game psychologists recommended called Table Topics. Stupid topics to start dialogue not work-related to make people feel okay, feel like they’re part of a community. We’re working as much as we used to, maybe a little more, what we don’t have is that water cooler time.

We’re doing Zoom yoga here at Forcepoint, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at noon. We’re doing everything we need to do, I’m doing random check-in calls so I have a contact list of my entire team and I’m just checking in to see how people are going randomly as of my leaders in the business. We’re inviting executive leadership, the CEO is invited into some meetings so that he can be involved, we’re keeping people very up to date, we’re very candid and transparent here on what’s happening, what’s going on with the business because they’re worried, they don’t know what’s happening. They don’t know if they’re going to have a job tomorrow so we’re over-communicating on the state of the business.

We just completed a very good quarter, what we’re doing, we’re asking for help is the final thing. Our business relies on our companies, our people’s abilities to do their jobs effectively and service their customers so we’re asking them for help, too and we’re asking them what they need. We’re doing a lot.

Fred Diamond: Jennifer, I’m curious, is your team’s day ending at 5 o’clock? You know where everybody is, everybody is at home, no one’s traveling, no one’s going to the beach. I’m just curious, has the day expanded? I know a lot of people listening on today’s webinar and obviously the sales leaders we have here, I know it’s not a 9 to 5 job, you all do a lot of hours and a lot of work but I’m just curious because we’re all at our desks in our houses now. Has the day expanded? I’m curious on how you’re managing out there today.

Jennifer Ives: I think this is so important as leaders to make sure you’re checking in with your teams regularly. I do believe the day has expanded and what I’m hearing more and more is that people are sitting in place for 4, 5, 6 hours sometimes not realizing it because they’ve gone from one meeting to another, to another potentially with clients, internal meetings, client, client, client, internal meeting. As leadership at 3Pillar we are proactively reaching out from the CEO founder, David DeWolf all the way through the company to say, “Here’s what my day looks like, this is how I’m making sure that I’m setting boundaries between work and my family.”

This is a unique situation where it’s not just that you’ve chosen to work from home and you’ve got children or others at school or maybe a partner at work, you’re all home together, it’s really important. Again, it goes back to empathetic leadership, understand where your team is at the moment, help them delineate, make those delineations, I was just having a couple of conversations with some team members this morning and sharing how I was now blocking off my lunch time during the day. Also, I’ve learned from other leaders that I’ve reached out to that have been working from home for many years and I’m now blocking out two breaks during the morning and in the afternoon. They’re getting filled in but I’m filling them in, the very least is allowing me. You try to model for your team members what it is that you can do.

We also have team members who have little children and they’re trading with their partner, they’re taking care of the kids in the morning, they’re working in the afternoon and then after children go to bed they’re sending emails at 10 and 11 o’clock at night and they’re doing a piece of their work much later in the evening and sometimes in the middle of the night.

We want to be sure that those folks are being taken care of in that they understand and they have support around the boundaries that you can set. I think it’s really important to set those boundaries. It’s really important as Eric and I think Matt has also mentioned in the conversation as well, it’s really important to bring fun and silly into the conversations. We’re hosting happy hours, we’re hosting lunch roulettes where we sit down and we put our names in a Google doc and at random three people are chosen to have lunch with each other. We’re hosting Netflix movies where you can watch them together, lots of different ways that you can bring some fun back into the virtual but to your very specific question, really important to help your teams understand that it’s alright. You should encourage them messaging you and having those open conversations and they open dialogue with you as to, “Here’s what my day looks like, this is when I need to do this for my family, this is when I can be working, I’m going to be working from 10 to midnight on X, Y, Z project.” That over-communication goes both ways.

Fred Diamond: Tell us something new, one thing each that you all are doing as a response to this. We’ll go from my right to left with Matt then Eric then Jennifer. One thing new that you’re doing.

Matt McDarby: Me first? Boy, we’re doing a lot of things new, let me think about the one. I’m surrounded by people who are experts at using collaboration technology so we get ideas regularly from the team. One of the things that we’re doing new is creating team spaces to share everything from little bits of competitive intel and things that are going into the marketplace to another team space that’s about the very specific situation we’re in right now with COVID-19 and then there’s one that I’m kicking off here shortly. We have a team standout twice weekly, 15, 20 minutes where I’m going to interject a quick challenge for people so we’re using our team space to throw a little fun, creative challenge out to the team that we’re going to talk about live during the next team standout.

Fred Diamond: Eric, how about you?

Eric Trexler: I think I’d like to give my marketing team some props here. We’ve been talking about our customers going through digital transformation. A massive amount of my marketing budget annually goes to shows, the government is big on shows. Obviously the shows aren’t happening, they’re cancelling. My marketing team has done a phenomenal job transitioning to digital from the physical shows that we used to do and they’re even ahead of the budgets, we can’t get our money back until the show actually cancels, there are several hundred thousand dollars ahead on the digital transformation from a customer outreach perspective compared to what we’re getting back from the customers’ shows that are cancelling. We’re expecting to see a lot more customer communication, a lot more contact as we have to pivot, that’s probably the biggest or most significant thing where I’m just seeing leadership from the front from the marketing thing.

Fred Diamond: Jennifer, one thing that’s new that you guys are doing as a response to this.

Jennifer Ives: It’s similar to Eric, we are freely putting information out into the world through live chats. We’ve been hosting many live chats for our clients for those who lean on 3Pillar Global for product information and up to date information. They’re going so well that we will be doing them when everyone gets back to normal, when the uncertainty changes to certainty and we’ll be doing them then as well.

Fred Diamond: From a sales professional perspective, next 7 days, what are going to be the big challenges? Jennifer Ives of 3Pillar Global, what do you think that big challenge is going to be?

Jennifer Ives: I think that as time passes and with the new lockdown orders in place not only here in the DC region but around the world, this is going to start wearing on people and the frustration is going to start to set in so it’s really important to stay creative with our teams about ways to connect as well as ways to stay connected as well as reminders to them about that work-family balance and boundaries. As leaders we need to proactively share and demonstrate those work-family boundaries and continue to support the teams who may be struggling with the family needs and ongoing concerns. Things are changing on an hourly and daily basis so it’s staying true to being transparent, communicating actively with your teams and in your company as leaders and it’s about being empathetic with your teams and what they’re struggling with to deliver to clients. Then that empathy extending to your clients. Fred Diamond: Matt McDarby, how about you?

Matt McDarby: I think helping people to focus on their work in a way that’s healthy right now. Everybody’s gotten some commuting time back, there’s a silver lining to this and the work itself, the work day does create some normalcy even though a lot of us find ourselves working at home 5 days a week when maybe we never do that or we only do that a couple of days a week. Helping people see that the work is still somewhat normal even though the environment has changed and when you get that commuting time back maybe it means looking around my own office, maybe there’s something you can do to reorganize. Maybe there’s that little project that you have the extra hour or if you’re in the DC area, two and a half hours of commute time back to focus on something you just haven’t been able to get to. That’s what I mean by focus on this work environment in a way that’s healthy, the balance is important, you’ve got to get away from this stuff. The final point here is draw the line, if you’re not accustomed to working from home know that when the work is away, it’s away. Don’t keep coming back to it, separate yourself from it because you can develop a very unhealthy balance of the work if you’re not disciplined about drawing hard lines between work and the rest of your life.

Fred Diamond: Eric, why don’t you bring us home? Again, I want to thank Jennifer Ives, Eric Trexler, Matt McDarby. Eric, final thought here. What do you think are going to be the big challenges for the next 7 days from a sales perspective?

Eric Trexler: For me it ties into mindset, you mentioned it here at the end of the show. I think mindset is going to be so critical, going back to what Jennifer talked about, this is a new world. Things are changing, the novelty of it is wearing off, we’re now in solitary as opposed to, “Hey, this is kind of cool, I don’t have to commute to work anymore.” I think we need to focus on action versus activity, I think it’s too easy to get lost in the fact that, “I just worked 12 hours, this was great.” We need to fail fast, we need to look at what’s working, what’s not, we need to be able to evolve very rapidly. The new normal, as I call it, is changing constantly. Understand what that is, work with friends, work with peers, try to figure it out. If you’re experienced you’re changing it up, if you’re new you might have an advantage, you’re learning for the first time and you don’t know what should or shouldn’t work so you might be more creative. I agree fully with Jennifer, the next couple days, the next couple weeks we’re going to settle in and this becomes real for people. We’ve now been at home four weeks and we probably have 6 to 8 more to go. It’s all about mindset.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 222: Sales Game Changers Learning Event: Sales Transformation and Success During COVID-19 featuring Jennifer Ives, Matt McDarby and Eric Trexler first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Subscribe to the Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Register for the upcoming IES Women in Sales Leadership Forum here.

EPISODE 175: 3Pillar Global CRO Heather Combs Says These Three Strategies Helped Her Thrive as a Woman in Sales Leader

HEATHER’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Continue to learn, grow, evolve and improve every day and so will you. Find the places that you’re willing to learn to work hard, to continue to get better. Just keep on working at it and enjoy the journey.”

Heather Combs is the Chief Revenue Officer for 3Pillar Global and is passionate about the role that women play in leadership and sales.

If you recognize her name, we previously interviewed Heather on her career journey in sales and sales leadership. You can find that episode at here.

The Institute for Excellence in Sales will be holding its second Women in Sales Leadership Forum starting on October 11.

We wanted to take this opportunity to talk to Heather about some of the opportunities facing women in sales and some ways that they can direct their career.

Find Heather on LinkedIn!

Heather, it’s great to have you on the Sales Game Changers podcast. Once again, you’re truly a leader, you’ve written a lot of great articles, you’ve spoken about women in leadership and women in sales. I’m excited to talk to you at length about that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your journey as a successful woman in sales?

Heather Combs: Thanks, Fred. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you again. It’s true, this is my passion project both internally here at 3 Pillar where we host a Women in Leadership support educational opportunity as well and then of course in the broader DC market with IES. We sent an individual to the first class and we have a couple of women joining the second class so we’re excited to see what continues to evolve there. Thank you for providing that.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about some of the opportunities and challenges that do face women in sales today. What do you think are the two biggest challenges that women face today as sales leaders?

Heather Combs: I think probably one of those is how difficult it can be to be the only woman in the room. I recently went through a straight string of meetings where for 9 meetings I was the only woman in the room. I thought I was going to make it to 10, but I didn’t, the 10th meeting did in fact bring a woman. I still even in 2019 have these experiences where I am alone in my ideas, in my attire, in my presence and I think that continues to be something we want to evolve. We want to get purposeful about having more women in the room and at the table. The second is for women, it’s really about getting them to opt in and believe both in themselves and in a culture that can support them, whether that’s a culture of behavior – no more strip club sales meetings – or whether that is a culture that supports their desire to balance their family life and their work life. I think both are very possible.

Fred Diamond: I have a question for you. You just said that you were definitely the only woman in the room for 9 meetings. For our listeners, what was going through your mind? Are you conscious of that or did it occur to you at various times because certain things were being said? Give us a little bit of an insight into how you became aware of the fact. Obviously, you knew you were the only woman in the room but what made it even more apparent?

Heather Combs: It never goes by without me noticing as the room starts to come together and all of the men, especially when we’re in our most formal business attire and they come in in their dark suits, that I become the only woman in the room and how much I stand out from the visual aspect. As that goes, there is a big difference on the way men speak and collaborate with one another, how comfortable they are interrupting one another and speaking over one another that you don’t often see with women.

Then just finding your place and how to interject, how to speak and to do that. You’re aware in the room, in none of those meetings was anyone disrespectful in an overt way, but it certainly makes you feel like you’re just one of one. I think that probably is true for all types of diversity when somebody’s one of one in a room and we should strive for that to be different. If a room has more people in it who are representing more perspectives and ideas, they’re going to be better for it.

Fred Diamond: How do you consciously behave when you’re in a room like that? Do you try to become one of the guys, or what would be some of the advice you would give to the women listening around the world? We have listeners all around the world who listen to the Sales Game Changers podcast. What might be some of the advice you would give? Would it be to figure out a way to blend or just be yourself? How would you handle that?

Heather Combs: It’s super important to be authentic at all times. That said, I am aware of the opportunity and I lean in. I know that book has had some bits of controversy, but the truth is take a seat in the middle of the table, speak up, be confident, be aware of your ideas, take the opportunity to show your confidence and why you’re in the room. You’re not there as a token, you’re absolutely there because you’ve got something important to share.

Fred Diamond: In 2019, for example more and more companies have begun increasing the number of women on their corporate boards. Why do you think this is an important movement and how can more companies take steps to bring qualified women into positions of corporate leadership?

Heather Combs: I think it’s really important for the highest levels of all corporate leadership to be a representation of the environment that’s around them. I don’t know any companies that sell only to white men, so I don’t know why we have only 60 something year old white men leading most companies. I think that the products we put in the market are better, the go-to-market business models are better and of course, the research shows most of these companies, the more diversity they have in their leadership, the more profitable they are. It’s not only good for society and morality reasons or for the culture of inclusion, but also straight up for business profitability.

Fred Diamond: You’ve worked at some great places. You worked at CEB which is of course now part of Gartner, you worked at Hanover Research, you also worked at HRCI and you’ve held leadership positions. Throughout your own career how have you seen business culture evolve for women?

Heather Combs: I do think it’s improving. I don’t think we’re all the way to the destination we hope for, but I think it’s getting better. In the last few years, for example the conferences I’ve attended have increasingly gotten diverse on the stage. The number of female speakers and panelists have increased, the inclusion and welcomeness of the female participants have increased, the number of golf games and whiskey nights and cigar smoking outings have gone down to just simply getting drinks afterwards. You’d be surprised at how much it changes on whether women will attend if it’s cocktail hour versus a cigar bar. Those are the kinds of small changes that are happening that make it much more inclusive feeling towards those of us who might not smoke too many cigars.

Fred Diamond: The IES Women in Sales Leadership Forum we have two types of leaders who conduct the classes. We have professional trainers who talk about mindset and leadership but we also have gotten tremendous response from women in sales who hold leadership positions who have been sales leaders who, like you, were the only women in the room for a number of years. Actually, one of our speakers, Gigi Schumm actually won the Woman in Sales Leadership Award, she used to be a senior leader at Symantec and she was the only female senior leader with 49 other peers. What type of leadership or mentorship have you received from other women, and what do you think would be an appropriate way to mentor young women?

Heather Combs: I have been lucky to have had some great female role models and other women in leadership roles who have helped me out along in the way, both from a molding, shaping, bounce-ideas-off-of-them way but also just management. Actually being there to guide my career and give me opportunities when they were the hiring manager. Now that I’m on the other side of that, I believe it’s unbelievably important to use the opportunities I have.

If I have the opportunity to hire women and diverse candidates, I should do so. If I have the power of the budget to support women, for example to go to the Women in Leadership sales class, I should do so. I certainly think that a part of giving back includes me mentoring other up and coming leaders and asking my fellow female colleagues to do the same. To pave the path forward for the people that are coming up through this process with us so that by the time our little girls are all in these positions, it’s a 50-50 ratio and not the 26-ish percent it is today.

Fred Diamond: Let’s give some advice to the young women listening on today’s Sales Game Changers podcast. Again, you’re a woman who’s Chief Revenue Officer for 3Pillar Global, you do a lot of writing so you’ve established yourself as a leader at least in the DC sales world, and growing as well. What might be some advice you would give to the women who are emerging in their career as they seek a mentor? What is the best way for a young woman growing her sales career to be mentored? You just don’t want someone coming to you and saying, “I want you to be my mentor, could you give me 40 hours a week?” How could you optimize your time and their time to be most effective?

Heather Combs: One is network, network, network. Get out there and meet as many people as you can and soak up every little opportunity. The 10 or 20 minutes before an event starts or the 10 minutes walking back to the parking lot can be great nuggets of time that you didn’t take off of anyone’s calendar. The diversity of thought you will get by being in the market and being present with so many different types of leaders, you will learn something along the way. Sometimes I don’t think it has to be that formal. If you have the opportunity to ask someone to formally spend some amount of time with you, just remember, be super respectful of their schedule, to make sure you’re grateful for whatever time they spend and then think hard about what that commitment looks like. Is it lunch once a quarter? That probably is something that they can do and that you can do and still get an awful lot from it without burning the relationship too much.

Fred Diamond: Heather, before we take a short break I want to ask you a couple other quick questions. What are the priorities for continuing to shape business culture that are supportive of female leadership?

Heather Combs: I think work closely with your recruiting department to insist upon a diverse slate of candidates. One of the places you can start is by making sure that other people know it’s a clear priority of yours and then holding them accountable to make that possible. I think the next is once you have that diverse slate of candidates, seek an opportunity to extend opportunities to non-traditional candidates. If someone’s taking their first sales role for example, take a chance on them. If they were a great college athlete, as Jennifer Ives talked about it, you probably have a good competitive person on your hands to work with.

Fred Diamond: You’re the Chief Revenue Officer, you’re responsible for sales and marketing. Do you enjoy being a sales professional?

Heather Combs: I absolutely do. I think that it is a lot of fun, I think that never having two days alike is an interesting way to get to go through your career and it just continues to grow as my role expands. To put the puzzle together, to solve problems, I think of it today as trying to take the very best product to market that I can. Shaping the product, shaping the process, shaping how we demonstrate that value and then making sure that we’re taking it to those individuals, those companies that can use it the most effectively I think is an awesome experience.

Fred Diamond: I just learned something recently that we now have a female majority in the college educated workforce for the first time. What do you think this will mean for gender equality in the workplace, in the sales industry in particular?

Heather Combs: I hope this one starts to impact that cultural piece we talked about. The environment that the women will create and the diversity inside the organization will make it more accommodating for other women and for diverse candidates probably of all types That will change from the inside out those things that are most important to the candidates. Whether it’s parental leave policies or whether it’s not having interviews behind closed doors that make them uncomfortable or whether it’s having events at locations and time frames that are respectful of their outside responsibilities. I just think we’ll see a change a great deal as more women come into the workforce and it’s just permeated through and takes down some of the old stereotypes.

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Heather, as an experienced sales and tech executive, what advice would you give to other women starting their careers, particularly those in the tech and/or sales industries?

Heather Combs: I think one is lean on your own unique experience. Everyone has something wonderful to offer and so often we fail to see that about ourselves. If you’ve come from the sports we mentioned earlier or if you have a parent that has been in the technology field or you come from a certain global background because perhaps you were a military brat, moved all over the world and you are extroverted and capable of meeting anyone from any culture, use those things to really lean into and become the best version of yourself so that you’re successful authentically in your career.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the skills they should be working on? What is one skill if a young woman in sales came to you and said, “Heather, give me one thing”? Of course it could be customized, but in general what’s one skill that you would have people work on?

Heather Combs: To pay attention to the basics, that there are so many often overlooked steps in the process these days, thank-you notes, agendas for sales calls, being on time, making sure that you have clearly communicated why you’re there or next steps. Just make sure you nail those basics before you go onto something more extravagant and miss the things that really make a difference.

Fred Diamond: Those are some great bits of advice. A lot of times on the Sales Game Changers podcast people will talk about the basics and doing them over and over again. We actually interviewed someone you introduced us to, Alan Stein Jr. who is an absolutely fantastic business leader and motivational speaker. He kept talking about how some of the best basketball performers in the world like Kobe Bryant would work on the simplest things. They won’t be working on the 360 dunks, they’d be working on foot movement or passing. That’s a great answer. I’m just curious, what would you tell your younger self? Again, you’re now the Chief Revenue Officer of a very successful company – I’m not going to mention number of years but what would you tell the younger Heather Combs?

Heather Combs: [Laughs] I appreciate that, that’ll give me a cover for just a little bit longer. I think that one of the most important things is to be in it where you are. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, now my oldest is going into 10th grade and I still very much think of myself as a new mom. I realize that 15 years has flown off the calendar and I hope I enjoyed every minute. When I look forward and I think about her going off to college or what her life will involve, I just want to be there to absorb every minute. While that’s very true in personal relationships, it’s true in your career too. Whether you’re going to your first training class or you’re getting your second promotion or you just got your first office, enjoy each step of the way because as it disappears into memory, you’ll long for those moments.

Fred Diamond: Absolutely, you’ve got to live in the moment, that’s a beautiful way to say it too. Be in it where you are, I like that a lot. Heather, tell us about some of your selling habits that have led to your sales success that some of the listeners listening to the podcast might want to make their own.

Heather Combs: The basics answer probably would be a good repeat there, but there’s another one I talk a lot about and it’s I believe very much in momentum. When you get a rock rolling in the right direction, that rock continues to move even if you’re pushing it uphill. The same is true in the other direction – if you either stall out, it’s very hard to start again or if that rock starts rolling the wrong way it’s very difficult to stop it. From everything you do, from the time you wake up in the morning through your sales process and your follow up to the other commitments you make, if you constantly move forward with positive momentum you will find it easier to be successful.

Fred Diamond: Heather before I ask you for your final thought that will inspire our listeners today, again the Woman in Sales Leadership Forum from the Institute for Excellence in Sales is a support network for young women in sales who are looking to grow in their career. Let’s talk about that for one final second. What about building support networks? What would you recommend for women in sales to go about making this happen?

Heather Combs: I would say it goes right with the piece of advice which is fill up your own cup. No one else cares about your career much as you do, so make sure that whether that filling it up is getting enough sleep or it’s having enough people in your network or it’s having someone review your resume for your next job application or to go to that training class – this training class, Women in Sales Leadership training class – fill up your cup so that you are ready to pour it out when you need to.

Fred Diamond: Again, we have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe and one of the cool things, too about the Sales Game Changers podcast is people discover it every day. I get people who reach out to me and say, “I love this episode” and I’ll go back and I’ll realize it was from two years ago. Give us something that will inspire our listeners today and in the future as they come upon this podcast.

Heather Combs: No pressure there, Fred. I would say it’s that I continue to learn, grow, evolve and improve every day and so will you. Find the places that you’re willing to learn to work hard, to continue to get better, never think anyone walked in and found sales leadership or life in general all that easy. Just keep on working at it and enjoy the journey.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 175: 3Pillar Global CRO Heather Combs Says These Three Strategies Helped Her Thrive as a Woman in Sales Leader first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Subscribe to the Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Are you a sales leader looking to improve your sales organization’s performance or an elite performance looking to improve your skills? If so, join the Institute for Excellence in Sales!

EPISODE 172: 3Pillar Global Sales Leader Jennifer Ives Said If She Put Blinders On She Would Have Missed This Wonderful Opportunity

JENNIFER’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Don’t put blinders on. There have been so many opportunities that have opened up for me that if I had put blinders on and said – No, this is my path, this is what I’m going to do for a certain amount of time – I would have missed out on.”

Jennifer Ives is the Senior VP of Client Relationships at 3Pillar Global.

Prior to coming over to 3Pillar Global she held sales leadership positions at LiveSafe, Top Employers Institute, and Arlington Economic Development.

Find Jennifer on LinkedIn!

Jennifer Ives: You mentioned Arlington Economic Development in the introduction. I was there for many years. I led business investment for  and crafted the innovation, economic development policies and strategy that the county has even today which laid the groundwork for the Amazon headquarters choosing Arlington. I’m really proud of that work.

Fred Diamond: That’s good, I saw that in the news. That’s big news for us. Again, we’re broadcasting to people all around the globe, we’re based here in the DC area so that’s big news and actually worldwide news, so good for you. Tell us a little more about what you sell today, tell us what excites you about that.

Jennifer Ives: At 3Pillar we build award-winning custom digital products for some of the largest brands in the world including PBS, NPR, Equinox, Forrester. What I also love is that we build amazing digital products for companies that no one’s heard of just yet until they’re acquired for a billion dollars and then everybody starts talking about them and I get to say, “I knew them when, we helped build digital products for them when” and then we stay with them when they’re acquired for a billion dollars and we continue to help build out their digital products.

It’s really exciting, we have about a hundred teams working on 150 different digital products in the marketplace all around the world and we were just recognized last week by the Software and Information Association and won a CODiE award as the Top Development Services Firm of the Year.

Fred Diamond: Tell us how you got into sales as a career. Again, you talked about technology but you’re also leading sales teams here so how did you get into the sales side?

Jennifer Ives: My story is a little different maybe than some of the other folks that you’ve spoken with and even some folk’s peers and others that I get to rub elbows with often. I started out actually on the engineering team at a company here in the DC area. My background was geospatial engineering and I was on the engineering team for a few years. My CEO – this was before the day and age where people and companies would really bring on solutions architects or solutions engineers into the sales process or even working directly with clients – he asked me to join him on a few meetings where there seemed to be a little bit of a miss between what the client or prospect was looking for and what we were trying to deliver.

He asked me one day in the hallway if I’d like to come to the meeting with him and try to figure out if we can really understand their headache. I always talk in terms of headaches and pain points and what the medication is for that particular headache. That was my first introduction to being on the revenue generation side as well as being upfront and very close to the leaders in not only companies that we were working for but also my CEO and my C-suite. Very quickly early in my career I moved from the first few years on the engineering team over to the revenue generation side and working with clients directly.

Again, really trying to figure out what their pain points were and making sure that we were talking the same language and understanding how to solution for their pain.

Fred Diamond: What did you go to college for? Were you an engineer major?

Jennifer Ives: Yes, geospatial engineering.

Fred Diamond: For people like me who don’t know what that means, just tell us real brief, what is geospatial engineering?

Jennifer Ives: I come from a long line of engineers in my family. In my family we are engineers of all sorts, mechanical, electrical, water resource engineers and when I got my degree in geospatial engineering about 20 years ago my entire family here in the DC area, in New England, Boston, beyond said, “Are you going to be able to get a job?” [Laughs] no one knew what that was because the super-secret agencies actually were hiring most geospatial engineers.

Today we all know Google Earth and we know Waze and we know all of these different technologies that are at our fingertips that consumers interact with on a daily basis. Geospatial engineers were the engineers to work on those projects and those products, so that was my life early on. Data, visualization of data and then making sure that revenue and that the businesses are growing based on data, that’s really what I love.

Fred Diamond: I’m going to ask you what were some of the key lessons you learned with some of your first few sales jobs when you made that shift, but as an engineer with an engineering background and a family in engineering, do you think differently as a sales professional? How do you think the engineering background has helped you in your thought process as a sales leader?

Jennifer Ives: That’s an interesting question. Again, as I’ve grown in my career and I have peers and those that I look up to in sales and revenue generation, it’s actually quite methodical. It’s quite similar to engineering, there is a very specific process and a craft that’s related to revenue generation and strategic growth and sales. I think the engineering background really feeds in nicely to that. I was a curious person by nature growing up, I was curious when I was an engineer and I’m curious to this day so maybe coming at it from an analytical perspective trying to figure out what it is that people are saying, where their pain is and then how to solve for that. Again, the best revenue generators that I know and some of the most successful business leaders I know approach it in the same way whether they have an engineering background or not.

Fred Diamond: Again, when your CEO asked you to join on that sales call you then made the shift into sales. What were some of the key lessons you learned in some of your first few sales jobs that have stuck with you through today?

Jennifer Ives: I think establishing credibility very quickly is key. No matter what kind of selling you’re involved with or what kind of product you’re representing, you need to know that product well, you need to know the industry well, you need to have deep education and background in it. Again, I highly recommend establishing credibility very quickly. I also recommend having empathy for the buyer, for the person – you’re going to hear me talk about pain points quite a bit – having empathy for what that buyer is going through, what he or she is dealing with on a daily basis and how your product or your services can really help him or her through that. Being a Sherpa of information trying to problem solve and get out in front of where that pain point might be.

Fred Diamond: We already talked about geospatial engineering being one of your areas of expertise, but tell us a little more about what you are specifically an expert in. Tell us a little more about your area of brilliance.

Jennifer Ives: I’m a revenue generator, I love to connect a problem set with a solution, that’s how I think of sales, that’s how I think of revenue generation. My area of expertise is really revenue generation, that’s why companies call me, that’s why friends lean on me, that’s why in my network people contact me, is to talk with them about strategically growing their company, how to do so, how to sell the particular product, what the product market fit is.

Fred Diamond: I have another question. We mentioned at the very beginning you talked about being employed by the Arlington Economic Development. How has that helped you? You made the shift into the commercial side, tell us about how working in the public sector for strategy and economic development has helped you as a sales leader.

Jennifer Ives: This is very interesting, too. I started out in the private sector side of the world and then when I saw what was going on in Arlington I really thought, “What if you took a community almost as a business?” – and their revenue really is the tax revenue into the county – “How would you grow that as a business if you were looking at the economy of a locality as a business? How could you grow that?” Some of the lessons that I learned there are some that are both public and private sector facing. They are credibility, building trust, knowing your client, your customer, your prospect, knowing them inside and out, what their pain points are, what their desires are, what their goals are sometimes before they even know what their goals are. If you can really elicit that and pull that out of them, again whether it’s public or private sector, that’s really the goal.

Fred Diamond: You’ve worked for some great places, you’ve worked for some great people. Why don’t you tell us about an impactful sales career mentor and how they impacted your career?

Jennifer Ives: That’s a great question, I’ve had two that really come to mind. One actually was at Arlington Economic Development and he taught me early about credibility. He also taught me about really driving deals forward and asking the question, not just trying to solve the problem for your client or your prospect or the person that you’re working with. He was pretty wonderful, Terry Holzheimer, he passed away a few years ago and I thought the world of him as a wonderful mentor.

The other is someone that I worked with more recently in the last few years, Johann Labuschagne, he’s the head of Global Sales at Top Employers Institute, he’s based in Amsterdam. He reinforced through his actions that notion of one, that he was a leader who really put the team ahead of himself, that empathetic leader that builds trust with the team. Trust to him was more important than almost anything else. Earning trust with his team was #1. He knew revenue and business growth would follow. Johann is someone that to this day I will tap into every so often and we keep in touch personally as well, but he’s really someone who taught me about empathetic leadership and being one with the team. Without the trust of your team, without the backing of your team it’s very difficult to grow and to develop revenue.

Fred Diamond: What are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Jennifer Ives: I would say finding talent. Finding sales leaders who truly understand the process of revenue generation, of selling and of sales is not easy throughout the country, it’s definitely not easy in the DC area. I love to find diamonds in the rough, those folks who maybe think that they’re not salespeople and the more we talk, the more I say, “Actually, you are a problem solver, you enjoy doing X, Y, Z right around problem solving.”

That’s one challenge on the hiring side, the other is lead generation. It is a very different world today than when I, more than 20 years ago, started joining my CEO for conversations with clients and prospects. The kinds of deals that we could get done and the quickness and the pace at which we could close a deal is very different today. Lead generation is really interesting and it can be very challenging no matter what industry you’re in.

Research shows over and over again that buyers today spend much less time with someone in sales or someone who can help them solve their problem, they’re doing much more research on their own. Sometimes that takes them actually in a different direction that isn’t helpful to them but I think the most recent research shows that the majority of buyers come to you 70% of the way through their buying process. Again, many times they could have gone off in a direction that you could have helped guide them much earlier and save them time, energy, money, committee decisions, all sorts of things.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you take us back to the #1 specific sales success or win from your career you’re most proud of?

Jennifer Ives: I’ve had a really great career, I’ve worked with amazing people so to answer one, I’d have to say in the last few years we were working with a company that was having some trouble identifying. They thought they knew what the challenge was, they thought they knew their headache, they thought it was a migraine headache and it wasn’t, it was a stress headache and those two headaches are solved very differently. It took many conversations and many bringing in a number of our talented solutions architects and engineers and data engineers to really walk through and help them identify which kind of headache they had. Then when they got it, “Yes, that is the answer to my pain point. It took a little while to get there, thank you for hanging in with us during that process. We’re going with you, we’ve chosen you and by the way, our hair is on fire as you know and we need to start tomorrow.”

Literally tomorrow which clearly couldn’t happen, we needed to get through some contracting, we needed to get through a little bit of process but we were able to turn that around in very short amount of time and get started with the client and work with them, and bring results in a fraction of the time that it would normally take. Again, I am all about team and to see my team both on the sales side and the solution side and the engineering side, #oneteam all the way. I was really proud, it was a large global enterprise corporation, big brand, they had never worked with a company outside of their own partners that they had worked with before. We just solutioned it brilliantly, I’m really proud of the work that the team did and they’re a client to this day and they’re very happy. It was a wonderful experience.

Fred Diamond: Before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, again you started off as an engineer, geospatial engineering, that was a lot of your background. You also worked in private and public sector for some great companies, you’re doing some great work now with 3 Pillar Global, now you’re in sales. Did you ever question the move to sales? Just curiously, when your CEO asked you to participate in those conversations, what were you thinking? Were you thinking, “This is nuts” or were you thinking, “I’m interested, I’m curious”? Just curiously, where was your mind back then when your CEO first asked you to engage in these conversations with him?

Jennifer Ives: I thought, “This is the greatest day of my life! You mean I get to go and talk about technology and ask a lot of questions to the people that we are helping?” I was creating digital products and they would go with the client, so now I was actually able to sit and talk with them. I remember to this day, I thought it was the greatest moment of my life, I really did.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever question being in sales?

Jennifer Ives: No. [Laughs] I’ll beat you to it in the other piece of that. No, I love growing businesses and the way I think about sales is really bringing an answer to someone’s problem. I love it, I love that every day is different, I love that every year is different, I love playing and being involved in different kinds of technologies, in different kinds of digital products and solutioning pain points.

My entire career I have sold to the C-suite, even early on in my career when my CEO first came to me and asked me to play a little bit of  a different role I’ve always sold to the C-suite. To be honest, I believe I’ve been very lucky that way because I’ve seen for over 20 years the decisions that C-suite executives need to make and the money involved, and the weight that they carry with those decisions. So no, I love it, every day is different and the experiences that I’ve had, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

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

Jennifer Ives: We’ve talked about it a little bit already today, but a couple of things one of which is build out your network and build it out in a credible way. To be in sales is not to be selling every moment, it’s in service of. Early in your career be in service, ask what you can do, build your networks, volunteer with different organizations, get on committees. Really understand who it is that you’re selling to, be part of their world in a credible way.

Again, build networks, build credibility and I think the other ties into it just a little bit, into building the credibility and building your networks, educate yourself. If it means earning a certificate in a particular technology if you’re selling into those particular buyer, that earns you credibility, do so. If it means attending conferences not only to network but to learn if it means again being on committees, joining organizations, listening to podcasts like this, it is so important. I come from a family where learning is ongoing, we’re lifetime learners so my role models growing up were always getting degrees, they were always learning, they were always taking classes. My mom, my dad, my aunts, my uncles. Be a lifelong learner.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us about a selling habit that you have that has led to your continued success?

Jennifer Ives: Again, it’s a selling habit that I don’t think of as a selling habit. I think of it as being in service to people. I try my best to always have other people in mind and always reach out with what we would consider in sales as warm touches. To me, it’s when I read an article, when I come across a podcast, when I remember something that someone told me, shared with me, I send them a note. It’s a personal touch in today’s day an age of technology, it’s still a personal touch. You might use technology to send them that information but always thinking about people that you’ve touched in the past. It never fails, I have done work with people that I haven’t had the ability to be in front of in five years, but we’ve kept up through LinkedIn or through text or through email and every so often if something reminds me of them or I remember that they had a challenge, I send them some information on it. It might be six months, it might be three years but they remember and again you’ve built the relationship, you’ve built the credibility and I highly recommend it.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us about a major initiative you’re working on to ensure your continued success?

Jennifer Ives: Here at 3Pillar we are really from a sales specific perspective working on the lead generation piece of it. The MQL’s, SAL’s, sales qualified leads and really pulling that into the entire commercial process of 3 Pillar. From a 3 Pillar global perspective, we’re working on something called product mindset, it’s how we live and breathe here. Our CEO and our head of product strategy and design just wrote a book on product mindset, it’s just coming out. It’s really a way that we look at product and the design of product. Product is ever-living, it’s ongoing, it never ends and it’s really important from the first year engineer working on the project for the product and in support of the product all the way through to the program. I’m talking about the product manager and maybe the delivery lead and the client partner, everyone to be thinking about in terms of our client, how can that product drive revenue and success and engagement for our client? How do they get their customer to engage more with their product?

Everyone thinks of product in that same way, it’s not just coding for coding’s sake or designing for designing’s sake, it’s what does our client need to do with that information and how do they need to grow their business? And how can our designing and development of their digital products, how can it help their business grow?

Fred Diamond: Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Jennifer Ives: I find it exciting, pure and simple. I find helping people identify their problem, their real challenge they’re trying to solve and then helping them solve it, I find that very inspiring. Personally, I grew up an athlete, I was a competitive swimmer, I have goals I like to achieve and I really also enjoy growing companies. As I mentioned, I’m usually called in when a company is in a growth pattern or when they are looking to grow or when they are in an inflection point, that’s when I’m called in and I love that. I love creating the strategy, I love building the team to deliver on that strategy and I’ve been very specific about the companies that I’ve worked with and that I’ve been in support of, the companies I advise. I advise companies as well and I find it very exciting.

Fred Diamond: What was your stroke, did you specialize in any stroke?

Jennifer Ives: Yes, I was a freestyler and a butterflyer although my back stroke was quite excellent. It wasn’t my favorite, but coaches would often call on me to swim. Clearly I was very weak in breast stroke but the other three strokes were so strong that usually I could make it up and on the last length pull it out.

Fred Diamond: How far did you go with swimming?

Jennifer Ives: I went through high school. I burned out on swimming at the end of high school, I loved it from the time I was five and then I burned out a little bit and then I turned over into some other sports. I’ve stayed active and I will say, I love hiring people on my team who are involved with sports or have been involved with sports as children. Any kind of sports, it’s about goal setting, it’s about stick-to-itiveness and knowing where you are today and how you can get better and creating a path for that. Anyone out there who’s involved with sports or was involved in sports give me a call, I love hiring sports people.

Fred Diamond: We have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe, why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire them today?

Jennifer Ives: Don’t put blinders on, I live by that. There have been so many opportunities that have opened up for me that if I had put blinders on and said, “No, this is my path, this is what I’m going to do for a certain amount of time.” For instance, if I had put blinders on when my CEO said, “Would you please come to a meeting? I’d love for you to discuss this particular product for these reasons” – if I had only identified as an engineer and not been open to, “Let me see what this is all about” I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve had wonderful opportunities that if I had put blinders on. So don’t put blinders on in your career and in your life.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 172: 3Pillar Global Sales Leader Jennifer Ives Said If She Put Blinders On She Would Have Missed This Wonderful Opportunity first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.