Episode 19: Wesleyne Greer – Cultivating Sales Strategies for Sales Professionals

Wesleyne Greer 0:00

I think about the social aspect of sales even before I was in a virtual world, right because sales is so social. If you’re not a social being, if you’re not an extrovert, if you don’t like being–if you don’t like socializing with people, you’re not really going to be a good salesperson.

Intro (Bob Woods) 0:26

Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast, featuring the top voices and sales and marketing. Join hosts, Brynne Tillman and Bill McCormick. As they discussed the best tips and strategies they are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Here are your hosts, Brynne Tillman and Bill McCormick.

Bill McCormick 0:51

Hi, welcome to Making Sales Social, I’m Bill McCormick, (Brynne) I’m Brynne Tillman. So Brynne, who’s joining us today?

Brynne Tillman 0:58

I am so excited. So I met Wesleyne Greer. Just recently, however, we’ve been circling all the same people for a really long time. So I’m surprised it took us so long to connect. But I’m thrilled that we did. And she helps sales managers and sales leaders build a sustainable team of selling superstars. I can’t wait to hear her insights today. Hello Wesleyne, how are you?

Wesleyne Greer 1:24

Hello, thank you so much Bill and Brynne for having me on. I’m excited.

Bill McCormick 1:30

So Wesleyne, tell everyone a little bit about you, how you got into sales training and what you’re working on.

Wesleyne Greer 1:36

So I always like to take people a couple steps back. I’m a chemist by trade. And I worked in a petrochemical lab with plastics for many years. And then I decided I wanted something different. So I got into sales. And I tell people, when I got into sales, I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up because I loved it, everything about sales and selling, and convincing people to buy my products. And because of that love, I made a very fast ascent from individual contributor to international sales manager. And what I noticed during my ascent, that there was so much training when you become a new salesperson, I mean, they’re the loads and loads of training but becoming a new sales manager. It’s like everything. It’s kind of like the Wild West, there’s not a lot of structure, there’s not a lot of training and coaching and things like that. And so that is really my passion to really help people help sales managers when they first started their journey of sales management, or maybe they’ve been in it for a couple of years, and they just haven’t figured it out.

Bill McCormick 2:37

There’s one question we ask every guest that we have on. So Wesleyne, to you, what is making sales social mean to you?

Wesleyne Greer 2:45

So you know, when I think about that, I think about the social aspect of sales even before I was in a virtual world, right? Because sales is so social. If you’re not a social being, if you’re not an extrovert, if you don’t like being–so if you don’t like socializing with people, you’re not really going to be a good salesperson. And when you combine just the human-to-human social aspect of sales, and then you take it up a notch by using social selling, then you have this true, nice little bucket of being a social salesperson.

Bill McCormick 3:23

That’s great. So as you’re training sales managers, and you’re speaking with them, so what are you telling them and teaching them that they can do in the physical world, that they can apply at the top of their pipeline?

Wesleyne Greer 3:38

So really, it’s about learning and understanding what is driving your current audience. So a lot of times people when they’re networking, or they’re out in their prospecting, you know, maybe they go to an event where if they’re in, let’s say, they’re an HR professional, right? And they’re selling HR software, they’re gonna go where their HR software professionals, they’re gonna go to those kinds of conferences, but I say, No, you have to go where your ideal client is. So you should go to a recruiting event. Yeah, they’re looking for employees, but you’re gonna have everybody want to speak to all the recruiters, all the HR professionals, and so actually go where your ideal prospect is showing up, not where your competitors are because then you’re going to be in a sea of everyone else.

Brynne Tillman 4:29

That’s brilliant. I have a quick question that I want to throw in, in today’s environment where you know, all the field reps are now inside sales people, just the way that is right. What do the sales managers and leaders need to do to do three things, one, keep their folks motivated to help them get the tools they need to make the adjustment? Right, and then and three, how do you hire and onboard new sales people in this environment?

Wesleyne Greer 5:03

You’re speaking my language, things that I love talking about. So first motivation. One thing about motivation is people are motivated differently. And as a good sales leader, it is your job to understand how your sales reps are motivated. Some people think that, okay, they’re salespeople, they’re motivated by money. But maybe they’re not. Right, maybe they’re motivated because they think that their product is changing the world. And that’s what they want to do, they want to help change the world. So the first thing that you have to do is have each and every person on your team build their personal goals, and whatever their personal goals are for the year, when you’re having a session with them, and you’re coaching them, or you’re asking them about a deal that needs to close say, you told me that by the end of the year, you want to pay off your car, that’s $30,000, if we close this deal, that’s going to be $5,000 towards your goal. So really make it personal to them. So that is key in the motivation. I know the last one you said was hiring and onboarding. So with hiring and onboarding, a lot of times people, they do it wrong, you’re not that you shouldn’t look at resumes, you shouldn’t interview people, you shouldn’t do any of that, you really need to do a quantitative assessment, right? Figure out what skills the person needs to have, and assess them before you look at their resume. Because a lot of times you look at a resume, or you’ll interview someone, and your biases kind of come in, right like, “oh, okay, we went to the same university”, “oh, you sold for this place, I sold for that place, too”. And you’re not able to really cut through the noise and hire a good person. And what happens is sales people can sell themselves good interviews, you hired this person, and they were done. Right? It’s like, I just hired this person. And they were great in the interview. But now they’re a dud. So really take a step back and figure out, what do I need this person to do? What do I need them to have? And assess them before talking to them or looking at their resume.

Brynne Tillman 7:07

So this is the one, actually that’s going to kind of transition from sales world pre-pandemic to kind of like today is what do sales managers need to do in order to provide the right tools, the right training, the right support, so that their sales people can sell better in the new environment.

Wesleyne Greer 7:28

So in this virtual environment, a lot of people are using zoom and WebEx or whatever tools that your company has, and LinkedIn is blowing up, right? Like everybody’s getting messages all day, every day on LinkedIn. So what you need to do, whereas before, you would say, Okay, how many calls did you make, how many demos did you do? You need to kind of change those key performance indicators to things that they’re doing in the virtual world. How many valuable, meaningful connections that you make on LinkedIn? Not how many people did you talk to on LinkedIn, not how many people did you spam, how many meaningful, right? And how do you quantify the meaningful on LinkedIn or when you’re doing social selling, it is really about that conversion piece. So I’m not a box checker. Right? Okay, I reached out to five people, it’s the five people you reached out to, did it turn into a phone call? Right? No, really qualify that piece, that is the most important piece, it’s the conversion factor. So when you are checking those things, and then you just pop in on a virtual call that they’re having, and see what they’re doing? Are they no camera, looking down, mumbling, are they engaging with the prospect?

Brynne Tillman 8:47

We love that obviously, we teach LinkedIn and social selling, but many sales managers don’t know how to train their people like they’re, they were great at ride alongs. How are you guiding the sales managers in the sales trainers to better support their team?

Wesleyne Greer 9:06

So really, what I like to do is I like to model, because even you know, doing ride alongs or doing in person meetings, right? They have now transitioned to doing virtual meetings for their team. So what they are doing, what they’re showing, how they’re actually doing that, what we do every single month when we’re in a team meeting is, we do roleplay, right? And everybody else has to watch and observe, and they have to give good critical feedback. Yes, I know that this is your colleague, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings. But at the end of the day, what did you see, what was their body language? What about the prospect to the prospect, start typing on the computer look down at their phone, like look at these subliminal cues that a lot of times you miss when you’re in this virtual world to understand how To do this better, right, like you said, in this social selling environment, what you guys are so excellent at is helping people understand that right how they can go from being in a virtual world to actually convert. And so instead of sales managers saying, I know how to do this, they should really enlist help. You don’t know how to do this. This is a brand new world. And if you want to hit quota, you need to work with experts that know how to do it.

Brynne Tillman 10:26

So virtual selling is critical. Knowing how to do that, your lighting, your eye contact, you’re right, all that fun stuff. What we have now that we didn’t have before, is the ability to record this like, right. And so I think there’s an opportunity here that’s bigger than we could have ever imagined. Because we can go back and look at ourselves, or we could never have done it before. So thank you for that. Bill, I will hand–

Bill McCormick 10:51

I want to stick with this idea of virtual selling, and especially as we talk about sales managers, because one of the things we know is pre-pandemic, many sales managers that we ran into, many sales leaders were hesitant to get involved in the social selling, hesitant of online and LinkedIn activity, because they didn’t believe it held value. Suddenly, April 2020 came and now suddenly, they all wanted it because they needed it. I’m curious, as you’re working with sales leaders, how is that hesitancy? Has it changed? Are they more open? And how are you convincing those diehards that say, “No, I need the phone”. Not that there’s anything wrong with the phone. How are you convincing them or influencing them to embrace social selling and virtual selling?

Wesleyne Greer 11:42

One thing that I said is, I’m a chemist, right? And because I’m a chemist, I like data. So when I started working with an organization, I do, what I like to call an MRI, and one of the competencies on there is CRM savvy and social selling. And a lot of times it is very, very low, right? When I’m working with clients, because they-if they have blinders on, one, they don’t want to use a CRM, but that’s a whole nother story, and two, they don’t see the value in social selling. So I think the last one I did it was like zero, like, Do you guys ever use LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter? Like anything? He was like, “No, because we don’t see value in it”. So the first thing that I have to help them do is see the value in social selling, right? And a lot of times, I give them my own personal story, like the whole reason that I’m working with you is because I found your manager, or the business owner on LinkedIn, and we connected there. And this is, this is why I’m talking to you now. Right? Like, I didn’t pick up the phone and call him. I engaged with his content, right? I sent him a message. I said, “Hey, here’s a little video”, right? I did all of those things. And if your sales team is suffering to hit quota, then we have to do something different. We can’t keep doing the same thing. And expecting there to be a different result. Right? We have to do something different. (Brynne) Love that.

Bill McCormick 13:12

Yeah. So I’m a sales manager and I’ve got a team. And they span the new kid who’s in his 20s, who just lives on his phone, and is doing everything socially imaginable. But then I’ve got a guy like me, who’s 58, who wants nothing to do with that. So you had these extremes, how do you coach a sales manager to kind of get some uniformity, and some conformity into embracing social, when you have the person who can do it, like they’re born to do it. And the person down here who just isn’t even sure what a mouse is.

Wesleyne Greer 13:56

You know, a lot of times what I do is I like to, I’m a show kind of person, I like to show them. So at that point, I will know who their target audiences and you know who their ideal prospect is. So I’ll pull LinkedIn up, when we’re in one of those sales meetings, and I’ll show them and typically I go for a- you know, the older gentleman who is like, “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to touch this”. And I show them how their customers are on LinkedIn. And how nobody, because we know company pages don’t get that much love. So very few people are even interacting with the company’s page, right? And so I show them just, if you like this, they’re gonna get a notification. And if you put just a few words, this was great XYZ, or I really enjoyed this, this was insightful. The company gets a notification, and so does your decision maker. Right? And so it’s a super small thing. And so I asked them, very small things like we start very, very slowly, just five interactions per day are valuable, meaningful interactions each and every day, just to kind of get started. And then the young buck, I’m like, okay, so you’ve already been interacting. But now let’s do some meaningful interactions, let’s fix your profile, let’s do some of those things, right? Instead of because I don’t have to walk them through it as much.

Brynne Tillman 15:27

As what you just said, which was brilliant. Your decision maker may not always get that if there’s a marketing department, that’s the admin sometimes who you’re–but at the same time, that decision maker may not have even seen the content on their own company page, you can share, there’s a little paper airplane at the bottom that says Send. And you can actually send that decision maker their own content. And say, I just recently saw this on your company page. Often executives miss their own press, I thought this was great. Just in case you miss, I want to get in front of you.

Wesleyne Greer 16:03

I love that I’m all about touches, right? And that is a valuable touch. That is awesome! I love it! 

Brynne Tillman 16:10

It’s great to hear someone whose job is to help management and leadership succeed. recognize the importance of getting on the radar.

Bill McCormick 16:38

So let’s keep with that theme, as we’re talking about sales, leadership and sales managers, and what would be one tip you would give a sales leader, a sales manager that they do consistently, will really help their team be more successful?

Wesleyne Greer 16:38

I really like to say, practice what you preach. So if you have an expectation that your sales team is doing something on LinkedIn, whether it’s engaging or posting, or whatever, you need to show them, right, so I love what Brynne said, post something, and then share it with the people in your team saying, “hey, see what I did see the interaction, look at these people who are on our target list who just liked it or commented”, right, so show them what they need to do, model the right behavior. And as a sales leader, a lot of times we like to do, for our team. And if you do, for them, the team’s never going to grow, you’re never going to go from your 3, to the 10, to the 100 that you want to, because you just can’t manage that. So show them the right behavior by doing. If it’s our KPI right now is to engage with five people in a meaningful way, then you need to hold yourself to the same thing. (Brynne) Love that practice what you teach.

Bill McCormick 17:44

I’ve heard from many people who are very successful sales reps, and then became sales managers, and they have that control thing. You know, they want to control it, they get involved with all these different projects that their team’s doing, and they don’t grow. So that’s great, great advice. As we’re wrapping up here, Wesleyne. This has been really great. I’m hoping there’s a lot of sales managers that are going to take your advice. How can they stay in touch with you, a website? How can they work with you? If they’re interested in working with you, having a chemist as a sales trainer, I think that’s awesome.

Wesleyne Greer 18:18

So I will say the two best ways. I am very, very active on LinkedIn. So send me a connection request and put “Social Sales Link”. So I know that you heard me on this amazing show. That’s a great way to contact me, or go to my website, there’s a contact form, we have lots of resources, blogs, videos. So either of those ways are really good.

Bill McCormick 18:42

Do you offer, like a complimentary evaluation for sales managers, if they wanted to have like a 15 minute call me and say, “Hey, here’s what I’m struggling with?”.

Wesleyne Greer 18:52

Absolutely. I like to call it an unset session. So a lot of times, there’s like one thing that’s right in front of their face, and they’re stuck. And so I am absolutely happy to meet with someone. And again, when you go on the website, there’s a contact form. And the next screen that you’ll see it’s a way to schedule a 15 minute, I think it’s actually a 20 minute, you know, getting to know me session and in that session, it’s all about you. It’s like what do you need to do to get from point A to point B and a lot of times we talk about getting out of the weeds kind of like what you said, Bill, it’s like you’re so much of a doer, you’re not being strategic. So what is the first step that we can take to get you from being such a doer, to being a more strategic leader.

Bill McCormick 19:39

That’s great. So listen, if you’re a sales leader, a sales manager, you listen to this, I recommend, contact Wesleyne, have that meeting. If you’re a sales rep, you may want to just email this link to your sales manager and say, “hey, this was a great webinar that you need to listen to”, or find a tactful way to say it though. You’re salesmen, you should be able to sell it to them easily. So Wesley, thanks so much for being with us and sharing with our audience. So folks, I’m Bill McCormick. Bye-Bye.

Outro (Bob Woods) 20:12

Thanks for listening, and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing, sales, training and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Don’t forget to subscribe to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social podcasts, leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned, and what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on  Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.