Episode 421: Human First, Sales Second: Building Social Sales Teams

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Enjoy the show.

00:00:50:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. Today I have a remarkable guest, Carla Wade, who is currently serving as the Chief Revenue Officer at Lot Links, Inc with an extensive career in revenue generation and strategic sales development. Carla has demonstrated exceptional leadership skills and approaches for transforming sales organizations. Her experience spans over 18 years, including key roles in companies like automotive Mastermind and Mercedes Benz Manhattan, where she successfully leveraged big data and behavioral analytics to drive customer engagement and retention. Carla is not only a revenue powerhouse, but also a mentor and thought leader in the sales community. So I’m very excited to welcome Carla to the show. Thanks for being here. 

00:01:43:13 – (Carla Wade): Hi, Brian, it’s my pleasure. Excited to talk to you today. 

00:01:46:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I’m so excited to talk with you. Just your extensive knowledge I cannot wait to tap into. But before we jump into your genius, we ask all of our guests one question. What does making sales so show mean to you?

00:02:03:13 – (Carla Wade): I think that’s such a great question. Right. And I think what it means to me is making it human. Right. Remember that this if you’re talking about relationship sales or the consultative approach, it all starts with humans. So, you know, be sure to tap into what a customer or what the other party is really passionate about or what is driving them pain. And use that as your leverage. But be human first. Be a salesperson second. 

00:02:32:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that. I think that’s fabulous. So, you know, you have this incredible rich background in sales and revenue generation, and you’ve got probably thousands of key insights that could help us learn about building effective sales teams.But if you were to say the number one thing, number one piece of advice, I would give someone in building sales teams, what would that be? 

00:02:58:13 – (Carla Wade): Building sales teams is like, find the right professional, right. Find the hungry human that is ready to take the world at the top with their hands. I think that curiosity is a really important driver. Right? We’re talking about selling social. You also need to do a lot of discovery. And discovery isn’t just about learning what’s going on on the other side. It’s also allowing your customer to vocalize what is happening, right? To actually share with you some of their key insight. And then at the negotiation level, doesn’t feel like a negotiation at all.

00:03:34:08 – (Carla Wade): It feels like a very organic type of conversation and a no brainer to do business. So you really want to make sure that the folks you’re bringing into your organization have a curious and a growth mindset, right? Because that’s definitely the key component. So it’s finding the right folks. And then there’s the process. You’ve got to have a process. And don’t be so rigid in your process that you’re not allowing yourself the flexibility or the fluidity to make changes to enhance it. Right. To evolve. And sometimes that takes getting feedback from your team as well to help you develop that as you go. And then whatever is working, make sure that that performance is repeatable and sustainable. 

00:04:19:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, so I think that’s so important that it’s repeatable and sustainable. So many folks struggle when hiring salespeople. I am just going to go one more deeper on this because I, you know, such successful teams. I’d love to tap in a little bit. I love being hungry, motivated, curious. That’s all amazing salespeople can kind of pull the wool over the eyes of a lot of people. Do you have any questions where you can really identify someone who might be a good fit for the team?

00:04:56:00 – (Carla Wade): Yeah, sure. So outside of the run of the mill questions, right? I like to dig into someone’s process or their operating rhythm. I love to see how their wheels turn at the beginning of a month to make sure that they hit their quota and what kind of actions they take. But there’s two questions that I ask in every interview process, if I may share more than one.

00:05:17:19 – (Carla Wade): And one of them is for them to give me two words that are probably their best professional attributes. And then, conversely, what are the two things that they are currently working on? What is something that they know is an area of opportunity and growth for them that they’re currently working on? And it always kind of gets people a little stuck, but they dig in and tell you what those things are.

00:05:41:03 – (Carla Wade): And if it’s my temper or I have no patience, then you kind of get some of your flags right there once and for all for yourself. But then also I do like to, to discuss feedback and what their relationship is with feedback. Right. Because when coaching folks, it is incredibly important to be able to coach people correctly as you go, but that they are able to accept the feedback and receive it and put it into action, but also are brave enough to give that feedback as well, right?

00:06:14:07 – (Carla Wade): I’ve worked with some incredible professionals that were a nightmare to manage, and it’s because their relationship with feedback was broken. And so that can make it very, very difficult for you to get the type of performance you’re looking for or spill toxic behaviors into the rest of your team. So you want to make sure that any candidate you bring on is self-aware, right? They understand what their shortcomings are and are working to correct those. And that is also very open to delivering and receiving feedback. 

00:06:47:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh that’s great. I think that’s fantastic. And that is probably something you can really feel out in an interview. So I think that’s wonderful. What are you seeing with the rolling out of AI tools, and how are effective salespeople adopting it or using it wrong? Or what are you seeing around sales and AI? 

00:07:13:07 – (Carla Wade): Yeah. So Brynne, what a remarkable day and age to be alive, right, that we have all these resources. I think racing AI is really a personal journey. Some folks are either really nervous about it right now or are ready to take it on and fully embrace it. I’m on the embrace side because even with all the developments of AI today and how it can help give you additional resources and efficiencies right for your day to day, even your personal life, it still needs the h AI, which is human intelligence, right? It needs that healthy marriage of both artificial and human for you to render those results. But if it can give you a leg up or speed you down to the part where you’re spending time with your family or finding work life balance, by all means, I would definitely lean on artificial intelligence and leverage those resources. 

00:08:12:13 – (Brynne Tillman): So as a CRO, how do you foresee enabling these tools in your sales team over the next couple of years?

00:08:21:14 – (Carla Wade): Yeah, so part of our technology, what we sell today uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver our insights to our customers. So we’re pretty deep rooted in that. But how I’m using it with my sales team is with some of our outreach, for example. Right. Or our marketing. Having the ability now to make some of our conversations a lot more personal.

00:08:46:03 – (Carla Wade): Meeting people on their turf or finding insights that would maybe pique their interest or draw them towards wanting to spend time with us, talk to us, or give us their business. And a lot of times, doing that manually can really drain a person’s resources or the amount of time that it takes to do that research or it’s not accurate right now. AI is not always 100% accurate. Hence he has to step in as well. And of course make it human and give it that touch. But customers like to know that you took the time out to figure out who they are and really target them on a personal, on a human level. And I can definitely give you the leg up to do that.

00:09:30:02 – (Carla Wade): And that’s how we’re using that today in both marketing messages as well as my sales development team using it on their cold calling outreach as well. 

00:09:39:13 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that, yeah, we have a prompt for pre call planning that is just unbelievable that all you need is their LinkedIn profile. And so that social listening really condenses that time and has significantly more time for having conversations instead of the research around it.

00:09:58:10 – (Carla Wade): So absolutely.

00:10:00:13 – (Brynne Tillman): I think that’s wonderful. One thing that I heard you say, and I think, and this is really why the CRO is a critical role in companies today, is I heard you actually use the word marketing when talking about SAP. So traditionally they’re so siloed as a CRO. Lots of links. Tell me a little bit about how you bring those two and marry those two together. So they’re working toward the same revenue goal. 

00:10:31:10 – (Carla Wade): Absolutely. So you’d be happy to know that my CMO and myself are arming arm all the time. So not only do we involve each other in all of our meetings, but she’s also a part of, like, my sales calls and some of our pipeline reviews, right? There are instances where she could pick up on something that might be a great campaign, or a great start for a campaign, or a pain or a need that we may have geographically, potentially, that we could do a specialized campaign for.

00:11:04:07 – (Carla Wade): So she is constantly listening. She also has her finger on the pulse with our product teams. Right. Also another component that you’ve kind of got to break those silos and bring in together. But we find that having synergy between sales and service. Not only are we able to get the speed of our messaging out and create that reach, but it’s generating traffic right there.

00:11:29:08 – (Carla Wade): Absolutely. Now they’ll be coming back in droves. But a lot of times, those messaging and what people are seeing is driving the outreach back from the customer, and there is nothing greater than a warm hand razor or someone that comes along and says, hey, I’d like to take a demo. I went to your website, or I watched this webinar that you hosted and having your finger on the pulse of all of those things together in lockstep is, I could make such a happy team and a really great result.

00:11:58:17 – (Brynne Tillman): So that’s awesome. I’m curious what kind of marketing message slash content is starting conversations with your prospects before they’re raising their hand and getting them to ask for a demo. What gets them interested enough to explore? 

00:12:17:08 – (Carla Wade): Yeah. So the industry, the vertical that I’m in is automotive. And I think it’s no secret that since Covid and beyond that industry has gone through some twists and turns.Right? And every six months it seems like there’s a brand new problem or an issue that’s coming into play. And so I think really having your finger on the pulse as to what the issues are at hand now or what obstacles they’re faced with, and being able to express that you have a way, you have a solution that can help them out of that is number one message to to spread.

00:12:52:10 – (Carla Wade): And then secondly, this industry too is starting to adopt AI tools to help them be quicker, more efficient. So better be better at customer service, right? Deliver a better product to their customers and stand out. And so those are some of the things that we would put right at the top of our messaging to make sure that we’re delivering those insights. Everyone sees that and then comes our way. 

00:13:21:17 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that you’re dealing with kind of real time insights. What’s happening now? What are the challenges now versus here? Are products and services and features and functions. And something we often say is we’ve got to lead to our solution, not with our solution. 

00:13:38:10 – (Carla Wade): Yes. 

00:13:39:17 – (Brynne Tillman): You know when you’re talking about kind of the challenges now in the industry, I think you really create a trusted advisor role. There’s a sales role which I think is huge today. So I think that’s great that you’re doing that as we move forward with tech Nology and with platforms. Where do you see cold calling email LinkedIn? Like what’s the evolution that you see in some of those platforms? 

00:14:15:10 – (Carla Wade): I feel as though we’ve already come such a long way. And even when I think about our own efforts, right, kind of bringing in the AI and into the format as well to us with the outreach, I keep going back into that element of human interaction. Right. I think there’s something just so refreshing about a connection, a network, whether it’s someone who is in your circle or can bring you into someone’s circle and have that, that trusted dialog, it’s still right now at the top of the roster, even though we have all these wonderful things that are coming to the helm.

00:14:54:00 – (Carla Wade): I think that I’ve probably joined more communities and networks this year than I ever have. Right. Because even with all the tools that we’re leveraging, I’m still interested in talking at a human level, with another person and learning insights. I think that there’ll probably be a time when I’m not going to say that I think machines are going to replace all of us and so on. Again, I think that it’s going to be a happy marriage of the two. But I think that it’s really going to help us get there a lot sooner and a lot more seamlessly. Right. And being able to draw from the public information that someone sets out about themselves starts to filter through, maybe things that you don’t want to hear about, right?

00:15:40:00 – (Carla Wade): Filter through the noise so they may come a time where grin sets her preferences and it, hey, I love these things. I don’t want to hear about these things. And that will kind of create maybe some of the blockers that may come your way or come down your path in the future, but time will tell where we will land overall. But I think right now we’re still kind of at the cusp of it all. But that’s kind of how I see some of the changes coming about. 

00:16:06:17 – (Brynne Tillman): Are there any particular tools that enable the tools that you have found have had a huge impact on productivity? 

00:16:17:00 – (Carla Wade): So enablement is a tricky subject, right. I think one of the reasons why enablement failed in some companies is that it doesn’t diversify. It’s really important to hit people with their own learning style. Some folks love to read, some folks are tactile, others just like to watch and see how someone does it, and so on and so forth. So you really have to make sure that again, it’s the technology. So being able to provide virtual learnings where folks can do it and at the comfort of their own home at any time, anyplace, but then also have in-person meetings, subject matter experts that can help deliver some of those insights, too.

00:17:00:08 – (Carla Wade): So really, you need to diversify your efforts when it comes down to enablement and meet folks in the path that is best suited for them. 

00:17:08:17 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that answer, and I love that you’re personalizing all of that. Are there specific tools, whether it’s like Cadence Tools or Sales Navigator or tools that really help your sales reps succeed faster?

00:17:27:10 – (Carla Wade): So in terms of software, specifically, 

00:17:30:17 – (Brynne Tillman): I think so, unless there’s something else that comes to mind. 

00:17:35:10 – (Carla Wade): So, I mean, Sales Navigator all day long, right? I mean that you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got a good LinkedIn account and you’re leveraging that often for enablement. We’ve both got the classroom style, but we also lean on an LMS, right? A learning management system, to help deliver some of the video content or create quick, small snippets of updates as a product may roll out a new feature. It may be just a very short, quick micro learning that you need to deliver to your folks in short order, right? So an LMS can definitely help you with that outreach. We use a lot of sales engagement tools as well, right?

00:18:16:11 – (Carla Wade): So tools that create sequences for outreach for customer outreach. Right. So that helps to kind of set up the fold of phone calls, emails, LinkedIn , check in those types of things so that you’re making sure and you’re delivering a good prospecting journey for that customer. Right. It’s tough to keep on top of all of that. When stars are making hundreds of phone calls per day.

00:18:41:13 – (Carla Wade): So yeah, we lean on a lot of those things. And of course, CRM, you definitely want to make sure that you’re updating your CRM database, because for us it’s been Salesforce for many years leveraging that. But all of your insights, notes, meetings, all those things should be documented together with a good Healthy Cells pipeline and those stages to help you understand where folks are getting stuck analyzing all of those details to see you know how to forecast and look at your business in healthy, metric driven ways.

00:19:15:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that. I know I need to go down to the forecasting firm. Oh boy. So I would from my conversations with sales leaders and cross forecasting is some of the trickiest to do. So do you have any insights or tips or mistakes that you made, that you fixed, or, you know, anything that could bring value in forecast setting?

00:19:41:01 – (Carla Wade): So not my favorite topic. Thanks for bringing it up. I literally just got off our forecast call before jumping on with you today. It is tricky, right? And I will tell you, I don’t think I have my finger on the pulse of it yet. There’s still gaps. Like, I look at our forecast and I want to see it. All right. I want to know how we’re going to land this month. So all we did this month compared to the year before. Are we going to beat out quarter over quarter? There’s so many different metrics that you’re looking at. But the main one for me is the pipeline. I want to make sure that my sales reps have enough pipeline to not just get through this month, but also fuel the next month.

00:20:23:19 – (Carla Wade): Right? And it is such a tricky thing to do. I’ve recently been looking at a couple of companies that specialize in this mobility, showing you forecasting in different ways. We’ve tried the spreadsheets, we’ve tried through our CRM, we’ve tried with the multiple meetings, and I still don’t have the, the secret sauce for it, but there’s a lot of companies out there nowadays, financial tools that can help you with, with getting your forecasting down.

00:20:53:13 – (Carla Wade): But you’re right, it is incredibly tricky. And everyone has a gut feel, too that winds up making it into the forecast as well. Just to keep it interesting. 

00:21:03:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. What you’re saying I hear all the time so that it’s very, very common. Also, what I hear from the sales reps, just because they have a conversation with the champion, they think it’s so do you have any advice for sales leaders to kind of what could you ask a sales rep to really qualify? Does this belong in the pipeline? 

00:21:25:13 – (Carla Wade): Yeah. Happy ears. We call those happy ears. And it does happen so frequently. Right. But I think some of the baseline things is, is it the economic buyer? Are you speaking with the person that can actually make the decision right? Sometimes it could be two levels down. And it’s an amazing meeting. But how were you going to get to that economic buyer? Do you have the right person in the room?

00:21:53:05 – (Carla Wade): And then other very clear next steps, right. Is there a second meeting that’s needed or did they just say, hey, I’ll get back to you. Like you’ve got to have very clear and driven next steps. And then you also need to know if you’ve been chosen, which is the most important thing. Sometimes the only question I’ll ask a sales rep is like, that’s fantastic.

00:22:14:12 – (Carla Wade): Have we been chosen? And they can’t answer that question. So either we haven’t delivered enough value or we need to get back in front of someone else. Potentially they’re looking at other companies. So at the beginning of the call, we talked about discovery, right. Discovery being the most important aspect because you can ask you can position those questions to understand if there is a pushback at the end when you’re getting to to the end where it’s time to make a decision, you would have maybe uncovered that during that discovery phase to really understand more about where you are in the deal, when it comes down to asking for the business.

00:22:57:21 – (Carla Wade): And those are some of the things that I would push on. Each time, someone is telling me it’s coming in and it’s taking a little long. We need to find out what’s going on. Those are the routes. 

00:23:09:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I think that’s spot on. I love that. That’s great. Well, you have brought so many valuable insights in such a short period of time, but is there a question I should have asked you that I didn’t?

00:23:21:00 – (Carla Wade): Well, I don’t think so. I think the only question is, if you hadn’t asked me about it, I definitely would have gone there with you. But I thought that your questions were pretty well thought out and well positioned, and I appreciate the conversation today for sure. 

00:23:36:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I do. I really loved this, and I know that other sales leaders and even marketing leaders are going to get some great value. So thank you so much Carla. You have been amazing. If people want to get in touch with you, how would they do that? 

00:23:51:00 – (Carla Wade): So there’s my email. cade wadlinks.com. Or look for Carla Wade on LinkedIn. Please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn as well. I’d be happy to have a new follower, or maybe follow your business as well, or answer any questions if you have them.

00:24:10:24 – (Brynne Tillman): You’ve been fantastic. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much. And to all our listeners, when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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