How To Never Miss A Target with Erica Neal

[00:00:00] Erica, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining.

[00:00:03] Thank you for having me, Lauren. I’m excited for this.

[00:00:06] so excited. You’re gonna have to bear with the sirens.

[00:00:09] Can you hear the New York sirens behind me recording live from New York? Erica? Um, look, I’m delighted to have you on. We were connected by a dear friend in the industry. Um, we both work in a similar field.

[00:00:22] You work on the agency side? I work sort of more partner publisher side. Both of us sit. Within sales, and I think it was pretty clear from our initial chat how passionate we both are

[00:00:33] about this industry and what stood out for me as just like how much you have achieved, Erica. So I wanna start there because sales is all about targets

[00:00:44] and they can sometimes loom over our heads, let’s face it. But you have never missed a target. That is huge. So what do you think people misunderstand about consistent performance in Stales? And I guess how on earth did you do that?

[00:00:59] Um, so, huh, when, so I now consult, uh, with sales leadership, um, in the role that I do. And when I ask how your team’s planning, they don’t. So if you wanna do something consistently, you’ve gotta have a plan. So that’s where it starts, is getting. I would always plan my week ahead. Um, that’s number one. And then when I’ve created my plan, fiercely protect my plan.

[00:01:28] So saying th you know, say, say you are, maybe go back a few years in your career, Lauren, maybe you’re in a sort of sdr, BDR type role. You are setting the appointments and you’ve got a really aggressive target, and your team around you will be really unhelpful. They’ll put in like a 10 30 or a two 30 when you’re actually right in the full focus mode of.

[00:01:50] Executing my plan. So I talk a lot about, you’ve gotta empower your people to say no and push back and say, actually I’ve got other priorities that are important for me to achieve in that time. So I’m not coming to that meeting or put it in at nine o’clock, five o’clock. Just get out of the way of my core focus.

[00:02:05] So that’s one thing. So have you plan fiercely protect the plan, then There’s unusual stuff that I do, Lauren, so I think slightly differently about a lot of things. So if I said to you, imagine a calendar. How do you visualize that calendar? What does it look like for you?

[00:02:23] As in my work calendar,

[00:02:25] Yeah, or just a calendar, like what does it look like?

[00:02:27] I’m super regimented with it. So similar to you,

[00:02:30] but I color code my calendar.

[00:02:32] Um, so I have color

[00:02:34] codes for client meetings and internals or maybe meetings that I need to prepare for. And I think to your point, like I call it ruthless prioritization, that gives me a really good view of am I spending too much time in an area that’s actually taking away from revenue producing

[00:02:52] activities.

[00:02:53] So to me, calendar. When you say calendar, I think color.

[00:02:56] ’cause that’s how mine looks.

[00:02:57] That’s a, that’s a lovely reaction. Most people will say things like that. I color code, I plan. Um, and my calendar starts on the first of the month and it finishes on the 30th of the month. Okay. I don’t think like that. I think about a calendar being a set amount of time in a month that I’ve got, and I would shift it to saying I work the 15th to the 15th.

[00:03:20] So what that drove in me. So I had a, yes, I had a monthly target to hit, but I set myself the goal to hit it by the 15th. So what that then means is I’m absolutely front loading my activity. I’m going hard straight outta the blocks day one. I’m doing as much as I can to get to that target by the 15th so that when there’s a month, when that doesn’t work, I’ve invented time.

[00:03:44] I’ve created time. So I work to hit my target on the 15th, and then I’ve got two weeks left to build for the next month.

[00:03:52] Mm-hmm.

[00:03:52] But if I ever didn’t get to my target, if I wasn’t where I needed to be on the 15th, I don’t just have four weeks to fix it. I’ve got six. So kind of that’s how my brain works. If you can hit it by the 15th, you’re then building for the next month, which means you’ve got two weeks before the first to get ahead.

[00:04:11] Right. And then if I don’t get to where I need to be, I’ve then got six weeks before the end of the next month rather than just four. So that’s how I’ve always done it. I think that way. The 15th to the 15th, front load plan, protect your time. That is part of consistency for sure.

[00:04:26] Very good tips. I think. So the way I position it internally here is we call them golden hours as well, and we have blocks in our diary every day. Um, if you are S-D-R-B-D-R type role, we’re probably looking at five, four to five golden hours. Literally. And when I say golden hours, I mean do not get distracted by what is happening around you because

[00:04:47] you will get pulled into

[00:04:49] Oh my goodness. You know it.

[00:04:52] Teams pings, email comes in, stop, check it. Oh, quick question. All of that. No, no. I’ve got a, I’ve got a target to hit. Just get out of the way. Let me deliver on it.

[00:05:02] The best piece of advice I think I’ve ever received in my career is like, Lauren, you’re not in an active conversation with those people. You don’t need to respond immediately. Even if they see you are green,

[00:05:13] you do not need to respond immediately.

[00:05:15] So I. I think that’s a massive call out because remember, everyone’s sales is formulaic, so what Erica’s done is gone. I know exactly how many calls, meetings, pipeline, opportunities I need to generate to hit target, and nothing else is more important in that two weeks leading up to the 15th. And if you don’t hit it, then you refocus, you redirect.

[00:05:35] So brilliant,

[00:05:36] the, and the other thing in, in sort of sales leadership is boundaries. So I get those pings. Have you got a minute? I get those pings from people that you know, report to me. I get those pings from leadership or a quick catch up and I say, what’s the context? Because I’m doing my urgent and important stuff right now.

[00:05:51] I need to know what you need in order for me to decide where that’s now in my priority list, and I can either signpost you to someone else that can help if I’m too busy or let you know when I can, or actually if what you’ve got to share is more urgent than to me than what I’m working on, I’ll call you straight back, but land the context with me.

[00:06:08] I’ve gotta have those boundaries.

[00:06:09] Absolutely. Yeah. Understand what their urgent and important is versus yours, and then

[00:06:14] come to a healthy compromise is how I

[00:06:16] like to work. Love that. So. Erica, we talked a lot obviously given your, your role, your trajectory, how you are now coaching teams around prospecting.

[00:06:28] Right. And you’ve been very vocal to me that you hate the current state of prospecting.

[00:06:34] Same with me actually, especially post pandemic, and especially if we think about with the rise of AI and automation, because the market just feels really loud, feels really noisy, feels more irrelevant than ever. So in your view, what’s gone wrong? So

[00:06:52] So I think there was the, so leading up to the pandemic, there was this wonderful gift to salespeople called sales automation. And suddenly you could do an awful lot in a day. You could automate all of these sequences. You could go for it. I, my gut reaction to that when I was shown these technologies and asked to buy these technologies was, eh, for me, sales is inherently human to human, and I don’t wanna automate my relationships, so I never went for them, and I’m glad I did because what then happened was the pandemic and what actually happened, the biggest shift for the first time in my career is how noisy buyers became.

[00:07:28] The inbounds went off the chart. Everybody needed technology to adapt quickly and survive, or, or their businesses died as a result of what was going on globally. So these sales automation tools came in and everyone thought they were great and fantastic, and they made a lot of noise. And then the pandemic hit and buyers made even more noise and kind of hid that what we were all doing was just making too much noise.

[00:07:51] Right. You, you can go and look. Um, look at a guy called my Mark, uh, Koslow. So he was the senior vice president of global sales for one of these sales automation technology companies, and he’s now saying The great ignore is upon us and we’ve done it to ourselves. So, uh. It’s that kind of thing. It’s, it’s set, you know, sales teams going, I worked really hard today.

[00:08:13] I sent 2000 emails. You, you didn’t, you sent one email 2000 times. There’s a massive difference in that. Um, and so I think that that’s the state of it. And, and now that buyers aren’t being as noisy because they’ve invested in all these technologies. They’re now in renewal cycles, five, six years down the line.

[00:08:30] Salespeople are still doing what they were doing just as we got into the, the, the twenties. Um, and I think the pandemic hid. I think we would’ve worked out much quicker that this kind of technology doesn’t actually serve us. If it wasn’t for the pandemic

[00:08:44] Absolutely, it is it, it’s crazy. One, I was asked on a podcast recently about a sales myth that I would like to kill, and mine is all around if. If you throw enough at the wall, something will stick.

[00:08:57] Because I think that goes back to the volume. Yeah,

[00:09:00] It does. It

[00:09:01] what you’re saying. This kind of, these tools have been created for us to scale the volume that we deliver. But

[00:09:08] you are right, the messaging, I mean we, we talk a lot about this with our clients at Interlink is like when you go into quality nurture, you don’t just wanna send the same message to everyone. It has to be about. The engagement, the connection, the authenticity, the relevancy, and I think that we are losing that a little bit.

[00:09:27] Definitely, and, and let me build on that a little bit because when I do speak to clients that have got these sales automation tools, it’s not the actual sales person writing these cadences, they’re given to them. So then what you’re doing is you’re potentially creating zombies at the wheel.

[00:09:44] That’s right.

[00:09:45] You’ve got salespeople that haven’t written the copy, haven’t thought about the positioning and the messaging, deploying these emails, and then they speak to the customer and they don’t, they haven’t crafted it, right?

[00:09:55] So what they then say might be different from the message that’s received, or they’re just not delivering authentically enough. So we’ve, we’ve taken away through these sales automation tools that are really noisy, a sales person’s ability to get creative and really think about. What they wanna say, how they wanna say it, what message they wanna land because it’s written for you and provided

[00:10:15] not only

[00:10:17] that

[00:10:17] and, and quality’s going down, right as a result of that.

[00:10:20] Yeah. Not only that, Erica, I’ll add to that. We hosted a round table last year in Miami around sales and marketing alignment. That was the topic we brought together senior marketers, and quite a lot of the marketers in that room said that they write the cadences for their sales team.

[00:10:35] And, oh, don’t get me started on marketing, writing, sales messaging. Right? So what happens is

[00:10:39] happens is

[00:10:40] marketing naturally default to the royal we. Our US and then your buzzwords. Leverage, utilize, enable fast pace digital trans. That’s what, that’s what marketers do. But when I’m speaking to a prospect, I’m using us and we, and our, between us, not as my brand’s voice.

[00:11:02] So one of the biggest giveaways that the sequence that sales have hit,

[00:11:05] Go on has been written by marketing is that language. It’s we, our us we are the brand leader. You know, it is all, it’s that kind of language and it’s, it is terrible ’cause it’s not how salespeople speak to prospects.

[00:11:17] Totally true. And I think we’ve just spent time there talking about our loathing of AI tools generating high volume and its scale.

[00:11:25] However, on the flip side. AI for me recently has been so valuable where, to your point, whenever I write an email, I wanna make the customer the hero of the story. Um, and I had an example of yesterday I wrote an email to a customer where they weren’t hitting our minimum spends. Right? Pretty standard. And I thought to myself, hang on a minute, this is so about my minimum spends, but actually the reason we have minimum spends in place is because. Them running a campaign that’s that small is statistically not gonna make much difference for their

[00:12:01] bottom line, right? We operate in the lead generation demand field, so I wrote out my view of the email, but it was very me, I, my

[00:12:10] team resource heavy, plugged it into AI and asked it to reshape it around the customer.

[00:12:16] This is actually, it’s not about me. This is about you. I don’t

[00:12:19] want you to come back to me and say, this didn’t work. Actually what you’re getting in return is so small because

[00:12:25] your investment isn’t high enough. That’s a completely different kettle of

[00:12:27] fish.

[00:12:28] absolutely. And I would say with AI at every salesperson’s fingertips, there are no excuses not to be doing your research. There are no excuses to be sending, you know, generic messaging out to people like it’s audacious, and that’s you just hitting your own minimum standard of,

[00:12:45] oh, I need to deliver 250 activities today.

[00:12:48] That’s, if you care about that, you are not selling.

[00:12:51] Absolutely. And, and you said to me, everyone talks about customer experience, but no one’s talking about prospect experience.

[00:12:59] So that ties into that. Why don’t you explain a little bit to the listeners what the difference is and why that matters?

[00:13:04] Well, it’s, it’s the same theory around, you know, putting the customer at the heart of what you’re doing, but you’re thinking about your prospect instead. So that’s, you know, how can I show up and add value to their day rather than giving them a job to do by saying, here’s a white paper that I’ve attached, and a link that you need to click to go and register to come along and find time for this webinar over here.

[00:13:25] Like, it’s, it’s lightening the load for your prospects. It’s doing. Something I coined a term I’m very proud of, Lauren, which is the thinking and linking. So it’s thinking about their business, how their business makes money, and linking your proposition to their corporate goals. And then you’re not saying, Hey, we do this shiny AI tool for you.

[00:13:43] Would you like it? It’s we’ve developed this AI tool that can underpin these three strategic, strategic objectives of yours. So you are taking the load off of them to have to think, is this useful? How could this apply to my business? ’cause you’re doing the thinking for them. And even if you get it wrong, Lauren.

[00:13:59] The fact you’ve tried, earns you kudos with your prospects. So that’s the one thing is how do I show up differently in a helpful way with empathy that puts my prospect at the center of it? That means, you know, I’m not talking about my agenda and I need hit target. I’m talking about their agenda. But it goes further than that.

[00:14:18] So that’s very top of funnel. How you show up in someone’s inbox, how you show up on LinkedIn. Don’t be pitch slapping people the minute that you’ve connected with them. You know, build a relationship. You’re on a social networking site, not a social selling site. It’s emails that come across as helpful, that bring value, that have a perspective, and have shown thought.

[00:14:37] And it’s again, back to planning. Planning, how you’re gonna introduce yourself to somebody. What questions do you wanna ask them about? What’s going on in their world? Then we get into sort of middle and bottom of funnel prospect experience then becomes buyer enablement. What meetings is, is your champion gonna go into internally?

[00:14:57] What questions might they be asked? How hard is the CFO gonna grill them? Why can’t we do it with these other six tools that we have? Why do we need this thing? Like you have to help them have those internal conversations that you’re not a part of. Um, and then it’s other things like understanding that.

[00:15:15] This, this buying group of prospects, ’cause they’re not your customers yet have all got a different point of view. They’re all coming in at a different stage and it’s helping to onboard them to where you are in your, in their buying process. So you’ll notice that you know, your C-suite, set the strategy, set the thing, then it’s your m and d level that go find the solution to the problem.

[00:15:35] And then the C-suite popup at the end to to do the final decision making. They’ve missed a massive gap in the middle there. So it’s, it’s onboarding them to where you are in the conversation, what we’re defining the problem around how we’re gonna solve that so that they feel really immersed in it. And there’s great technology, digital showrooms and all sorts of things these days that can help with that, but it’s really applying that thinking and it will change your business processes if you put your prospect at the middle of what you’re doing throughout the funnel.

[00:16:03] And I’ve got a controversial statement to add to that. I absolutely hate sales frameworks and methodologies that are very prescriptive because everything that you’ve just said, it’s, it’s actually quite hard because fundamentally that’s grounded in. Understanding, it’s like behavioral science, the human psychology of what makes people tick. It’s adaptive communication. If the CFO walks in the room, they’re gonna have very different needs and

[00:16:31] requirements for your services. Then maybe your prime buyer, right? There’s target, there’s hidden buyers. You have to be able to adapt, and I think what I. Within sales a lot is this very structured, prescriptive training that tells you, Hey, Erica, if you get on a phone with me, I need to uncover

[00:16:50] your timeframe, your budget.

[00:16:52] I actually think it loses the human element.

[00:16:54] it totally does. So really it’s

[00:16:57] what

[00:16:58] are your needs and what’s your buying process? Who’s gonna come in? At what point, what are their needs gonna be? Do they agree the problem’s the same as you think it is? It’s, it’s actually saying. And again, it’s that it’s, is it their agenda or your agenda? If it’s your agenda, it’s, oh, I need to move it from this sales stage to this sales stage.

[00:17:18] I need to ask these three questions that’s so rigid and

[00:17:22] and just, yeah, people buy with emotion and justify with fact, even in B2B, like there’s reputational risk. What? You know, no one ever gets fired for buying, what was it, IBM or HP or something?

[00:17:33] IBM.

[00:17:34] It’s the same sort of thing. You know, you are, you are. It’s an emotional investment to purchase a multimillion pound, you know, solution out there.

[00:17:42] Uh, recognize it, like be human with your, with your potential buyer. Like what fear stories are you telling yourself? What can I show you that will put those stories to bed for you? Like really just get into the emotion of it.

[00:17:54] Yeah, definitely. And, and some of the things I’m experimenting with lately is trying not to ask the same question. For example, like what keeps you awake at night? Everyone kind of says that, right?

[00:18:06] I’m trying to spin it. So for example, within my industry, there’s a lot of love for it, but there’s also a lot of hate. I think a lot of people have been burned in, in many cases. So I’ll just open up and be like, Erica, I’m just gonna get straight to it. Like, tell me what do you love about this industry, but also what do you hate?

[00:18:21] What really frustrates you that will give you everything that you need to shape that conversation. So I think, I dunno about you, but I love what you said at the beginning. You’ve hit target consistently because of preparation. You understand your products, you really research your clients. The bit, I don’t prepare as much on. Discovery questions

[00:18:41] because I think it should flow much more naturally. See how that person, they might come onto the call really flustered. I had that yesterday. There was a guy who was in quite a lot of pain.

[00:18:51] He’d, he’d had like injections in his back. You have to pivot very

[00:18:54] quickly to be able to respond to his emotion, right? Going in and asking him prescriptive discovery was not gonna drive

[00:19:01] No, no, no, no, no, no. And, and another thing, Lauren, like, um, I learned this, um, and we’ll, we’ll probably come on to it. Um, a little bit later around the work of Brene Brown, but we, we’ve invested in ways of working, which comes down to ways of being, so who are you authentically ways of doing? What environment are you trying to operate within those two things added together as ways of working and just one simple thing, which is check in with your teams.

[00:19:27] Ask your teams a check in question, right? So it’s, you could be funny,

[00:19:31] It could be something serious. So it could be, give me your color. Red is, I’m up to here. I could probably do with a time back. Can I

[00:19:38] catch up later? Like record the meeting and I’ll watch it later. And my amber, I’m, there’s a lot going on, but I can make mental space for this or green, which is good.

[00:19:48] Let’s go and then you can ask funny questions or

[00:19:51] Questions related to the meeting, like, what do you need to get from the meeting? And it just checks everybody in. It’s cameras on, I need to see your body language, you know, and let’s get on with things. Or it could be a really funny question, like, I know

[00:20:05] you’re a burglar, but you can only steal things that mildly are tape people what you’re stealing. Like, do you know what I mean? It’s like just to break the ice and even in internal teams, you need to get everybody involved in the meeting. And I do it with clients an awful lot. You know, you, you seem a bit red.

[00:20:19] Are you sure we wanna have this conversation today? I’m happy to move it.

[00:20:24] That’s a really good call out too, because I’ve seen someone before in a meeting constantly look at their watch,

[00:20:30] so they were not concentrating. And I called it, I said, look, I’m gonna be honest. I can see you looking at your

[00:20:36] watch. There’s clearly a lot going on. I wanna make sure this is valuable for both of us.

[00:20:40] Should we take the time back and rebook this?

[00:20:42] You could see the relief, um, but on a sales leadership lens.

[00:20:46] Erica, I think that’s such a good tip and it’s something I’m gonna take forward because we work at such pace in this industry, don’t we? And as a leader, you have an agenda of what you wanna get from that person, which is probably driving revenue or getting

[00:20:58] updates, and they’re gonna have an agenda from you.

[00:21:01] So I think that little check in at the beginning,

[00:21:03] Erica, what’s your agenda and what’s mine? ’cause we

[00:21:05] need to cover both is a really nice way to structure

[00:21:08] Or even check out. So before we conclude, how’s everyone feeling further to the meeting? Red, amber, green. And then you can, you can triage, you can go to those that are saying, actually, I feel really red now. Okay. Let’s catch up separately.

[00:21:22] Absolutely. And let’s dig into that a bit more because that is certainly like mindset shifts, and I know that’s a big focus for you

[00:21:29] because sales is, it’s hard, it’s high pressure, and I think having the right mindset, you’ve always been, from what I can see in your career, very driven, very determined, and that has to come from mindset. How do, like, how do you get teams to shift that? What are the tools that you give them and arm them with?

[00:21:48] So I have a whole session that I run on growing your grit and resilience. Um. It comes down to a couple of things really. If you can get your teams planning their weeks, and I mean planning not to like the nth degree of these are the exact whatever it might be, but to say, look, I’ve got, uh, a free day Monday and I really wanna achieve like 50 calls and 50 really nicely crafted emails.

[00:22:16] Get them to set their goals and then when they achieve those goals, it doesn’t matter about the outcome because the effort they put in was achieved. They’ve, they’ve. Done the day’s work that they set out to do in service of themselves tomorrow. So I used to like to say to myself when I’d had a really busy day prospecting right, it’s five 30, I’m just gonna pop all of that in the oven for 180 to bake overnight, and hopefully in the morning there’ll be something in there based on the efforts that I put in.

[00:22:41] So getting your team to set their own effort based goals. When they achieve those goals, they feel good about it regardless of the outcome. The second thing is mini wins. Little wins. So you know, if you are gonna climb Mount Everest, you don’t get up one day and just walk the whole mountain, right? You’ve got several base camps, there’s different bits and pieces, and you need to break that journey down into smaller bite-sized chunks and then celebrate every single time something goes well because it’s worth celebrating when that Chief Information security officer whose pa you’ve been trying to, you know, schmooze and get a meeting with, accepts your LinkedIn connection request.

[00:23:22] Like, that’s a little win, and it deserves to be celebrated because if not, we live and die by the target. We miss the, the moments to stop, look around, learn, celebrate, acknowledge, and it drives us. It brings energy when you break the mountain down. Um, I’m not sure how old you are, Lauren, but you may remember, um, maybe around sort of.

[00:23:44] of

[00:23:46] Mid nineties, B, b, C started doing something called bite-sized learning for children that were studying, right? And it’s that same thing, like if I want to build an a, a rocket ship, I can’t just go and do it. I’ve got to build every little bit along the way. I’ve gotta break that mountain down into bite-sized chunks that I can tackle at a time.

[00:24:05] And that just makes you feel more successful. And when your boss then celebrates those little steps, you’ve got grit, you’ve got determination, you’ve got resilience.

[00:24:14] I like how that could even be a. Beginning of the week, very short check-in call, couldn’t it?

[00:24:19] What are your goals? Because Erica, your goals are gonna be different to my goals,

[00:24:22] right? What are your goals for the week? And then at the end, celebrating,

[00:24:27] as you rightly say, the wins, but also did you achieve the goals that you set out at the start of the week?

[00:24:32] Because if you didn’t, it’s also a time to reflect

[00:24:35] why, what got in the way, maybe a big deal got in the way, and that’s.

[00:24:39] Phenomenal. Um, I also think it’s in intelligent sharing across sales. I feel like sometimes we are so driven. It’s a bit of a like one track mind. You know, we, we’ve sent an email and it was actually really good.

[00:24:51] That messaging really landed, I think, as well as trying to get the team to share that with one

[00:24:56] another too, like think about the others.

[00:24:58] I think that there’s definitely something in a salesperson that’s a bit like a great white shark. I’ll just go it alone and I’ll get there. But actually, and, and one of the hardest things I think transitioning, uh. From a successful salesperson, when you get promoted to be a leader of a team, you don’t learn.

[00:25:14] You know, you rarely get that management coaching guidance on how to do it. And then you end up in a bit of an environment where your sales leader is genuinely directing you, not delegating, not nurturing, not coaching. They’re telling you what to do, and then you’re back again to the zombies at the wheel because somebody else is doing all the thinking.

[00:25:33] You feel micromanaged and you typically leave.

[00:25:36] Yeah. You know where I think that comes from though,

[00:25:39] I think it comes from successful ICS being promoted into leadership and as

[00:25:43] you rightly say, without the formal training and management going, ’cause I’ve had this in my career, I’ve always been a very successful ic. Like you disciplined, driven

[00:25:53] a lot of grit. And managers will go, well, just teach them what you do.

[00:25:58] But it doesn’t work like that.

[00:26:00] Actually

[00:26:00] no. The,

[00:26:01] person isn’t me. They’re

[00:26:02] no.

[00:26:02] different.

[00:26:03] Yeah, so, so then. Yeah, but exactly. So then it’s like, well, what is it authentic about me? What can I bring out of them that’s authentic? And that then is their superpower for sure. They, they talk a lot about, um, sprinters being born and not made right. So people that are really fast runners naturally have more of an energy cell in their, in their muscles.

[00:26:24] They just do. And so I will never be able to run as fast as Hussein Bolt like it’s never gonna happen. And I think the same level of grit, resilience, and determination is there in all of us. But it’s gotta be unlocked by the leadership to then develop this team that can really thrive. And I, and I do think.

[00:26:41] There’s a lot to be said for, you know, your hunters versus your farmers. If somebody is naturally more about longer term relationships, stick ’em in account management. If they like the transactional hunt and run and throw it over the fence and keep going. Keep them in business development. Like there, there is a difference there.

[00:26:55] Oh, there really is and and find what works for you. I think sometimes you can be pigeonholed

[00:27:01] into jobs that don’t quite suit you, so it’s really important to do that. I’d love to just quickly go back because you do so much work at TMP where you operate and support clients in that messy middle between sales and marketing.

[00:27:15] We just touched on it a little bit

[00:27:16] earlier, but it’s so important, isn’t it, that. Marketing and sales teams are operating against the same KPIs. They’re talking the same language. But why do you think, Erica, that they’re so disconnected? Like even now, I actually see it increasing even

[00:27:32] more. And what, what do you think we should do about it?

[00:27:35] So I think.

[00:27:36] I think.

[00:27:37] And I don’t have massively strong opinions about remote working, but I think when it comes to really getting to know the person, your counterpart in marketing or sales, having time together is important. Um, I think. You touched on the KPIs are misaligned, like when marketing show up and they’re talking about cost per lead and impressions and IT and sales just roll their eyes ’cause it doesn’t mean anything to us and we don’t care.

[00:28:02] Like it just doesn’t it, it erodes that. But I also think there’s a cultural piece and I think that cultural piece is underpinned by incentives which drive behaviors.

[00:28:16] Okay,

[00:28:17] So, you know, usually your sales team are heralded as the heroes. They’re the ones that get the sales kickoff in Dubai. You know, oh, what about me?

[00:28:27] Like, do you know what I mean? It’s, it’s, it, there, there’s a whole lot of behavior, incentive reward around sales that I don’t see in marketing. Um, I think there’s a, a bit of ego in there from the sales perspective of, you know, I’ve heard them call the marketing team the coloring in department. Like, it’s awful.

[00:28:43] It is awful out there. But I think these globally spread teams that very rarely do one-on-ones with each other, doesn’t need to be in person, but make time for each other. Then I think there’s also a crime of a lack of curiosity sometimes. So if I had invested millions of pounds in a massive media campaign and I’d come up with a message in the brand story and the red line and all of that good stuff, I’d want to, I’d want to read the opportunity report that the salesperson generated as a result of my campaign.

[00:29:15] I’d want to know how it’s working, what’s in the conversation detail. How can I join a call that’s a bit further down the buying process so I can hear what the CFO’s saying. I can hear what the chief commercial officer is saying, get me in the room as a marketer because I’m so attuned with my marketing hat onto language and tone and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:29:36] I’m gonna, I’m gonna find stuff, nuggets of gold that I then put into my next campaign and we supercharge it. So I think there’s, there’s a bit of ego, there’s a bit of where there’s, you know, the, the golden child of the company. We’re the ones owning the big target. So all the incentive and reward goes there.

[00:29:54] And then I think there’s this lack of curiosity to follow the process to its end. And then there’s leadership not demanding that people do it.

[00:30:01] it.

[00:30:02] Yeah, yeah. You know,

[00:30:04] however, you are now starting to see growth in roles like Chief Revenue Officer 10 years ago. I don’t really remember coming across a CRO. It was the sales director and the CFO working on the forecast.

[00:30:17] Now you’ve got the CRO, you’ve got Chief Commercial Officers. It’s in these people’s interest to get sales and marketing working together.

[00:30:25] It really is. And I like the point about ego

[00:30:28] because I also think with sales, a tip I would give as well is build a really good relationship with your marketing team.

[00:30:36] My marketing team here are brilliant. I often go to them and I’ll say, I. I think that people hate the terminology content syndication, and we keep putting content out saying content syndication,

[00:30:47] but we do so much more than that.

[00:30:49] We need to coin a new term. And they’re like really interested. Oh,

[00:30:53] what are your customers saying to you? Have that. Direct feedback loop with your marketing team. They are open to listening.

[00:31:01] And I, I, I guess that’s, that leads me onto the next question is when they, when you see that work, that collaboration work, and they sit side by side, what, what have you seen happen?

[00:31:12] Well, it’s beautiful. It, it really is. It’s, it’s wonderful because you, you just, it just makes such a shift. Um. Uh, there’s, so, there’s, there’s so much in it. Like the prospect becomes the center of everything. People start to get obsessed with how the data’s flowing through their organization. So, you know, take, take me on a journey.

[00:31:32] I’m a prospect and I enter your system through content syndication. Where do I go then? Where do I touch what happens? And marketing are just so fantastic at challenging it and going, why do you do it like that? What about this? What about. You know, really thinking about the prospect at this stage and what they might need, and how can I support you with.

[00:31:52] Your pitch decks and your messaging to really hit home as to what they’re gonna need at that particular point in the buying, in the buying process. So I think it supercharges everything. The lights literally come on. Um, and I’m lucky that I, I, you know, where I work at the moment, I’ve been there nearly 12 years.

[00:32:10] I started off in our sales activation team. So clients would pay us to come up with a marketing campaign. Then my department sales activation would start executing on it. But I was in the same building as my strategist, my data manager, my planner, my copy man, my creative guy. And when I got a lead, I went and showed it to all of them.

[00:32:30] I’d be like, look guys, this is how it worked out. This is what I did to get there. There’s nuggets in them, there are hills, there’s gold there. Like use it, fuel it. And I’ve got so many examples where I would. Have a conversation with a prospect and think there’s something in there. I’m gonna use that in my next conversation.

[00:32:45] Do it again. Similar result. Run downstairs to strategy and be like, I’m onto something. I’ve just had two conversations here where this, this, and this happened with this wording. Let’s do a push. Let’s, and this is like back in the day of like marketing automation, emails and all that good stuff. And we generate like seven inbound replies going, I’d love to have a meeting.

[00:33:04] So.

[00:33:04] So

[00:33:05] There’s, I think you’ve got to have really high quality people that can spot those things and know what to do about it, first of all. But by just being curious, sitting side by side, asking questions. Sales will quickly learn what you value in marketing, what matters, and then we’ll share those things with you because

[00:33:24] we like, we like getting their thanks.

[00:33:26] That’s really useful. We like it.

[00:33:28] Yeah, absolutely. And I think it, it ties into. Uh, as sales professionals, we always say we’re selling ourselves externally to clients to build revenue, to hit targets. Sell what you are doing internally. That’s a perfect example. Speak to the strategy teams. Get marketing on side. ’cause funnily enough, if you get them on board with your journey, you get inbound leads.

[00:33:52] That is meetings that you’ve not had to drive yourself.

[00:33:55] So it’s bringing everyone on board that journey with you, isn’t it?

[00:33:58] For sure and creating some buzz and excitement about it. But I’m really fortunate that that’s where I grew up in work. Um, and it’s stuff that we do naturally. So then when I speak to clients about it, I can talk with genuine authenticity and authority about this being a better way to do things.

[00:34:12] better, yeah. Well that kind of leads me onto our final question before I fire

[00:34:17] into some great quick fire questions. But what I’m hearing there is it’s slightly, a lot of that is confidence. Um, and a lot of that, there’s even an element of like. Self-promotion, like

[00:34:29] being visible internally. And one of the things I’ve noticed, Erica, is women are not as good as men at this.

[00:34:35] Well,

[00:34:36] Talk to

[00:34:36] me about that. ’cause women, I’m really passionate about women in more sales roles, right? But I think sometimes our lack of confidence holds us back. So talk to me about that and what, why you think maybe women are

[00:34:48] really strong in sales roles.

[00:34:52] So first of all, I would say it took a little while for the penny drop that I was a brand. So I now joke about brand Erica o’ Neil, uh, delivering sales excellence and this, that and the other. But I had to, I was surrounded by marketers, like we are a marketing agency. I’m surrounded by marketing people and I’m talking sales, and they don’t get it.

[00:35:09] So I had to establish a brand of what I stood for. The safest pair of hands to work on your campaign, the one that’s gonna bring client delight and great feedback, great sales feedback, and guess what? Revenue outcomes for the client’s investment with us. So I was then in demand by our client services team.

[00:35:26] We want Erica on this. We want Erica on this. Um, but to go back to the question around the strength of, of women in sales, I think it’s, I think it’s something that’s actually quite, um, quite evolutionary. So they say 72 to 90% of communication is body language. Okay. And as the smaller fairer sex, we had to evolve to be able to very quickly read someone’s body language to know, are you a threat or a friend?

[00:36:01] So now you put that into a sales context where 72 to 90% of what your, of what someone’s saying to you. is In their body, not in their words. And we’re just so good at reading people. It’s really active listening. It’s really responding to someone’s, you know, nodding head or oh, or hmm, they’re looking a little bit suspicious of me and going, stop.

[00:36:23] What did I say that’s caused that reaction? Talk to me. Where’s your head at right now? You can read people, and I think it’s evolutionary. I do, I think it’s just in our, in our history of how we came to be that we’ve had to read body language so much quicker.

[00:36:37] I’ve never. That, and I’m going to use that. I will quote the brand of Erica o’ Neil that gave me that. Don’t worry, I won’t steal it as my own. But it’s It’s so true. It’s

[00:36:47] absolutely true. And I think it’s such a, I mean, how many times have you been on a call where clearly you are not listening and you’re slightly. Focused on something else and the sales person continues to pitch at

[00:36:58] you. You know, it kind of what I was saying earlier about a guy being in pain or

[00:37:03] someone being busy, like you have to be able to read that and adapt. Um, it’s not easy, but it does come quite naturally to us

[00:37:11] actually. Yeah,

[00:37:13] So I think, you know, my advice to any women in sales is tune into that you are a, a natural, you can naturally scan someone’s body language quicker than a man. And I dunno if that’s scientifically proven. I’m just, guessing here, but it feels about right that we would do that more naturally.

[00:37:30] Yeah. Reading the room,

[00:37:32] and maybe we’ve had to do it more where we have been the minority in many rooms as well,

[00:37:36] Yeah. As well.

[00:37:37] so we’re maybe better active listeners. We’re observing what’s going on around us before we are ready to make our voice known

[00:37:45] and be present in that room. So we take a little bit more time. Maybe we’re a bit more considered.

[00:37:50] Yeah. Although for me now, because what I do and the way that I do it. Seems to work very well. I’m now very confident I lead the room these days. I’m not active listening. I’m, you know, come on guys, we’ve got this project to crack. What are we gonna do? How are we gonna do it? And I, and I, you know, I, I’ve moved into that more leadership role, but it is, it’s backed by confidence, um, from being able to, to, to read the room and, and rely on my experience as well.

[00:38:15] Absolutely. Gosh, so much here, Erica. I’m

[00:38:18] literally, I’ve put myself on mute so many times to write notes because

[00:38:21] Oh, bless you.

[00:38:22] I’m gonna be implementing some of this quite quickly actually.

[00:38:25] So thank you for sharing all

[00:38:26] are welcome.

[00:38:27] So I just have a final few quick fire. Erica, same questions for all guests, but I love it

[00:38:32] because everyone has different views. Um, so we’ll start with not the easiest because it’s only one trait I want here, but if you think about. Everything that’s made you successful as a sales leader, what is the one trait that you believe is most critical?

[00:38:49] I think it’s nurturing. You’ve gotta invest in the people around you so that they feel seen, heard, and valued. And they’ll do, they’ll get grittier for you. So you’ve gotta nurture and invest in your sales team. I think there’s a stat out there that says sales leadership should be making sure that their teams get 40 to 60% of their time in coaching, mentoring, and helping.

[00:39:13] That’s right.

[00:39:14] And it doesn’t happen.

[00:39:15] Oh,

[00:39:16] and that’s what pays my bills. ’cause they bring me in to do it.

[00:39:20] it. Yeah. Also true. Yeah. I, I think I spend two hours a week with my team.

[00:39:25] One hour is like active stuff, and then the other is dynamic coaching.

[00:39:30] But it’s hard because as the team grows, I’m very conscious that I’m not gonna be able to give all that time. But I

[00:39:36] think what you’ve taught me during this is. Actually you can bring people together to Dynamic coach because those mini wins. What, what was, what landed this week? What messaging really worked? I think actually team sharing is just

[00:39:50] as valuable as one-to-one as well. So don’t feel

[00:39:53] you have to do

[00:39:53] it.

[00:39:54] Delegate it. Like find your role models within your team and. Give, you know, give them a little bit more power to go and help others and, and just start to breed this culture of nurturing because there’s so much to learn in sales. And even when you think you’ve learned everything, guess what?

[00:40:09] Something comes along like a pandemic or like a brand new technology. And we start again.

[00:40:15] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think nurturing and people and connection is going to come to the fore even more

[00:40:22] so. Great call out on that one. What about, um, a female sales leader or mentor in this space that’s really inspired you?

[00:40:30] Uh, that has got to be my friend Joanne Black. So Joanne Black founded a company called No More Cold Calling, and she won’t mind me saying that I’d. Love cold calling. Um, but her business is a referral system, so she brings referral system thinking to businesses so that they use their relationships to get referral instructions and grow.

[00:40:49] Um, so we cracked a, a great project together. I bought the system to, to where I work now with some really useful, sorry, really good results. Um. And since then, like we, we catch up every fortnight. Like she’s a mentor, cheerleader, she’s, she’s a hero for me and somebody that I learn an awful lot from every single time we speak.

[00:41:06] And she’d say the same vice versa. I tend to teach her about random stuff though. Like she sent me a lovely thank you card and it’s aboriginal art. And I said, did you know that aboriginal art is actually the bird’s eye view of the landscape? So the swells of the rivers and the circles of the mountains, and it’s a map,

[00:41:22] and her mind was blown.

[00:41:24] So, yeah, I teach her something all the time as well.

[00:41:26] Learning from each other female friendship

[00:41:29] is, is truly amazing.

[00:41:30] And to have to work in a field where you can inspire each other, I’m sure, challenge each other too. ’cause

[00:41:35] if she’s saying no more cold calling, but you also deem that quite fruitful.

[00:41:39] I bet it makes for some great conversation down the

[00:41:41] pub. So I like that. Um, I think it was

[00:41:45] clear when we spoke about. Our desire to like constantly self-develop, to stay sharp.

[00:41:51] We talked about a lot of influencers that we follow in this space. Keep sharing them with me.

[00:41:55] I actually find most of the influencers I follow are men in this space. The, the, the loudest voices are men.

[00:42:01] I think there’s, I mean, I’ve had a lot of these women on my podcast, so it’s becoming clearer. But what about you?

[00:42:08] Is it an influencer? Is it a book, is it a podcast that has really helped you that you can maybe share with the listeners?

[00:42:14] It’s a resource that our company invested in, and it’s based on the work of Brene Brown. Um, if you don’t know her, go have a look. If you are seeing, watching this on YouTube, make sure it’s the next thing you search for. Um, so we were coached on something called Ways of Working, which I touched on very briefly earlier.

[00:42:31] It’s ways of ways of being. So how do you show up as an authentic person in business? Ways of doing what are the systems that you’ve gotta operate within? And then ways of Working brings that all together. And our tutor for that was a lady called Mackenzie Fogelson. Another, like when I had to decide on my female role models, like Mac was nearly, that just pipped, in fact, edit that out.

[00:42:52] Um, but um, yeah, the, the, the way that she brought that to us honestly just made me unleash, uh, how I show up at work and how I bring people with me and how I, uh, deliver the results for my client. It really just supercharged everything. Now, it’s not a resource everyone can get their hands on, but go follow Mackenzie Fogelson.

[00:43:11] There’s tons of resources from Brene Brown. She’s done a whole load of TED Talks. There’s definitely stuff in there that will significantly inspire you.

[00:43:19] And then I think, um, the book that has inspired me most is actually a book called Wintering by Catherine May.

[00:43:25] May. I’ve literally, I’m in the middle of reading it now, Erica, this happens to me so much on this podcast where it’s like serendipity.

[00:43:32] I’m like,

[00:43:33] how did that just happen?

[00:43:35] Yeah.

[00:43:35] I’m in the middle of it now.

[00:43:36] And, and it’s, and it’s really about acknowledging, it’s not about the winter. It’s acknowledging that you will have moments in your life when you are out in the world and everything’s great. And then sometimes you need to fall between the two worlds, between the past and, you know, the, the present and the future.

[00:43:50] You just slip in between it and you just need to take time for yourself. So, yeah. That’s a, a great, a great read as well.

[00:43:57] I think it’s a great place to land as well. ’cause sales is hard and you are certainly gonna have winters

[00:44:03] and you are definitely gonna have springs and summers. Last year for me was growing a business in a region where no one knew us. It felt like winter for a long time, but I am firmly in summer this year and it feels really good.

[00:44:15] So all I would say is keep going, keep persisting. And Erica, you bring so much like I’ve, I’m so glad we’ve been connected. I feel like. We are both as passionate as each other, but I feel like I’m gonna learn from you even more.

[00:44:28] So thank you.

[00:44:29] No, no. Thank you for reaching out. You were proactive. Uh, you contacted me, you know, and it’s, that’s the sort of stuff that matters in sales, so, yeah. Um, I’m sure we’ll, we’ll have, uh, lots of violently agreeing conversations in the future.

[00:44:42] all disagreeing and that’s okay. We can challenge a sale each other if we need to.

[00:44:47] exactly. Exactly.

[00:44:48] thank you so much for joining the WISE podcast.

[00:44:51] Now my absolute pleasure.

[00:44:51] Thank you for having me.