The Sales Influencer Series Presents: Mike Weinberg (Pt 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of Episode 14 in our Sales Influencer Series, where we interview leaders on the cutting edge of sales and marketing. In today's episode, Ambition Director of Sales Ops Dan Nice continues his interview with Mike Weinberg, an expert sales consultant and Top Sales Influencer, as designated by Forbes, OpenView Labs and InsideView, among others.

Mike is the author of two acclaimed books: New Sales. Simplified., which helps sales professionals understand and optimize the landscape of new business development, and Sales Management. Simplified., a must-read for modern sales leaders looking to optimize their team culture, processes and people. Mike's website newsalescoach.com is another great resource worth checking out.

In Part 2 of their interview, Mike and Dan discuss the keys to finding the right balance in managing their sales team, technology and information. (Hear Part 1; Part 3).

Ep. 14.2: Balancing Team, Tools and Data

Interview Topics

1. Effective Ways to Change Culture. 0:00 - 4:00.

Synopsis: A difficult truth about culture change: It's very hard to change culture unless you change some people.

In most cases, assuming you have good people, it's a matter of how sales leaders choose to spend their time. The 3 highest value activities to improve culture are:

One-on-one sales meetings with pipeline review and coaching.
Sales team meetings where you share vision, equip, align and inspire the team.
Work with your people - get out of your office, get in the bullpen and observe, coach, model and mentor.

Not only will you change culture, you'll have a huge impact on results.

2. Finding the Right Balance with Sales Tool Usage. 4:00 - 10:33.

Synopsis: This is a very hard challenge. In a lot of companies, it feels more like the salespeople work for the CRM than the CRM working for the salespeople. You need accurate information and transparency, but you don't want to turn your reps into desk jockeys - the trick is finding that balance.

Top people always are the most transparent, because they're confident, and they're often the most cooperative with tools as long as the tool shows ROI. That means you have to put teeth into your tools -- you have to invest in ancillary tools to make sure you have full functionality, support and streamlined usage for your sales tools.

You also shouldn't penalize people for not updating the system - at that point, you're frustrating your people and taking away their time to sell. The biggest inhibitor Dan has seen in terms of CRM adoption is the lack of understanding as to how it helps reps move their prospects along their sales funnel and overcome roadblocks.

3. How to Maintain a "Big Picture" Mentality and Stick to Fundamentals. 10:33 - 13:51.

Synopsis: For Mike, the biggest inhibitor to developing new business he's seen is that people aren't spending enough time developing new business.

There's no silver bullet to finding the right balance for your organization - but the key is to avoid a nightmare scenario where the information being put in the CRM is inaccurate and/or requires additional data logging from reps.

Ninety percent of the problems that most sales orgs are facing come down to fundamental things that people have forgotten over the years -- they get lured into the weeds by "sales hacks" or new, unproven tactics. Dan's bottom line: Make your tools fit your process and not the other way around.

The Sales Influencer Series Library

To check out further episodes and see why CloserIQ has ranked the Sales Influencer Series as one of the very best sales podcasts of 2016, just click on the links below.

Episode 1. John Barrows

Episode 2. Lori Richardson

Episode 3. Max Altschuler

Episode 4. Matt Heinz

Episode 5. Mark Leslie

Episode 6. Kyle Porter

Episode 7. Jon Bradford

Episode 8. Eks Anderson

Episode 9. Matt Hottle

Episode 10. Heather Morgan

Episode 11. Ilan Ferdman

Episode 12. Ryan Jenkins