Making A Difference Podcast

Leveraging Sales Technology For Maximum Impact. A Conversation With Corey Richardson And Jeff Freund

We are overwhelmed with technology solutions to help sellers.  Despite huge investments in technology, utilization by sellers is actually pretty low.

How do we look at technology and how do we get sellers to use these technologies effectively?  Join me in a discussions of how Corey Richardson, SVP of Sales for Teamworks is driving performance through the use of Akoonu. 

Jeff Freund, CEO of Akoonu, joins us to discuss how vendors can work with companies to maximize the value they achieve in their technology implementation.

 

Corey Richardson, Senior Vice President of Sales, Teamworks:  LinkedIn

Jeff Freund, Founder and CEO, Akoonu:  LinkedIn

Discussion of the Wentworth Prospect with the authors!

I had the opportunity to have a great discussion with John Smibert, Wayne Moloney, and Jeff Clulow, authors of the Wentworth Prospect.  We discussed why they chose to present some very powerful sales approach in the format of a novel.  It was a fun discussion, how you enjoy!

Selling In A Covid-19 World

In Q1/2020, the world turned upside down.  Covid-19 was spreading around the

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Changing Channel Dynamics, Driving Channel Success With Today's Buyers!

Channels have always been a critical part of most organizations' Go To Customer strategies.  They are critical to extending our coverage of the market, accessing markets with specialized expertise, and in helping provide our customers more complete solutions.

Managing channels for optimum performance in the face of rapidly changing buying processes and cloud based solutions creates challenges neither suppliers nor channel players have faced in the past.

For example, many of the IT centric products and services are seeing radically changing buying--shifting out of IT into end users.  This drives a change in the channel, helping them shift their approaches to the buyers or finding partners that have access to those buyers.

Shifting from business models where products/services were sold outright, to today's models where products and services are frequently packaged as "As A Service" offering requires new business models, new skills, new capabilities both in the supplier and channels.

Rapid digitization of our customers businesses provide yet another challenge and opportunity to both suppliers and channel participants.

Managing these transitions, helping partners manage these transitions is a very complex process.  It requires new thinking, new relationships, new partner enablement programs, and in some cases new partners.

Simon Minett, Head of Global Sales Operations for Unify, has been leading their transition from a primarily direct field sales orientation to a channel deployed orientation.

The discussion Simon and I had, is one of the most fascinating and wide ranging conversations on this topic that I have had.  We cover everything from managing the transition to channel first, developing capability in the channel, shifting priorities and business model, rising complexity and managing that complexity, to critical elements in channel performance management and enablement.

It's a longer discussion than normal, but this topic is so critical, it was important that we cover this topic in some greater depth.

I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I enjoyed the conversation with Simon Minett!

How Do We Recruit And Onboard "A" Players? A Discussion With Al Drucker

The cost of a bad hire in sales can be millions of dollars.   We can't forget the hiring and salary costs are the smallest part of our investment in sales people.  The biggest part is the opportunity costs----lost business and opportunities--- if we make the wrong choice.

Too many managers are pretty cavalier about the process, the interview someone, see if there is "chemistry," then make a hire.  Too often, they settle for what they get, not invest the time in finding the right high performers.

Al Drucker has a completely different approach.  He has a rigorous screening process---first he's very clear about what he's looking for, he builds a "competency model," against which he evaluates candidates.  He leveraged behavioral tests and assessments.  Finally, he has a rigorous interview process, invoving everyone from his assistant, presales support, other managers and sales people.  He expects people to prepare for and go through role play and presentation scenarios.  Through this rigorous process, he does everything possible to make sure he is recrutigint "A" players.

But the job doesn't stop there.  Al recognizes that even the best people will fail unless they are onboarded correctly.

Join Al Drucker and me in a fascinating discussion about what it takes to recruit and onboard "A" players.

Thanks Al for a great discussion!