September 1, 2022 • 27 mins
Episode 21 -We speak with Alice Heiman Chief Sales Energizer & Podcast Host of Sales Talk for CEO's
Alice shares her experience with starting her own company in 1997 and her journey to being nationally known for working with B2B companies that have exceptional growth potential to elevate their sales and increase their valuation.
Alice Hosts the Podcast Sales Talk for CEO's and shares her insights on Play the King from interviews with successful CEOs over the years.
About Alice Heiman:
As Chief Sales Energizer, Alice is internationally known for her expertise in elevating sales to increase valuation for companies with a B2B sale that have exceptional growth potential. Spending her time strategizing with CEOs, company leaders and their sales leadership to build the strategies that find new business and grow existing accounts is her passion. Her clients love her spirit and the way she energizes their sales organization. She is the host of the popular podcast, Sales Talk for CEOs. Alice dedicates time to local entrepreneurs by teaching at the University of Nevada in the entrepreneurship minor which she helped inspire. Alice also serves on the board of several growing companies to energize and elevate their sales.
When she is not guiding CEOs to elevate their sales, she can be found hanging out with her family, walking, snow skiing, sailing in Lake Tahoe, volunteering in the community, or reading a book in her backyard.
Learn More:
https://aliceheiman.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Play the King (00:00):
This podcast is sponsored by OMI, the company
that makes CRM work.
And today's guest is AliceHeiman, who is the podcast host
of sales talk for CEOs and Alicefor your own company.
You have a title that I'd likeyou to explain.
It's the Chief Sales Energizer,so have at it
Alice Heiman (00:19):
Well, that's what I do.
clearly, you know, energize you.
So, what I like to do is workwith the CEOs and the senior
leaders of their teams to getthe sales that they need and
want to increase evaluation.
And that requires pumping a lotof energy into an organization.
And so, clients love the energyI bring to them.
(00:41):
And so they have dubbed me, theChief Sales Energizer,.
Play the King (00:46):
What is the right level of energy that you need
from a sales team?
Like, I can imagine like tohyped up and, you know, you
might turn some people off toolethargic, and you're clearly,
not doing what you need to do.
What are you looking for whenyou take on a new client, where
do you want get them?
Alice Heiman (01:02):
Yeah.
You know, that's a greatquestion.
And I think a level of energycan be expressed in many
different ways, right?
So it can be expressed inenthusiasm, which I do tend to
be a cheerleader and many salesteams do need that because their
CEOs and sales leaders don'treally provide that type of
energy, that cheerleading typeof energy.
(01:23):
And so that can be very usefulwhen I get into an organization,
I see what's happening there andif they need a little
cheerleading, you know, I can dothat for them.
Sales people like others do wellwhen you tell them they're doing
well and they can continue to dobetter when you tell them what
they did well and specificallywhat that was so they can
(01:46):
duplicate it.
Right?
So we, we do want to let peopleknow that they're doing well,
however, somehow in our society,that just doesn't seem to be a
thing that we do.
So oftentimes I become the onewho does that and it's
contagious, which is great.
So I teach the leaders to dothat as well.
So that's one kind of energy.
And then there's, you know, theenergy to really organize things
(02:08):
and drive them through.
And I find that that energy islacking sometimes too.
So sales people and salesleaders especially need that
kind of energy.
It's not necessarily enthusiasm,but it's that deep penetrating
energy that can get the jobdone.
(02:28):
Right?
So start it, get to the middleand then get to the finish line.
And so I think I help them bringthat kind of energy to their
organization too, because Iinstall process that makes it
easier for them to do their job.
And as sales leaders, we getpulled into so many different
things that take us away fromactually coaching our sales
(02:51):
people to close business.
So I try to bring it back to oneof the most important things and
have us focus on those.
So I bring that energy as welland probably more, but, you
know, that's good for now.
Play the King (03:05):
Let's zero in on that relationship between, you
know, the leadership and thesales team.
You've got like just a ton ofexperience working with these
teams, what are some ways thatyou've seen a really healthy
relationship there and what aresome ways that maybe, you come
in and you say, Hey, this isn'tworking so well.
What are some of your mostfrequent diagnoses?
Alice Heiman (03:24):
Well, I, I think a frequent diagnosis is that the
CEO could be the chief salesprevention officer.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Now that sounds ridiculous.
Doesn't it?
Like, why would a CEO bepreventing sales?
Play the King (03:38):
Right.
So, tell me more about that.
Like how does that play out?
What are you actually seeing?
What is the behavior?
What are the messages they'resending?
What and how does that work?
Alice Heiman (03:48):
It's different in every organization, but many
times there's a bit of anadversarial relationship between
the CEO and the senior leadersand the sales team don't know if
you've ever seen that, butanybody who's listening, who is
in sales can, can tell you thatit is true, unfortunately.
And of course, everybody wantsmore sales at their company and
(04:10):
they want their sales team toperform.
Now, remember that I only workwith companies who have a
business to business complexsales.
So when I'm talking about this,that's the setting.
And most of my clients arebetween twenty and a hundred
million dollars in revenues.
And they're all trying to get,go from incremental growth to
exponential growth.
So a lot of them want to double,right?
(04:32):
Many of them are owner led andinvestor backed.
So when you look at anorganization this size and a CEO
who is probably the founder, inmost cases, they did founder-led
sales when their organizationwas young.
And, you know, as things changedand the company grew, they added
a sales team and then they addeda sales leader.
(04:54):
And then at some point theymight have added a super sales
leader, right?
So you go from having salesmanagers, to sales VPs to having
a CRO, a chief revenue officeror a CSO, a chief sales officer.
So those companies are now goingbe 50 to 80 million when they're
adding those super salesleaders.
(05:15):
Right! What happens over time ina company and how it gets to be
an adversarial relationship isthe CEO remembers the time when
they did the selling.
And when they did founder ledsales and how well that worked.
And then when they startedhiring sales people, they're
always sitting there wonderingwhy can I outsell my sales
people?
(05:35):
Why can't they sell?
Like I do, well thenumber onereason, they're not the founder.
They don't have the CEO title,but there's a myriad of other
reasons as well.
Right?
So, that's what happens, right?
So over time as salespeopledon't perform, as well as, or
don't perform to expectations ofinvestors or, you know,
(05:56):
stakeholders, then there becomesthis adversarial, well, what are
those salespeople doing?
Well, why won't they do this?
Why don't they do that?
And there's this lack ofunderstanding between senior
leaders and the sales team as towhat should happen and how it's
happening.
And so we get a little bit ofthis adversarial thing now, as
(06:17):
the company grows and they getbigger and there's lots more
people, you start getting theseother factions that are
adversarial with sales too, likefinance, like operations.
It's everybody's like, what arethose sales people doing?
Oh, you know, they get to go todinners and play golf.
Well, not during COVID, but youknow what I mean?
They get to travel to tradeshows.
How fun?
Oh yeah.
It's super fun to work 12 hoursat a trade show and then have to
(06:40):
take people out to dinner andkeep your eyes propped open, and
then get up at 6:00 AM and startall over again.
I mean, it sounds reallyglamorous, but it's not right.
So there comes this kind ofadversarial thing, these sales
people aren't performing, whatare they doing?
And we're not getting what weneed and they always want this
and they're selling stuff wedon't have.
And so you can see how it kindof becomes adversarial, right?
(07:03):
So then we have sales leaders orCEOs, especially expecting or
requesting things of sales thatare not really going to help
them sell more, or they're nothaving the rest of the company
support sales in the way that'sneeded.
Let me pause there to say salesis not about sellers.
(07:26):
It's not about sales people.
That's not what sales is.
Sales is about the way thecustomer wants to buy from you.
And when we place too much focuson the sellers and what they
are, or they are not doing,maybe based on like what we used
to do 20 years ago, that doesn'twork anymore.
When we do that, then we're notfocused on how the customer
wants to buy from us.
(07:46):
And so now we're drivingbehaviors that are not helping
our customer buy from us andproducing activities that don't
help our customers buy from us.
And we're not getting theresults we want.
And then we have this viciouscircle of, you know, more
adversarial type ofrelationship.
So that's how CEOs arepreventing sales, because
they're not understanding.
(08:08):
And they don't support in theway that helps the customer buy.
And all the focus is on sellersand what they're doing or not
doing.
Play the King (08:15):
Can you make that concrete with me with an
example, perhaps like you don'thave to obviously name and
shame, but, what is one that youthink is like maybe
representative of your clients,right?
Who where you came in, you said,oh, classic case.
Like here's how we solve this.
Alice Heiman (08:31):
So why don't we start with what a typical
customer journey is or acustomer buying process.
So most of the companies, I dealwith sell some sort of
technology, some sort ofsoftware software as a service,
we call it SaaS, or some otherinnovative type of product or
service.
And most of it has somecomponent of recurring revenue
(08:51):
with it.
Companies who have to buy thesethings have to make a lot of
change at their company in orderto buy them.
And they're expensive.
These things cost a lot ofmoney.
So when I, as a customer need tobuy something like this, that's
expensive, it's going to take along time to get it integrated.
(09:14):
We're gonna have user adoptionissues.
We're gonna have technologyissues, right?
This is really complex and it'scould be hundreds of thousands
or millions of dollars.
So let's say I'm, I'm tasked atmy company with buying, let's
call it this software, thisenterprise software, that's
going to impact all of the salespeople at our company.
(09:35):
And I'm a$5 billion company.
So I task a sales enablement orsales, operations type person.
You know, if I'm the CEO or I'mthe CRO, I task this person.
So now here I am, all right, Ihave to buy this software.
What's the first thing I'm gonnado?
Well, I don't pick up the phoneand call a salesperson.
(09:56):
Funny enough.
Right.
that's not the firstthing that I do.
the first thing that Ido is ask a few of my friends
internally and, and outside myorganization as well.
Hey, what software do you, youuse to solve this problem?
And I get a few answers, right?
Or I didn't like I get, maybe, Idon't know.
(10:17):
We, we have the same problem.
If you find anything, let meknow.
Right.
Okay.
So either way I have someinformation and then I wanna go
to the internet and I'll go lookfor those companies that my
friends told me about and see ifI can find any of their
competitors that maybe no onetold me about.
And I'll start to gather theinformation.
Here are the six companies thatcan sell me the software that I
(10:39):
need for my entire sales team.
Okay.
So now I'm doing that now,unbeknownst to me at my own
organization, someone else isprobably doing the same task
because they have a need also.
And they didn't know that I wason it.
Right.
There may be a committee beingbuilt because this is a complex
(11:01):
purchasing decision.
And, you know, it's gonna takemore than just me to make this
decision.
So I may be building thatcommittee.
Somebody unbeknownst to me maybe building that committee who
knows buying has got socomplicated inside of
organizations, especially 5billion to a hundred million
dollar companies.
You know, it's just verycomplicated.
So anyway, I'm out lookingaround trying to find this
(11:21):
stuff.
So now I go to your website andI look to see what's there.
And if I can't fi find what Ineed, I'm out of there
immediately, right?
And then I go look at theothers.
So this is the beginning of the,you know, the, the buyer's
journey as a lot of people callit.
But my, my buying experience,this is what I'm doing.
It will get to a point where Iwill need to talk to a
(11:44):
salesperson.
Mm-hmm.
Now let's go back to the otherside and let's talk about your
sales process.
So at this company, our salesprocess is, we go to trade
shows.
We hold events.
We have downloads.
We do different things to be outthere in the marketplace so that
(12:05):
people who can buy from us willsee us and recognize our brand.
So some of that's marketingrelated, some of it's sales
related, and usually, we havesales people calling out bound
to try to get people on thephone and talk to them.
So we may have sales,development reps, or business
development reps, making phonecalls and trying to get people
(12:26):
on the phone to set anappointment for one of our
account executives or AEs totalk to them.
Right.
So that's what we're doing now.
What we fail to realize is thegaps.
So remember I said, this personwas tasked with going to find
out which softwares would solvethe problem, and they're doing
that on the internet.
(12:48):
And so, you know, back to thesales leader or the CEO saying,
there's not enough sales, weneed more sales.
Okay.
Well, we're not being capturingthem on the front end because
our website sucks.
And so they bounce right off ofit.
So they're losing all that rightoff the bat.
Now you're saying, well, how dothe salespeople get more leads?
We need more leads.
Well, your sales, your website,isn't helping you.
(13:10):
So you don't even realize thatthough, because you don't even
know what your customer journeyis.
So here I am on one side beingthe customer, taking this, this
journey, this buying experience,and trying to figure it out on
my own with what informationyou've put on the internet.
Right?
And then here, our sales peoplewanting my attention, but they
(13:30):
don't even know I'm looking atyour website, see the
disconnects going on here.
And so the people who want tobuy are not being identified
easily enough so thatsalespeople can have
conversations with them.
And the sales people are goingout after people who could
potentially buy, but weren'tnecessarily looking.
And so there's a disconnectthere too.
(13:51):
And so our pipelines just don'tget fill full enough at the top.
I like to call it a funnel,because that picture of a funnel
is a better picture.
We need lots of people at thetop to talk to lots of people,
interested to get a few of theminto a buying mode and move them
through to complete a sale.
Right.
So have I completely confusedyou yet?
Play the King (14:12):
Well no.
I think this is reallyinteresting.
This was very detailed.
And I'm wondering though, likethe role of the leader or the
CEO there, like if you use themetaphor of the conductor of an
orchestra, the sense I'm gettingfrom you is that just like these
sections, the horns are nottalking to the woodwinds and
they have no idea what eachother are doing.
You have like symbols crashingat the wrong time and like, so,
(14:34):
so take that I guess.
And tell me like what advice areyou finding yourself giving to
CEOs when you find theseproblems and how can they like
unblock this process?
Alice Heiman (14:43):
That is exactly the advice that I give them.
You need to be an orchestrator.
That is your job today.
So, as a CEO of a company, youhave a lot of things to do.
You're looking out over thewhole health and wellbeing of
your entire company, right?
But sales is crucial because ifthere are no sales, we can't pay
the people.
We can't keep the machinerunning.
(15:04):
So CEOs must play a role insales today.
And when I say that it scaresthem because they're like, oh,
I'm not gonna go out and closedeals.
That's not my job.
No, it certainly is not.
However, what your job is, is toorchestrate all of the things in
your organization that need tohappen so that the customer can
buy from you.
(15:25):
Not so that sellers can sell.
You see?
Because that is a veryinternally focused view of the
world.
You need to orchestrateeverything you can in your
company so that buyers can buyand we make it easier for them
to buy from us.
And so we have to look at thecomplete picture.
What is happening in marketing?
(15:47):
What is happening with customersuccess?
When does customer success getinvolved with the customer?
Should they get involved withthe customer before the
salesperson ever does?
What about those sales engineersover there?
When should they be involved?
How is finance impacting thecustomer journey?
How is operations impacting thecustomer journey?
How are they impacting theseller's ability to provide
(16:09):
what's needed to a customer?
How are they impactingmarketing's ability to provide
what is needed?
So when you have these separatesilos, which a lot of companies
have, and everybody works intheir own silos, and then they
bump up against each other'swalls, right?
and then hopefully tryto communicate occasionally it
(16:31):
can really cause a problem.
I tell the CEO, you are the onepreventing sales, because you
are not orchestrating.
You have abdicated allresponsibility for sales to your
chief revenue officer who has nocontrol over your chief
financial officer or your chiefoperating officer they're equals
they can't tell the others whatto do.
(16:53):
Only you can do that.
And so what the answer is is toget the senior leaders together
and talk about how the customersbuy.
Now, if you don't know that, noworries.
Just go ask them.
It's the simplest thing in theworld.
Go ask your customers when youfirst had to solve this problem,
(17:15):
what did you do?
Did you ask people, did youGoogle, did you go to a trade
show and look at all thesoftware?
What did you do first?
Did you define the problemclearly at your company before
you looked for solutions?
Ah, missing piece at manycompanies when they're trying to
buy, did you get your committeetogether and bring them to
consensus on exactly what neededto be solved before you started
(17:37):
looking?
So we have to ask our customersand we can get third party
companies to do a voice of thecustomer survey and bring that
to us.
Or we can get our own marketingdepartment or somebody to do
that.
So, but it starts with, if youwanna fix this and you really
wanna scale your sales and youwant it to be easy, not hard,
(17:57):
then you find out from yourcustomers how they buy from you.
Don't just look at thebeginning, look all the way
through the process from I foundyou and know you can solve my
problem to, I am now your loyalcustomer and continue to buy
from you.
That is the customer journey.
It's not just, oh gosh, I foundyou.
And I bought from you.
It's more important.
Even what happens after theybought from you, because that is
(18:20):
part of their continuingjourney.
Play the King (18:22):
Well, I think the segues into something I want to
ask you about, which is thedistinction between you have
this phrase that, um, I want toask you to tease out, which is,
the CEO needs to understand howto make it easier for their
customer and harder to be theircompetition.
What does that mean exactly toyou?
What is the distinction betweenthose two things?
Alice Heiman (18:39):
Right?
So a lot of sales people getinto a situation and where
they're in the middle of a deal,right?
The buyers have said, yeah,we're really interested.
We need this information.
They've done a demo.
They've got a proposal, thingslike that.
And then, all of a suddensomebody's like, oh my gosh, we
have a competitor orthree, of course you have
(19:02):
competitors, right?
But, from the customer's pointof view, they can't
differentiate you from thecompetitors.
They don't know how to do it.
And furthermore, it's not theirjob.
you should bedifferentiating yourself from
your competitors.
But what we do is we make itreally easy to be our competitor
because we don'tdifferentiate from them and they
(19:25):
don't differentiate from us.
And so then it's just gonna comedown to price, right?
So that's too bad.
We have to make it hard to beour competitor because we stand
out, we stand out from thecrowd, we make it clear.
What's different about us.
And we make it clear that wesell differently because we're
all about helping you buy, notselling you stuff you don't need
(19:48):
or want.
So when your products are verysimilar to the others in the, in
the competitive landscape, whichoften happens, then you have to
differentiate in other ways,because you may not have any
wholly, unique thing about yourproduct or service.
So what else differentiates you?
(20:09):
It could be your raving fans.
It could be your brand! It couldbe your ability to help your
customers grow.
It could be the way that yousell and service.
So we have to stand out from ourcustomers, or we're going to
just be driven down to pricediscussions constantly.
So that's, what we want to do onthat end, right?
(20:31):
Make it harder to be ourcompetitor.
And another way we make it hardto be our competitor is by
making it easier to be ourcustomer.
So if I go to your website andit's hard for me to find the
information that I need, you'remaking it hard for me to buy
from you.
Let that be your competitor, notyou, you make it easy.
When they come to the websitefor them to find everything they
(20:51):
may need, and you make it easyfor them to talk to someone, it
doesn't have to be click hereand you can set an appointment
with a salesperson.
Well, guess what?
I'm busy.
I have a job that I do all daylong, and now I've been tasked
with putting a committeetogether and going to find a
software for our enterpriseteam.
Right now you're asking me to dothat on top of my busy day
(21:14):
already.
So when am I going do it?
Well, I'm going to get home, eatdinner, put the kids in bed.
And between nine and midnight,I'm going to get on the internet
and start researching for theseproducts.
but there's no salespeople at your company available
between nine and midnight.
But if you had a chat that wasstaffed 24 7, that could answer
a lot of my questions.
(21:34):
If you had a video demo, no, youdon't have a video demo.
You make me sign up to get ademo.
I'm off your site in a in aheartbeat.
I have to sign up to get a demo.
Why can't I see what yourproduct does?
There's this thing called video.
And you could even have a humanbeing conducting that demo.
Now, will it be exactly tailoredto me?
Of course not.
But once I see enough, then I'mgonna say, great.
(21:57):
Now get me on the phone withsomebody.
So you see what I'm saying wouldjust make it difficult to be our
customer, make it easy to be ourcustomer.
And in that way we stand out formore competitors as well.
Play the King (22:06):
Sure.
So, talk to me, you know, let'ssay you have a client who, you
know, their sales operation ishumming along, but they need to
grow.
Right.
And, a nd so what does t heleadership team need to know
about sales growth to make, t o,you know, not to make that
happen?
I guess after everything we'vetalked about, the right phrase
is probably to allow that tohappen.
Alice Heiman (22:24):
Well, sales growth is not about sellers.
You don't just add more salespeople and get sales growth.
So that's a big mistake thatpeople make.
They look at the number thatthey want to hit and they say,
okay, what are we gonna need tohit this number?
We're gonna need to add moresales people.
Well, that's not always theanswer.
I mean, sometimes it is, butit's not always the answer.
(22:46):
Sometimes the sales people, wehave need more leads or higher
quality leads.
So many times sales people aredoing a lot of work that is in
my opinion, marketing work,they're sending emails, they're
posting social media.
They're doing things that arenot in really in their
wheelhouse, you know, salespeople are not copywriters, nor
(23:10):
are they content writers.
And most of them are very bad atit.
So having them be the main onesposting on social and writing
emails to send out is not a goodidea, but we do it anyway.
Right?
So, we have to take a look atwhat are our salespeople doing.
If we were able to give themqualified leads and they were
(23:30):
able to have four or five or sixconversations a day with people
who could buy from them, wewould have all the sales we
need, but that's not whathappens.
Most salespeople are lucky ifthey have five conversations a
week with someone who can buyfrom them.
So in that case, we can't say,oh my gosh, you know, these
sellers should, what send moreemail, send more spammy,
(23:50):
LinkedIn messages.
dial the phone moretimes it's not working.
We need to create demand.
We need marketing to createdemand and help us.
Right?
Well, so we do trade shows.
We do webinars, we hold otherkinds of events.
We have content for people toconsume.
We do all of those things thatshould drive inbound if we're
(24:13):
doing them well.
And then someone will talk tothese people that come to us
either through email or throughphone calls or through our web
or whatever, and getconversations set up with
salespeople.
So we can't just add moresalespeople.
The salespeople you have may nothave enough qualified leads.
So that's, I would look at thatfirst, right.
Then, I would also look atagain, the customer journey,
(24:35):
right?
So what is the customer journeyand where do we meet them, where
they are, how do we intersectwith them?
What are the gaps?
So we can't just go, oh gosh, weneed more sales, let's have more
sellers.
We have to look at the wholecustomer journey and figure out
what the customer needs at eachpart of that journey to be
successful in moving forwardwith us.
(24:55):
And it may have nothing to dowith peak sales people.
It may have something to do withcustomer success or marketing or
something else.
Play the King (25:03):
Totally.
And there's a bit of a feedbackloop there.
Right?
Because the sales people aretalking to the customers
directly and, and hopefullyfiltering back some of that
information to those otherdepartments right.
Where they can then act on it.
Alice Heiman (25:15):
One would hope.
Yes.
Play the King (25:17):
Yeah.
All right.
Alice, this has been reallyinteresting.
I know you have a podcast wouldlove for you to plug it, tell us
a bit about it.
Where can we find it?
The standard line, like anywhereyou get your podcast but
it's
Alice Heiman (25:31):
Standard line
Play the King (25:32):
Sales talk CEO, what could people find there?
Alice Heiman (25:36):
Well, so here's, what's cool about this podcast
at first.
Like I was so hesitant to do itright.
And everybody was like, yougotta do it.
You're a great interviewer, youknow?
And so I was like, okay, I'mgonna do it.
So I started off and my goal wasto interview CEOs about how they
grew their sales and to learnfrom them.
And most of the people that Iinterviewed, these are not
(25:58):
startups.
These companies are 10, 20, 30years old.
Right.
And I asked the CEO to, to goback in time to when they
started the company and talkabout how they grew sales from
there.
And so that's been reallyinteresting.
We've had some amazing CEOs andthen I thought, wow.
So the CEOs listening might needsome expert advice on some of
the things they've been tellingme were challenges along the way
to growing their sales.
(26:19):
So I started interviewing someexperts that I know on different
topics, like landing reallylarge deals and telling a better
story and different things likethat.
So, that was really cool.
And then most recently I justadded a piece where it's just
insights from me, the kinds ofthings you've been asking me
(26:41):
about.
And there's short littlesegments, like six minutes, 10
minutes where I just talk aboutthat.
So that's what's been really funabout my podcast.
It's only a year old, but I willsay this, it has been a great
way for me to meet CEOs and someof them, want to have more
conversations with me about whatI could do to help them.
And some of them, I asked to beon the podcast and some of them
(27:04):
I just become friends with.
So it's been an awesome and anadventure for me to have the
podcast.
So I would love for anyone whois a CEO or anyone who supports
a CEO to listen to Sales Tallkfor CEOs.
And I'd love your feedback onthat.
It's a lot of fun.
And then if you know, a CEO whoshould be on just a message me
and let me know
Play the King (27:24):
Good stuff, Alice , thank you for your time today.
Really appreciate it.
Alice Heiman (27:26):
Yeah.
Thank you.
This podcast is sponsored by OMI, the company
that makes CRM work.
And today's guest is AliceHeiman, who is the podcast host
of sales talk for CEOs and Alicefor your own company.
You have a title that I'd likeyou to explain.
It's the Chief Sales Energizer,so have at it
Alice Heiman (00:19):
Well, that's what I do.
clearly, you know, energize you.
So, what I like to do is workwith the CEOs and the senior
leaders of their teams to getthe sales that they need and
want to increase evaluation.
And that requires pumping a lotof energy into an organization.
And so, clients love the energyI bring to them.
(00:41):
And so they have dubbed me, theChief Sales Energizer,.
Play the King (00:46):
What is the right level of energy that you need
from a sales team?
Like, I can imagine like tohyped up and, you know, you
might turn some people off toolethargic, and you're clearly,
not doing what you need to do.
What are you looking for whenyou take on a new client, where
do you want get them?
Alice Heiman (01:02):
Yeah.
You know, that's a greatquestion.
And I think a level of energycan be expressed in many
different ways, right?
So it can be expressed inenthusiasm, which I do tend to
be a cheerleader and many salesteams do need that because their
CEOs and sales leaders don'treally provide that type of
energy, that cheerleading typeof energy.
(01:23):
And so that can be very usefulwhen I get into an organization,
I see what's happening there andif they need a little
cheerleading, you know, I can dothat for them.
Sales people like others do wellwhen you tell them they're doing
well and they can continue to dobetter when you tell them what
they did well and specificallywhat that was so they can
(01:46):
duplicate it.
Right?
So we, we do want to let peopleknow that they're doing well,
however, somehow in our society,that just doesn't seem to be a
thing that we do.
So oftentimes I become the onewho does that and it's
contagious, which is great.
So I teach the leaders to dothat as well.
So that's one kind of energy.
And then there's, you know, theenergy to really organize things
(02:08):
and drive them through.
And I find that that energy islacking sometimes too.
So sales people and salesleaders especially need that
kind of energy.
It's not necessarily enthusiasm,but it's that deep penetrating
energy that can get the jobdone.
(02:28):
Right?
So start it, get to the middleand then get to the finish line.
And so I think I help them bringthat kind of energy to their
organization too, because Iinstall process that makes it
easier for them to do their job.
And as sales leaders, we getpulled into so many different
things that take us away fromactually coaching our sales
(02:51):
people to close business.
So I try to bring it back to oneof the most important things and
have us focus on those.
So I bring that energy as welland probably more, but, you
know, that's good for now.
Play the King (03:05):
Let's zero in on that relationship between, you
know, the leadership and thesales team.
You've got like just a ton ofexperience working with these
teams, what are some ways thatyou've seen a really healthy
relationship there and what aresome ways that maybe, you come
in and you say, Hey, this isn'tworking so well.
What are some of your mostfrequent diagnoses?
Alice Heiman (03:24):
Well, I, I think a frequent diagnosis is that the
CEO could be the chief salesprevention officer.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Now that sounds ridiculous.
Doesn't it?
Like, why would a CEO bepreventing sales?
Play the King (03:38):
Right.
So, tell me more about that.
Like how does that play out?
What are you actually seeing?
What is the behavior?
What are the messages they'resending?
What and how does that work?
Alice Heiman (03:48):
It's different in every organization, but many
times there's a bit of anadversarial relationship between
the CEO and the senior leadersand the sales team don't know if
you've ever seen that, butanybody who's listening, who is
in sales can, can tell you thatit is true, unfortunately.
And of course, everybody wantsmore sales at their company and
(04:10):
they want their sales team toperform.
Now, remember that I only workwith companies who have a
business to business complexsales.
So when I'm talking about this,that's the setting.
And most of my clients arebetween twenty and a hundred
million dollars in revenues.
And they're all trying to get,go from incremental growth to
exponential growth.
So a lot of them want to double,right?
(04:32):
Many of them are owner led andinvestor backed.
So when you look at anorganization this size and a CEO
who is probably the founder, inmost cases, they did founder-led
sales when their organizationwas young.
And, you know, as things changedand the company grew, they added
a sales team and then they addeda sales leader.
(04:54):
And then at some point theymight have added a super sales
leader, right?
So you go from having salesmanagers, to sales VPs to having
a CRO, a chief revenue officeror a CSO, a chief sales officer.
So those companies are now goingbe 50 to 80 million when they're
adding those super salesleaders.
(05:15):
Right! What happens over time ina company and how it gets to be
an adversarial relationship isthe CEO remembers the time when
they did the selling.
And when they did founder ledsales and how well that worked.
And then when they startedhiring sales people, they're
always sitting there wonderingwhy can I outsell my sales
people?
(05:35):
Why can't they sell?
Like I do, well thenumber onereason, they're not the founder.
They don't have the CEO title,but there's a myriad of other
reasons as well.
Right?
So, that's what happens, right?
So over time as salespeopledon't perform, as well as, or
don't perform to expectations ofinvestors or, you know,
(05:56):
stakeholders, then there becomesthis adversarial, well, what are
those salespeople doing?
Well, why won't they do this?
Why don't they do that?
And there's this lack ofunderstanding between senior
leaders and the sales team as towhat should happen and how it's
happening.
And so we get a little bit ofthis adversarial thing now, as
(06:17):
the company grows and they getbigger and there's lots more
people, you start getting theseother factions that are
adversarial with sales too, likefinance, like operations.
It's everybody's like, what arethose sales people doing?
Oh, you know, they get to go todinners and play golf.
Well, not during COVID, but youknow what I mean?
They get to travel to tradeshows.
How fun?
Oh yeah.
It's super fun to work 12 hoursat a trade show and then have to
(06:40):
take people out to dinner andkeep your eyes propped open, and
then get up at 6:00 AM and startall over again.
I mean, it sounds reallyglamorous, but it's not right.
So there comes this kind ofadversarial thing, these sales
people aren't performing, whatare they doing?
And we're not getting what weneed and they always want this
and they're selling stuff wedon't have.
And so you can see how it kindof becomes adversarial, right?
(07:03):
So then we have sales leaders orCEOs, especially expecting or
requesting things of sales thatare not really going to help
them sell more, or they're nothaving the rest of the company
support sales in the way that'sneeded.
Let me pause there to say salesis not about sellers.
(07:26):
It's not about sales people.
That's not what sales is.
Sales is about the way thecustomer wants to buy from you.
And when we place too much focuson the sellers and what they
are, or they are not doing,maybe based on like what we used
to do 20 years ago, that doesn'twork anymore.
When we do that, then we're notfocused on how the customer
wants to buy from us.
(07:46):
And so now we're drivingbehaviors that are not helping
our customer buy from us andproducing activities that don't
help our customers buy from us.
And we're not getting theresults we want.
And then we have this viciouscircle of, you know, more
adversarial type ofrelationship.
So that's how CEOs arepreventing sales, because
they're not understanding.
(08:08):
And they don't support in theway that helps the customer buy.
And all the focus is on sellersand what they're doing or not
doing.
Play the King (08:15):
Can you make that concrete with me with an
example, perhaps like you don'thave to obviously name and
shame, but, what is one that youthink is like maybe
representative of your clients,right?
Who where you came in, you said,oh, classic case.
Like here's how we solve this.
Alice Heiman (08:31):
So why don't we start with what a typical
customer journey is or acustomer buying process.
So most of the companies, I dealwith sell some sort of
technology, some sort ofsoftware software as a service,
we call it SaaS, or some otherinnovative type of product or
service.
And most of it has somecomponent of recurring revenue
(08:51):
with it.
Companies who have to buy thesethings have to make a lot of
change at their company in orderto buy them.
And they're expensive.
These things cost a lot ofmoney.
So when I, as a customer need tobuy something like this, that's
expensive, it's going to take along time to get it integrated.
(09:14):
We're gonna have user adoptionissues.
We're gonna have technologyissues, right?
This is really complex and it'scould be hundreds of thousands
or millions of dollars.
So let's say I'm, I'm tasked atmy company with buying, let's
call it this software, thisenterprise software, that's
going to impact all of the salespeople at our company.
(09:35):
And I'm a$5 billion company.
So I task a sales enablement orsales, operations type person.
You know, if I'm the CEO or I'mthe CRO, I task this person.
So now here I am, all right, Ihave to buy this software.
What's the first thing I'm gonnado?
Well, I don't pick up the phoneand call a salesperson.
(09:56):
Funny enough.
Right.
internally and, and outside myorganization as well.
Hey, what software do you, youuse to solve this problem?
And I get a few answers, right?
Or I didn't like I get, maybe, Idon't know.
(10:17):
We, we have the same problem.
If you find anything, let meknow.
Right.
Okay.
So either way I have someinformation and then I wanna go
to the internet and I'll go lookfor those companies that my
friends told me about and see ifI can find any of their
competitors that maybe no onetold me about.
And I'll start to gather theinformation.
Here are the six companies thatcan sell me the software that I
(10:39):
need for my entire sales team.
Okay.
So now I'm doing that now,unbeknownst to me at my own
organization, someone else isprobably doing the same task
because they have a need also.
And they didn't know that I wason it.
Right.
There may be a committee beingbuilt because this is a complex
(11:01):
purchasing decision.
And, you know, it's gonna takemore than just me to make this
decision.
So I may be building thatcommittee.
Somebody unbeknownst to me maybe building that committee who
knows buying has got socomplicated inside of
organizations, especially 5billion to a hundred million
dollar companies.
You know, it's just verycomplicated.
So anyway, I'm out lookingaround trying to find this
(11:21):
stuff.
So now I go to your website andI look to see what's there.
And if I can't fi find what Ineed, I'm out of there
immediately, right?
And then I go look at theothers.
So this is the beginning of the,you know, the, the buyer's
journey as a lot of people callit.
But my, my buying experience,this is what I'm doing.
It will get to a point where Iwill need to talk to a
(11:44):
salesperson.
Mm-hmm
Now let's go back to the otherside and let's talk about your
sales process.
So at this company, our salesprocess is, we go to trade
shows.
We hold events.
We have downloads.
We do different things to be outthere in the marketplace so that
(12:05):
people who can buy from us willsee us and recognize our brand.
So some of that's marketingrelated, some of it's sales
related, and usually, we havesales people calling out bound
to try to get people on thephone and talk to them.
So we may have sales,development reps, or business
development reps, making phonecalls and trying to get people
(12:26):
on the phone to set anappointment for one of our
account executives or AEs totalk to them.
Right.
So that's what we're doing now.
What we fail to realize is thegaps.
So remember I said, this personwas tasked with going to find
out which softwares would solvethe problem, and they're doing
that on the internet.
(12:48):
And so, you know, back to thesales leader or the CEO saying,
there's not enough sales, weneed more sales.
Okay.
Well, we're not being capturingthem on the front end because
our website sucks.
And so they bounce right off ofit.
So they're losing all that rightoff the bat.
Now you're saying, well, how dothe salespeople get more leads?
We need more leads.
Well, your sales, your website,isn't helping you.
(13:10):
So you don't even realize thatthough, because you don't even
know what your customer journeyis.
So here I am on one side beingthe customer, taking this, this
journey, this buying experience,and trying to figure it out on
my own with what informationyou've put on the internet.
Right?
And then here, our sales peoplewanting my attention, but they
(13:30):
don't even know I'm looking atyour website, see the
disconnects going on here.
And so the people who want tobuy are not being identified
easily enough so thatsalespeople can have
conversations with them.
And the sales people are goingout after people who could
potentially buy, but weren'tnecessarily looking.
And so there's a disconnectthere too.
(13:51):
And so our pipelines just don'tget fill full enough at the top.
I like to call it a funnel,because that picture of a funnel
is a better picture.
We need lots of people at thetop to talk to lots of people,
interested to get a few of theminto a buying mode and move them
through to complete a sale.
Right.
So have I completely confusedyou yet?
Play the King (14:12):
Well no.
I think this is reallyinteresting.
This was very detailed.
And I'm wondering though, likethe role of the leader or the
CEO there, like if you use themetaphor of the conductor of an
orchestra, the sense I'm gettingfrom you is that just like these
sections, the horns are nottalking to the woodwinds and
they have no idea what eachother are doing.
You have like symbols crashingat the wrong time and like, so,
(14:34):
so take that I guess.
And tell me like what advice areyou finding yourself giving to
CEOs when you find theseproblems and how can they like
unblock this process?
Alice Heiman (14:43):
That is exactly the advice that I give them.
You need to be an orchestrator.
That is your job today.
So, as a CEO of a company, youhave a lot of things to do.
You're looking out over thewhole health and wellbeing of
your entire company, right?
But sales is crucial because ifthere are no sales, we can't pay
the people.
We can't keep the machinerunning.
(15:04):
So CEOs must play a role insales today.
And when I say that it scaresthem because they're like, oh,
I'm not gonna go out and closedeals.
That's not my job.
No, it certainly is not.
However, what your job is, is toorchestrate all of the things in
your organization that need tohappen so that the customer can
buy from you.
(15:25):
Not so that sellers can sell.
You see?
Because that is a veryinternally focused view of the
world.
You need to orchestrateeverything you can in your
company so that buyers can buyand we make it easier for them
to buy from us.
And so we have to look at thecomplete picture.
What is happening in marketing?
(15:47):
What is happening with customersuccess?
When does customer success getinvolved with the customer?
Should they get involved withthe customer before the
salesperson ever does?
What about those sales engineersover there?
When should they be involved?
How is finance impacting thecustomer journey?
How is operations impacting thecustomer journey?
How are they impacting theseller's ability to provide
(16:09):
what's needed to a customer?
How are they impactingmarketing's ability to provide
what is needed?
So when you have these separatesilos, which a lot of companies
have, and everybody works intheir own silos, and then they
bump up against each other'swalls, right?
(16:31):
can really cause a problem.
I tell the CEO, you are the onepreventing sales, because you
are not orchestrating.
You have abdicated allresponsibility for sales to your
chief revenue officer who has nocontrol over your chief
financial officer or your chiefoperating officer they're equals
they can't tell the others whatto do.
(16:53):
Only you can do that.
And so what the answer is is toget the senior leaders together
and talk about how the customersbuy.
Now, if you don't know that, noworries.
Just go ask them.
It's the simplest thing in theworld.
Go ask your customers when youfirst had to solve this problem,
(17:15):
what did you do?
Did you ask people, did youGoogle, did you go to a trade
show and look at all thesoftware?
What did you do first?
Did you define the problemclearly at your company before
you looked for solutions?
Ah, missing piece at manycompanies when they're trying to
buy, did you get your committeetogether and bring them to
consensus on exactly what neededto be solved before you started
(17:37):
looking?
So we have to ask our customersand we can get third party
companies to do a voice of thecustomer survey and bring that
to us.
Or we can get our own marketingdepartment or somebody to do
that.
So, but it starts with, if youwanna fix this and you really
wanna scale your sales and youwant it to be easy, not hard,
(17:57):
then you find out from yourcustomers how they buy from you.
Don't just look at thebeginning, look all the way
through the process from I foundyou and know you can solve my
problem to, I am now your loyalcustomer and continue to buy
from you.
That is the customer journey.
It's not just, oh gosh, I foundyou.
And I bought from you.
It's more important.
Even what happens after theybought from you, because that is
(18:20):
part of their continuingjourney.
Play the King (18:22):
Well, I think the segues into something I want to
ask you about, which is thedistinction between you have
this phrase that, um, I want toask you to tease out, which is,
the CEO needs to understand howto make it easier for their
customer and harder to be theircompetition.
What does that mean exactly toyou?
What is the distinction betweenthose two things?
Alice Heiman (18:39):
Right?
So a lot of sales people getinto a situation and where
they're in the middle of a deal,right?
The buyers have said, yeah,we're really interested.
We need this information.
They've done a demo.
They've got a proposal, thingslike that.
And then, all of a suddensomebody's like, oh my gosh, we
have a competitor
(19:02):
competitors, right?
But, from the customer's pointof view, they can't
differentiate you from thecompetitors.
They don't know how to do it.
And furthermore, it's not theirjob.
your competitors.
But what we do is we make itreally easy to be our competitor
(19:25):
don't differentiate from us.
And so then it's just gonna comedown to price, right?
So that's too bad.
We have to make it hard to beour competitor because we stand
out, we stand out from thecrowd, we make it clear.
What's different about us.
And we make it clear that wesell differently because we're
all about helping you buy, notselling you stuff you don't need
(19:48):
or want.
So when your products are verysimilar to the others in the, in
the competitive landscape, whichoften happens, then you have to
differentiate in other ways,because you may not have any
wholly, unique thing about yourproduct or service.
So what else differentiates you?
(20:09):
It could be your raving fans.
It could be your brand! It couldbe your ability to help your
customers grow.
It could be the way that yousell and service.
So we have to stand out from ourcustomers, or we're going to
just be driven down to pricediscussions constantly.
So that's, what we want to do onthat end, right?
(20:31):
Make it harder to be ourcompetitor.
And another way we make it hardto be our competitor is by
making it easier to be ourcustomer.
So if I go to your website andit's hard for me to find the
information that I need, you'remaking it hard for me to buy
from you.
Let that be your competitor, notyou,
When they come to the websitefor them to find everything they
(20:51):
may need, and you make it easyfor them to talk to someone, it
doesn't have to be click hereand you can set an appointment
with a salesperson.
Well, guess what?
I'm busy.
I have a job that I do all daylong, and now I've been tasked
with putting a committeetogether and going to find a
software for our enterpriseteam.
Right now you're asking me to dothat on top of my busy day
(21:14):
already.
So when am I going do it?
Well, I'm going to get home, eatdinner, put the kids in bed.
And between nine and midnight,I'm going to get on the internet
and start researching for theseproducts.
between nine and midnight.
But if you had a chat that wasstaffed 24 7, that could answer
a lot of my questions.
(21:34):
If you had a video demo, no, youdon't have a video demo.
You make me sign up to get ademo.
I'm off your site in a in aheartbeat.
I have to sign up to get a demo.
Why can't I see what yourproduct does?
There's this thing called video.
And you could even have a humanbeing conducting that demo.
Now, will it be exactly tailoredto me?
Of course not.
But once I see enough, then I'mgonna say, great.
(21:57):
Now get me on the phone withsomebody.
So you see what I'm saying wouldjust make it difficult to be our
customer, make it easy to be ourcustomer.
And in that way we stand out formore competitors as well.
Play the King (22:06):
Sure.
So, talk to me, you know, let'ssay you have a client who, you
know, their sales operation ishumming along, but they need to
grow.
Right.
And, a nd so what does t heleadership team need to know
about sales growth to make, t o,you know, not to make that
happen?
I guess after everything we'vetalked about, the right phrase
is probably to allow that tohappen.
Alice Heiman (22:24):
Well, sales growth is not about sellers.
You don't just add more salespeople and get sales growth.
So that's a big mistake thatpeople make.
They look at the number thatthey want to hit and they say,
okay, what are we gonna need tohit this number?
We're gonna need to add moresales people.
Well, that's not always theanswer.
I mean, sometimes it is, butit's not always the answer.
(22:46):
Sometimes the sales people, wehave need more leads or higher
quality leads.
So many times sales people aredoing a lot of work that is in
my opinion, marketing work,they're sending emails, they're
posting social media.
They're doing things that arenot in really in their
wheelhouse, you know, salespeople are not copywriters, nor
(23:10):
are they content writers
And most of them are very bad atit.
So having them be the main onesposting on social and writing
emails to send out is not a goodidea, but we do it anyway.
Right?
So, we have to take a look atwhat are our salespeople doing.
If we were able to give themqualified leads and they were
(23:30):
able to have four or five or sixconversations a day with people
who could buy from them, wewould have all the sales we
need, but that's not whathappens.
Most salespeople are lucky ifthey have five conversations a
week with someone who can buyfrom them.
So in that case, we can't say,oh my gosh, you know, these
sellers should, what send moreemail, send more spammy,
(23:50):
LinkedIn messages.
We need to create demand.
We need marketing to createdemand and help us.
Right?
Well, so we do trade shows.
We do webinars, we hold otherkinds of events.
We have content for people toconsume.
We do all of those things thatshould drive inbound if we're
(24:13):
doing them well.
And then someone will talk tothese people that come to us
either through email or throughphone calls or through our web
or whatever, and getconversations set up with
salespeople.
So we can't just add moresalespeople.
The salespeople you have may nothave enough qualified leads.
So that's, I would look at thatfirst, right.
Then, I would also look atagain, the customer journey,
(24:35):
right?
So what is the customer journeyand where do we meet them, where
they are, how do we intersectwith them?
What are the gaps?
So we can't just go, oh gosh, weneed more sales, let's have more
sellers.
We have to look at the wholecustomer journey and figure out
what the customer needs at eachpart of that journey to be
successful in moving forwardwith us.
(24:55):
And it may have nothing to dowith peak sales people.
It may have something to do withcustomer success or marketing or
something else.
Play the King (25:03):
Totally.
And there's a bit of a feedbackloop there.
Right?
Because the sales people aretalking to the customers
directly and, and hopefullyfiltering back some of that
information to those otherdepartments right.
Where they can then act on it.
Alice Heiman (25:15):
One would hope.
Yes
Play the King (25:17):
Yeah.
All right.
Alice, this has been reallyinteresting.
I know you have a podcast wouldlove for you to plug it, tell us
a bit about it.
Where can we find it?
The standard line, like anywhereyou get your podcast
it's
Alice Heiman (25:31):
Standard line
Play the King (25:32):
Sales talk CEO, what could people find there?
Alice Heiman (25:36):
Well, so here's, what's cool about this podcast
at first.
Like I was so hesitant to do itright.
And everybody was like, yougotta do it.
You're a great interviewer, youknow?
And so I was like, okay, I'mgonna do it.
So I started off and my goal wasto interview CEOs about how they
grew their sales and to learnfrom them.
And most of the people that Iinterviewed, these are not
(25:58):
startups.
These companies are 10, 20, 30years old.
Right.
And I asked the CEO to, to goback in time to when they
started the company and talkabout how they grew sales from
there.
And so that's been reallyinteresting.
We've had some amazing CEOs andthen I thought, wow.
So the CEOs listening might needsome expert advice on some of
the things they've been tellingme were challenges along the way
to growing their sales.
(26:19):
So I started interviewing someexperts that I know on different
topics, like landing reallylarge deals and telling a better
story and different things likethat.
So, that was really cool.
And then most recently I justadded a piece where it's just
insights from me, the kinds ofthings you've been asking me
(26:41):
about.
And there's short littlesegments, like six minutes, 10
minutes where I just talk aboutthat.
So that's what's been really funabout my podcast.
It's only a year old, but I willsay this, it has been a great
way for me to meet CEOs and someof them, want to have more
conversations with me about whatI could do to help them.
And some of them, I asked to beon the podcast and some of them
(27:04):
I just become friends with.
So it's been an awesome and anadventure for me to have the
podcast.
So I would love for anyone whois a CEO or anyone who supports
a CEO to listen to Sales Tallkfor CEOs.
And I'd love your feedback onthat.
It's a lot of fun.
And then if you know, a CEO whoshould be on just a message me
and let me know
Play the King (27:24):
Good stuff, Alice , thank you for your time today.
Really appreciate it.
Alice Heiman (27:26):
Yeah.
Thank you.
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