This week marks a first for SalesTV.live. This is our first SalesTV Spotlight Week, and the topic for this spotlight is Women in Sales. We have programming and guest hosts lined up each day this week to celebrate.

Taking on SalesTV.live guest hosting duties on Tuesday, March 5 is Shawn Karol Sandy, Chief Revenue Officer of Sauce Agency. Joining her is the original Irreverent Sales Girl, Dianna Geairn. They will lead a discussion centered around their mutual passion for "Making Moments that Matter" for prospects and customers throughout the sales process.

Things we’ll chat about include -

* Strategic Empathy in Sale

* RevOps Optimization for Customer Centricity

* Growth-Driven Design in Sales Strategies

* The Role of AI and Automation in Personalizing Sales Experiences

Where automation and AI are being leveraged successfully throughout the sales process, these tools must also enhance the customer or prospects' experiences and decision-making process to earn business, loyalty, and revenue. Making Moments That Matter is a critical differentiator for the next iteration of successful sales and revenue leaders.

Join us and be a part of the conversation.

Facts, the latest thinking, chat, and banter about the world of sales.

Today we were joined by our Guest Host -

• Shawn Karol Sandy, Chief Revenue Officer of Sauce Agency

Joining our Guest Host was -

• Dianna Geairn, Founder of The Irreverent Sales Girl

Transcript of SalesTV.live Spotlight Week - Women in Sales 2024-03-05

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:00:00]:

And we're live. Welcome everyone to sales TV takeover, women in sales spotlight week. We're taking over. Welcome, on LinkedIn and anywhere you're watching. I'm Sean Karoll Sandy. I'm the chief revenue officer of Sauce Agency, and I'm this week's guest guest host for today's episode. And I've invited my long time good friend, super seller, international interstellar, Diana Durant, the, a reverent sales girl, but also a current salesperson, saleswoman, and with DevTech currently. Andy we're gonna talk today about making moments that matter.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:00:41]:

Welcome, Diana. I'm so happy

Dianna Geairn [00:00:43]:

to see you here. We have had a long history of sales talks and, sales conversations. So welcome. Thank you, Sean. I'm so excited to be here. I think this is a I think this is an incredibly relevant topic for sales today, in this macro environment, in the environment of, you know, learning how to do conference calls really well, etcetera. You know, so much has changed about Alex. So I really hope that we can explore some ideas that give people a new idea for their toolbox to accelerate their pipelines.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:01:19]:

Yeah. That's the idea. So today's topic is very intentional. It's probably a little bit selfish in that it it's taking a page from what we like to say we do at Sauce Agency, which is we help our clients make moments that matter for their prospects, their customers, their employees, their community. And really, like, rev ops optimization is what we do, but that's just a mouthful of words, and it doesn't mean anything until you actually make moments that matter. So when Sales TV came to us with this idea of, guest hosting, and I said, let's talk about this because it's it's not just what we do. We want it to be a movement, thinking about changing the way we see customers prospecting as, and and even employees, the way we hire and treat employees as a movement of making moments that matter throughout every touchpoint. So we want it to be a movement, and I couldn't think of anyone better to invite to have this conversation with me than Durant Guerin because in as long as we've known each other and talked about sales, you've never ceased to amaze me or surprise me about how you think through the sales process and think in your customer's shoes and are clever and creative about making moments that matter for them.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:02:32]:

So if you would give a little bit of background, a little bit of your sales background to our audience today, if you don't mind.

Dianna Geairn [00:02:40]:

Yeah. For sure. So, I have had a background mostly in financial services and technology sales Andy, just found that my jam was really mid market to enterprise especially I really love, landing enterprise accounts. So that's that's what I found I was really great at. And as I started to sort of look at the common vernacular for what was out there about sales, especially in technology, I I I found that a lot of the practices were not really not really things that were helpful to the customer or the salesperson.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:03:14]:

Right.

Dianna Geairn [00:03:14]:

And sort of as the advocate for salespeople, I created, I created a character called the irreverent sales girl, and I started blogging. I I I just started on Facebook at the beginning and then blogging about, you know, what are the things that a sales expert can tell you who's really out there selling. And I love all my sales expert community, but a lot of them just haven't been in touch with sales for a long time. They're actually boots on the ground doing it. So that's that's what I created Andy it just kind of led to this exploration of, you know, how do you really make a difference in the sales pipeline? How do you make a difference for your customers, for your employees as, you know, I I think is really important Andy then also, you know, for your, colleagues at your organization that you work with because every organization that really wants to grow, each person in your organization has to understand their role in sales and be acknowledged for that. So so that's what my background. I'm I'm currently oh, thanks thanks, Adam. He says, the irreverence sales girl.

Dianna Geairn [00:04:15]:

What a great title. Great. Yeah. It was fun. It was bringing a dash of dignity to the art of selling. Yeah. So anyway, I I now am, lending my talents to an organization that I'm really passionate about because they're on a journey right now to create the, it's dev tech that I work for, and they're out to create the dev tech wow experience. And I'll we'll get into this a little bit, but I think, you know, they're focused on customer success is what's gonna drive their ultimate success.

Dianna Geairn [00:04:49]:

And that's kind of where I'm starting to shift how you get innovative, is how you create that wow experience for your customers and your prospects.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:04:57]:

Oh, I so I love that. The the DevTech Wow experience. Yeah. It it just the DevTech Wow experience dovetails directly, but making moments that matter Andy making in a movement. And I think one of the things that you and I have always talked about is, like, you can't it's really hard to be wow as a salesperson Andy create a wow experience, and then people leave your sphere. They go to, maybe the demo phase or they go to the production phase or delivery phase, and then it's like, like, well, you know, it there's a disconnect, and that was one of the biggest reasons why, you know, when you at Sauce, we talked about making moments that matter, taking down the silos between marketing, sales, service, operations. It's to deliver the, you know, across the entire, organization, a continuum of experience for the customer, whether they're in the prospect stage or the customer or, you know, referral renewal, etcetera. And quite honestly, I believe so having been in enterprise organizations and and selling enterprise organizations Andy now working with small Abbott sized businesses, I can understand, you know, the organization, the processes, and systems.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:06:13]:

Like, the stuff you have to build to scale, that's what enterprise businesses do really well. Yeah. But we can't take the human out of it. And by delivering these touch points throughout the sales and service process of making moments that matter, This is really giving a competitive edge to smaller, midsized businesses that understand this and can execute it really well, to attract and compel prospects in that process to become, you know, competitive or to win business away from, say, if they're competing in enterprise size market or just competitors who are not getting it. It's a way to compete and be relevant.

Dianna Geairn [00:06:52]:

Oh, I think that's exactly right. So one thing that you touched on that I wanna highlight is, and one thing that I've really loved about what we've been doing with the WOW experience is, we've been very cross functional. Right? So we have people from presales. We have people from marketing. We have people from service delivery. We have the customer success like, the people that are the service delivering people, and they're all in the same conversations about how you create a wow experience.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:07:21]:

Yes.

Dianna Geairn [00:07:21]:

Right? Yes. So one thing that's been so powerful, if you wanna really look to how are you gonna drive business, in the short term and the long term, you really can start focusing on what is it that makes our customers really excited about what we're doing for them. How do we create moments that matter for our customers? So Satya Nadella as you know, my favorite CEO in the whole world, Microsoft. A customer a few years ago he said customer success is the new sales. Andy if you're selling into an enterprise account, a lot of times we look at a logo like a Verizon or a CVS. And what we don't realize is that it looks like one logo, but to them, they can be as many as 560 business units. Right? So inside of your existing customers, you have many, many, many customers. Right? So a lot of your prospecting should be focused on what else can we do for customers that already love us, how do we expand our MRR, our ARR, and those accounts, And you have to be creating a wow experience, but then also how do we create a wow experience for our partners and our alliances that are gonna send us business? And I think a lot of people focus too much on hunting.

Dianna Geairn [00:08:42]:

I mean, hunting new logos is super important. I'm not gonna lie. We can talk about that all Gray. But, but I think how do you make a really great experience for your partners, and your network who's bringing you business? And if you just spent a couple of quarters focusing on those two things, I think you could double your business.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:09:01]:

Right. Okay. Well, in one of the things that's a theme along, you know, focusing on the individual business units and the customers and the existing customers is that compassion, that empathy of what their goals are, what they're trying to do, and that empathetic understanding of, it's not about me. This is a salesperson. No one. It's not about me. Like, they have, you know, 15 salespeople knocking on their door theoretically or metaphorically, I should say, on their LinkedIn in you know, inboxes every day. It's about them.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:09:36]:

So tell me, like, if you can give away no trade secrets, but if you can give us some examples of whether it's the DevTech Wow experience or I know you've got some, hidden secrets in your back pocket. How have you shown people that you understand them or delivered a Wow experience before in the sales process? Some good practical stuff. Yeah.

Dianna Geairn [00:09:58]:

Yeah. It's a great question. I mean one of the reasons that one of the reasons I started to focus on this so much, Sean, was because of what we were doing with the sellout show. And you used to always talk about how it's important to, like, wrap your prospects and your customers up so that nobody so they don't wanna talk to anybody else. Right? Yes. So what are the things that what are some of the ideas that you can generate for yourself about, how can you create that experience where they don't want to talk to anybody else. And mostly if you're having a great experience, you're lazy and you don't want to look for other opportunities. So that works in your favor.

Dianna Geairn [00:10:31]:

But, you know, I think that there's a few things. The first one is that you really need to do your research. There's a lot of research out there. If you're selling enterprise customers, read the 10 k's. As you're reading this research, as you're reading the 10 k's, as you're reading Andy maybe listening to the investor calls that the CEO and CFO are directly talking about what's important, you have to start to hypothesize how do those translate into KPIs for my buyer and the person that I'm talking to. And then as you hypothesize, what it'll do is it'll put you into a mindset. But then when you get in a conversation, shut up and listen because everything that's just that you've just read and researched is old news. So it gives you the opportunity to create hypotheses and say, hey, Sean, you know, your your CEO just said our core objective is to penetrate, goal Andy how does that Gray, and how does that impact what you're supposed to be accomplishing on a day to day basis? But the thing I think you really have to remember is we talk about how we talk about how b to b sales it seems like it's less emotion.

Dianna Geairn [00:11:51]:

It's not personal. Right? It's not b to c.

Rob Durant [00:11:53]:

Oh, right.

Dianna Geairn [00:11:54]:

But I will tell you that you make the wrong decision about the ERP for your company, and it is a far more emotional solution than if you bought the wrong watch. So I'm gonna Gray, the people that you're talking to have lives. They have children. They have career aspirations. They're trying to save for their retirement. They're taking care of their elderly parents. Their dog is sleeping next to them in the office now. Do you know, like, all of these you have to take into account, that these people have real goals and ambitions and what does that mean to their status, with their family, with themselves if they are successful, which leads you to be able to tell the truth about the things that you're not able to help them do.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:12:40]:

I love it.

Dianna Geairn [00:12:41]:

Isn't just about getting a number on the board. It's about making a real difference because those are the people that are gonna stick with you and

Rob Durant [00:12:48]:

vibe with you in the future. Yeah.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:12:50]:

Andy I think so I I love so if I had, like, a visual of what you said, it's really about saying, oh, you take those business Hughes, and then you think about in context to, like, what the, you know, what the quarterly reports or the, fiscal reports are saying Andy you drill down, and you just keep drilling down until you get to how does that impact this individual that I'm trying to have a conversation with. And one of the things that I love too about having this conversation with you is you're always curious. Like, get curious. And curiosity when you're asking questions leads to more questions Andy and and not just, I'm gonna jump in and respond, but be curious about how does that impact you this quarter, or is that is that true? You know, how I think it's funny too that curiosity means asking specific questions, and you have to do your homework to be able to drill down and get to those specific questions. And every day, we're especially with being, like, the chief revenue officer at SaaS. I get bombarded emails every single day, and I respond. And I play well with a lot of salespeople because I'm always trying to learn about the sales process.

Dianna Geairn [00:13:56]:

Yeah.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:13:56]:

And I I see these emails that are about, are you ready to crush your goals? I can help you kill it and da da da da. And, like, I just wanna I just wanna be able to stop work and go home and eat dinner with my family as a business owner. So there's there's no empathy in that. I'm gonna help you crush it or kill there's no curiosity. They're not specifically thinking about me as a business owner or whatever. So, I think that, you know, being curious about your specific person, their role, and your customers, and being customer centric is, like you said, the it's the new playing field. Tell me about, tell me about some of the ways you think AI will is contributing or mucking up, being customer centric Andy leading with empathy and helping us improve the sales experience for our customers and buyers. That's a big thing you and I agree on.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:14:51]:

We need to improve the experience for people and elevate the the profession of sales.

Dianna Geairn [00:14:57]:

For sure. For sure. So I love I love this question. I think AI is gonna be Gray a very powerful role in our ability to focus more on our customers because one of the things that AI will do is all the things that I hate to do, which is I can record a call with a customer. Now I can't do this right now because we're still waiting for walled gardens Andy everybody needs to be really careful about this. If you're using if you're using AI to run a transcription and do a summary so that you can get it into your CRM, you need to make sure that you have a closed system that isn't going to the public. This is super important. Right.

Dianna Geairn [00:15:37]:

Especially, I mean, if you have an NDA in place and all of a sudden you're piping information about what your customers are talking about with you, this is a big problem. But what AI can help you do as you get these walled gardens is to summarize what it is that's happened. So that gets into the CRM. There is nothing more powerful about delivering a wow experience than knowing and remembering your customer all the way through. So it's really the hard work of planning and prepping your calls, but then doing the follow through and getting all that documentation in like a doctor. Like, you want your doctor to know every little thing that's going on with you. You want your salesperson to really remember what you've talked about so you can drive forward. So AI will help with that.

Dianna Geairn [00:16:16]:

Mhmm. AI is doing great stuff. I I'm using Alex, Copilot for sales right now, and I know SalesLoft has some cool tools, and I'm sure there's more out there that direct you. What's the next what's the next step to take with this person? What was the next promise that you made? What showed up on LinkedIn that's a good trigger? You know, all these things that if you could keep track of them, you'd be a massively great salesperson because you'd know where to focus next.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:16:42]:

Mhmm.

Dianna Geairn [00:16:43]:

But all of those things aside, those are helpful. But I will tell you, I'm worried Abbott, like, all and you can already see it in the AI that's coming out of what's what's generated by a human and what's not. Sometimes I'm sure there's really good stuff that you miss, but we'll get more, we'll get more tuned into what's real and what's fake. But if you use these other things to get the clutter out of the way and really then get down to an emotional, meaningful conversation with your customer or your prospect. And I'll tell you one way to know that you've gotten there is that it's okay with them if you text them.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:17:16]:

That's a good sign. Yeah. Hey.

Dianna Geairn [00:17:19]:

If they if they'll take my text, now we've now we've bridged that barrier of, you know, Salesforce. Now we're partners. So, anyway, I don't what do you think? I'm curious what you think about the role that AI plays in this, world of sales.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:17:36]:

From I think it's incredibly interesting, and I always keep something I don't know if you know Jill Rowley. She's now with HubSpot. She said

Rob Durant [00:17:44]:

Oh my god. Oh, I know.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:17:45]:

She said something that, like, brewed its way into my brain, and I've never forgotten it. And I don't know if she originated this, but I certainly remember her saying it. A fool with a tool is still a fool. So you, you know, you AI, if you're using, a lot of times, it depends on the prompts that you're using. You have to use smart prompts. You have to be able to interpret what AI brings out of conversation. I can tell the fools with the tools because I get those emails on a daily basis. Yeah.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:18:15]:

That's, especially funny having just merged our organizations to a new business entity last year. So AI will go grab snippets of things that are out there and, you know, aggregate it Andy then spit out an email to me that's got to me, that's got my partner's name, my old business name, and, like, just it's like, oh, this is not cool. Oh, look. I I just thought I was cool. So it's like, oh, okay. Delete. So no one's going Andy and checking it's like no one's going and checking their work. And the crappy thing about it is that there's people that are like, oh, it's just a percentage of Hough.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:18:53]:

So we're okay with that. We're okay if we screw up or we're it's just like it's like the, you know, the negative part of the conversion. This is this it's the it's the stuff that doesn't convert. We're okay with that percentage of fail. But I might I'm never gonna use your tool because you showed me how it doesn't work. It's like when I remember. I think you and I actually talked about this one time on our old sellout show. I received an email from a company trying to sell me on, doing a demo for their video tool to use in the sales process.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:19:26]:

Ask me if there was a video in my email.

Dianna Geairn [00:19:30]:

No. Oh my god.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:19:32]:

So it it's just like, you know, there's good and oops. There's good and there's bad. And, you know, there is so we use it a lot, actually, in, different aspects for our clients. So from the digital marketing piece of it, you know, helping understand the personas and what drives them, to then how do we leverage that in the sales conversations and lead magnets and resources and all the kinds of stuff, but you still have to apply the human empathetic understanding of it. I will tell you one of the most powerful tools that I'm using in my, sales journey. And let me also just Gray, as the CRO of a growing and scaling company, I still do cold calls. Because if I'm going to talk the talk Andy build strategies and train people, I better walk the walk and make sure this stuff works. But we use a predictive persona tool so that before I reach out and, try to have a conversation, I'm gonna know where are they on the disc.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:20:31]:

Are they an analyst? Do they want case studies or numbers? Or are they an influencer, an eye personality, and they want, you know, metaphors and enthusiasm, or are they a d? They're the captain. So there are a lot of great ways to leverage it in the sales process to make people feel understood, to make your prospects feel like you get them Andy you are empathetic. And it's not necessarily manipulative. It's just tuning into them, and then you're able to, you know, meet them where they are with some curiosity.

Dianna Geairn [00:21:00]:

So those are so exciting. Yeah. I anything that you can do to get yourself more in your prospects or your customers world. Mhmm. I mean, I don't have the time to become a psychologist and know how to break down somebody's, you know, online persona that helps me communicate with them more effectively. I would I would love if somebody took the time to figure that out about me before they got on the if they start talking numbers, I'm like, but you Abbott you start talking good ideas. Yeah. I think also the one thing that AI is gonna do for us so we're just at the beginning for sure.

Dianna Geairn [00:21:35]:

The one thing that it's gonna do for us is unlock what we like to talk about so much is your natural genius. So, you know, Sean and I have shared some ideas here today, but what's gonna really make your job sing is to give yourself the permission to make a lot of mistakes and, you know, make sure you're Andy organization that allows you to make mistakes. And if you're not, you should probably go find 1. Yep. I always say 13 big mistakes a year, which has helped me really scale some great Abbott, but also, you know, unlock your own natural genius. Try some stuff. You've got it inside of you.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:22:10]:

Yeah. I it's hard, I think, especially for, the next generation of salespeople coming up Andy to to look around and think, okay. Well, what mistakes can I make? And so if you're a sales leader, if you're here and you're on this and you're a sales leader, help grow and encourage your sales team members, especially the up and coming ones to make mistakes. Let them know where those boundaries are. Do it. What did Jill Konrath call it? We Hughes this in, one of our keynotes, a pre mortem.

Rob Durant [00:22:41]:

Do a

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:22:41]:

pre mortem. What's the worst thing that can happen? It's with a lot of young people from coaching, you know, girls in volleyball to girl scouts to, fresh out of college, recruiters and such, and they think that they should automatically be good at something. And, you know, making mistakes is really scary, so you have to let people know where the boundaries are and what's gonna happen. If you make a mistake, what's the worst thing that can happen, so that, you know, that's how you discover new things is by, you know, potentially screwing up. So that's a great way to to suggest that. And and the other thing, the flip side of this too is we're touching a little bit on making moments that matter for your team members. So as a salesperson, rarely is it ever you're going to many and and many of you out there have sales teams that are, you know, divided and segmented into BDRs and then account executives, etcetera. You have to make moments that matter in the employee experience too.

Shawn Karol Sandy [00:23:40]:

Handing off to build trust, to build a continuum of experience for your customers means that you have to make those moments that matter for your team members too. I know, there's some ways to do that. Do you have any insights as to ways to connect with your team members and create a wow experience for them along with?

Dianna Geairn [00:23:58]:

For sure. I just think that organizationally, you need to have it. We have a system called Hough Fives where, it's a public. You can give a public Hough five to a person. And I think the thing to remember is a salesperson gets a commission. Everybody else gets paid what they were gonna get paid anyway. So make sure that you do things that acknowledge them in a meaningful and even if possible public way. I think you froze up, Sean.

Dianna Geairn [00:24:35]:

Okay. So I think we're at the end of this, idea. I think that if Sean were here to finish us off, she would say, you know, let's definitely combine ourselves as a community to find different ways that make moments that matter so that it drives our pipelines and our customer experience.

Rob Durant [00:24:58]:

Diana, that was fantastic. Thank you. Yes. Somehow we we, lost Sean. Sorry for that. How can people get in touch with you? How can they learn more?

Dianna Geairn [00:25:11]:

Yeah. So, I'm always happy to talk with anyone. The best place to find me is LinkedIn. So, it's Diana Guerin, g e a I r n. And, you know, direct ask to connect, but make sure you include a note about why you wanna connect because I like to connect with people that I wanna have conversations with. So, that's the best Abbott Tim, Rob. Thanks.

Rob Durant [00:25:35]:

Awesome. Thank you so much for being a part of this. To our audience, we will have a podcast. We will have a newsletter where you can find contact information for both Diana and Sean. And, I I just wanted to say you can also find us at salestv.live to follow-up on any of these others. Diana, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. To our audience, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

Dianna Geairn [00:26:02]:

Thanks, Rob. Bye.

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