Improving Sales Performance
Looking for sales performance strategies? Hoping to grow revenue? Join Matt Sunshine, CEO at The Center for Sales Strategy, where he and industry experts work toward a singular goal: Improving Sales Performance.
Improving Sales Performance
#WomenInSales Month 2022 with Katelin Tinley & Jaleigh Long
At Improving Sales Performance, we are proud to be celebrating Women in Sales Month once again.
For all of October, we have an amazing slate of women sales leaders who will be sharing their unique insights.
From offering advice for sales managers new and old to surveying the anticipated landscape of sales in the years ahead, when it comes to Improving Sales Performance, these ladies know how it's done.
Joining Matt for the entire month is Stephanie Downs, SVP & Senior Consultant at The Center for Sales Strategy.
Today, our guests are Katelin Tinley, Vice President and General Manager at Cox Media Group New York City, and Jaleigh Long, Vice President and Market Manager at Cox Media Group Atlanta and Athens.
Together, Katelin and Jaleigh share a ton of essential observations. Such as:
- The significance of having an open and transparent relationship with your team
- The power of going through the customer journey and knowing potential problems before the meeting
- And the importance of being seen as a resource, for your team and for your clients, to help guide them through disruption.
ABOUT IMPROVING SALES PERFORMANCE:
Improving Sales Performance is hosted by Matt Sunshine who speaks with guests that are thought leaders, experts, and industry gurus, to share their insight, tips, and knowledge on various topics that help companies improve sales performance.
CONNECT:
CSS:
https://www.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/
Matt Sunshine:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mattsunshine/
Stephanie Downs:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniewdowns/
Katelin Tinley:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/katelinzaretsky/
Jaleigh Long:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaleighlong/
TIMESTAMPS:
2:49 The importance of a good company culture
5:35 The power of having open and honest relationships with your team
7:41 Culture and Engagement have come up in every episode this season
9:45 Agility is key
11:03 Be that much more prepared for meetings in virtual spaces
12:30 Go through the customer journey before asking for a meeting
14:43 Recruitment is harder than ever before
17:42 Our greatest responsibility as leaders is to find the new leaders
19:17 Learn what drives your team, then drive them
21:57 Guiding colleagues and clients through disruption
22:44 The future is exciting
23:47 Wrap-up
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize and maybe even exceed their goals. Here we chat with thought leaders, experts in gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries. This season, we are celebrating women in Sales month by talking to some amazing women sales pros. Joining me for the entire month of October is Stephanie Downs, SVP and senior consultant at the Center for Sales Strategy. She'll be sharing her insights along with our fabulous guests. I'm your host, Matt Sunshine, managing partner at the Center for Sales Strategy, a sales performance consulting company.
Stephanie Downs:We're so proud to be celebrating Women in Sales Month for all of October. We have an amazing slate of women's sales leaders who will be sharing their unique insights from offering advice for sales managers, new or more experienced, to discussing the anticipated landscape of sales and years ahead when it comes to improving sales performance. These ladies know how it's done. I'm Stephanie down, Senior Vice President at the Center for Sales Strategy, and I'll be joining Matt Sunshine on the show for the entire month of October. Today our guest for Katelin Tinley, Vice President and General Manager at Cox Media Group, New York City, and Jaleigh Long Vice President and market manager at Cox Media Group, Atlanta and Athens. Together, Katelin and Jaleigh share a ton of essential observations such as the significance of having an open and transparent relationship with your team, the power of going through the customer journey and knowing potential problems before the meeting, and the importance of being seen as a resource for your team and for your clients to help guide them through disruption.
Matt Sunshine:Stephanie, I've been waiting all day for this conversation. I'm so excited. We have amazing guests and uh, let's just jump right in. Stephanie, take it away.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, sounds good. Okay. So Jaleigh, I'm coming to you first. And Katelin, I'm gonna follow up with you for this question, but so Jaleigh, what are the three, four, or five things that you look at across the sales department to know you're on track? You know, maybe consider, uh, either performance metrics or leading indicators. Mm-hmm.
Jaleigh long:<affirmative>. Um, sure. So I would say there's a couple of different things right away, and I think that is the culture overall, making sure that you have a winning team and a team that is overall happy with what they're doing and why they're doing it and who they're working with. Um, I would also say activity, um, you know, making sure that, that the team feels like they've got the support from the resources and the leaders and making sure that you've got a great team around your top performers and that activity is on track. I would also talk about relationships. Are they investing enough time in those important customer relationships and what do they need to go deeper into those relationships? You can get so much from, whether it's a phone call or a in-person meeting, or an email or a text or zoom call, whatever it might be. But digging in on what a relationship is like, why does someone need your help? Why are they coming to you? Why are they choosing to work with you? Is it because of what you have with your product and solutions? Or is it because the way you can solve a problem and maybe your credibility and how you've worked with them in the past?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. You know what, um, so Katelin, I'm gonna come to you, but I just have a thought on that first hearing you describe that. It makes me think about soft measures and hard measures and, and we have that in our organizations, right? And thinking about the relationship piece, that's a soft measure, but we know there can be a hard measure outcome when we have that relationship and that trusted and valued partnership and we're delivering results for clients. Um, and I'm glad you said that cause it did, it sparked that thought. Katelin, anything you would add to that?
Katelin Tinely:Yeah, I mean, I agree with all of those as well. Um, yeah. But, um, other than relationships, those mean nothing. Just I look at total revenue, but underneath that, I look at new business and make sure that we're controlling what we control and bringing in that new business. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, I look at also revenue share in the market for opportunities there. Um, and then activities big. What are the quality meetings that we're going on? What are the quality pitches? Um, and making sure that those are all, um, up to, up to standards. Yeah. And then sales engagement. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, Jaleigh's point too is how is your team engaged? Are they asking questions? Are they happy? Are they being motivated and driven? Um, is all key to sales success.
Stephanie Downs:So follow up question for both of you on that, because you both used, well, you said engagement and uh, Julie, you said culture. I'm curious how, um, how do you track that one? And um, that may not be the exact right way of asking that, but how do you track it and what are some things that you do to ensure that is happening? Katelin, you wanna go first? Oh, go Jaleigh. Go for it. Sure.
Jaleigh long:So whenever I think about knowing if you're relationships and where your culture are internally and with your team internally mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that's having, that's also having an open relationship with your team. Yeah. They can come to you when they need you. They can come with to you when they don't, I mean, we care about our team's success personally, just as much as professionally. And when they know that they've got that support around them, then we can have those open, honest, and candid conversations about what's going on with our business. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> business is changing too fast to think that, okay, have we done a check in or a checkup with someone? No. Like, you always have to have that pulse there, but we also have to have that with our people mm-hmm.<affirmative> and making sure that they know that they are supported along with, with the guidance to get through things that they've never had to go through before. Situations are popping up on an operations level with our clients that they're coming to us to help them solve and we should be there. Business acumen has got to be growing, and the only way we can do that is understand what our people know and what they don't know. Mm-hmm.
Katelin Tinely:<affirmative>. Yeah. Yeah. And just to piggyback that too, um, you can tell a lot when you walk into the sales pit and you can tell a lot in a sales meeting. Um, and then that can be a quick, you know, there's been plenty of times where you go into a sales meeting at some something's off here. So that can be just be a quick check in with your people, pulling them in one at a time, what's going on, and identifying if there is something that's wrong. And a lot of times it can just be an easy miscommunication or an easy fix there. And then this, we used to do something called Cox Tails, and we would invite our top clients out for these networking events and sometimes a good check in. And after Covid we realized we used to have these quarterly and after Covid we didn't. So doing a quick, okay, who would we invite to this? And making sure that, do we have, we still have those key 10 to 15 clients that we have that really strong relationship with, that we know if we emailed them today, they would be at an event next week, um, to get together. Nice. Yeah. Very nice. You
Matt Sunshine:Know, Stephanie, Stephanie, one of the things, and it's, I always like to, we've done a, we've done a bunch of these podcasts over, over the past couple of weeks and, and we've spoken to some just incredible leaders of people that I have a tremendous amount of respect for. And one thing or two things that is, that have come up every single time, and there's really something to it, is number one, the importance of culture. Culture without it out culture and engagement has come up on every single podcast that we've recorded over the past two weeks, and I don't think it would've come up the same way had we done this same thing four or five years ago. I think right now this is just really, really important. And the second thing that has come up, and it is interesting cuz you and I are in, are leading tfm the past few weeks Yeah. Is the importance of leading indicators and, and managing a pipeline correctly versus just managing, pending, you know, what are you gonna close this week? Right. That, that conversation around pipeline and leading indicators. And Katelin, the way you articulated what those leading indicators are, because it's, it is interesting, and I don't know if you guys are experiencing this too, that not everyone knows what a leading indicator is. Yep. And they, they, they know to use that word, but they don't actually know what a leading indicator is. And I thought that your description of, you know, you know, the activity and the appointments and the proposals and the new activity and the new bus, those are the exact right things, but it is interesting how that has come up every single time. It's, it's worth noting and paying attention to.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, yeah. For sure. So thinking about Jaleigh, um, from your perspective, so thinking about, um, just sales leaders today, what are the highest priorities or the biggest rocks that they have to be focused on? Should be and have to be<laugh>. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>.
Jaleigh long:I think, I think it's gotta be agility. And I think we have to understand, um, and know where we can come in and help along the way. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, we have sales member, sales team members that have a different variety of backgrounds, which is great for the business. It's exciting time for the business. Um, experience levels are very, very different too. So we've got to be able to pivot and adjust our style to the person that we're working with as sales managers today. Um, not everybody grew up in radio like, like we did before, and taking for granted some of those kind of, um, um, knowhow or, or, um, ways that we used to do things. It just doesn't work and it shouldn't, It's, it's, it's, it's a different day and, um, we, we've got to be more agile to working with our, our teams.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. That's another theme. Matt's point a minute ago about things that we are hearing on a consistent basis. Agility is another one that we're hearing, um, and complexity of the positions and our jobs today. That's another consistent thing. Katelin, what would you add to that?
Katelin Tinely:You know, we used to, I used to, we used to talk about quality meetings and making sure that we have the right quality meetings. And I think Covid kind of changed things where things came up last minute, so, well, I got on the phone with them and I got to have this conversation. So now we talk a lot about prepared, prepared quality meetings. We have so many resources and access to data that every one of our calls needs to be
Stephanie Downs:Prepared. Yeah.
Katelin Tinely:We need to be asset to our clients, never wasting their time. Um, and I also think what's very important is for legged calls, you know, man managers on a call, you have a higher propensity to close that deal. So how are we setting ourselves up to be able to get out on calls with our people? Um, and also that's a great coaching opportunity.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, for sure. So staying on that for just a second, I'm curious your thoughts on this. I, I love the thinking of prepared quality calls for all of the reasons that you just said during covid. It feels like the sales process to me has changed and in a variety of ways over the last, um, couple of years with that. I think us being more prepared going into those, us having more of a business acumen, to your point, Jaleigh, or getting less time in front of clients, are there other things like that to you that are really important to note in the sales process that's different and that we as leaders need to be responding to?
Jaleigh long:Yeah. Um, we should do enough research to know what the likely problems are.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah.
Jaleigh long:Yeah. Before we get the meaning, before we ask for time, before we are asking our, our partners inside the building too, to also dedicate more time to a client, to a campaign. We should go through that customer journey.
Stephanie Downs:Yep.
Jaleigh long:Um, and know ahead of time what the problem is that we can solve for them. Mm-hmm.
Stephanie Downs:<affirmative>. Yeah. And I think, um, to that point too, it, I'm hearing a lot about having a category focus as part of the sales process as well and the importance of focusing on a vertical. And I think that also helps us to be more prepared and be more of an expert and, uh, have better insights to share and have more of a business acumen. Um, part of the conversation just reminded me when you were saying that a minute ago, uh, Katelin, so question. How has, when you really think about the role of a sales leader in the organization, how have you seen that evolve in the last three to five years compared to today? Katelin,
Katelin Tinely:You know, post covid we're more virtual, and I think that path to getting back to in person is longer than we thought it was going to be. So it's adjusting for that. And I think, you know, to Jaleigh's point, people have less time. We're expecting more out of us. And, you know, when you're in that virtual space, you need to come prepared and with your information and with your data and not, and not waste their time. Um, I also think that there's more products, there's greater competitions and there's more distractions. Um, so how do you keep yourself focused on those priorities with so many more distractions and so many more products and focusing on solving clients' problems?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. Back to the use of the word, um,"agile"<laugh>, right? We have to be much more nimble than we've been before. Right. So Jaleigh, how have you, um, you know, really seen the role of a sales leader evolve over the last few years? Mm-hmm.
Jaleigh long:<affirmative>, I think with sales leaders, um, recruitment is harder than ever before. And whether that is for an individual contributor as a media consultant or an account manager or support staff, I also think when you think about the director of sales level level and you're hiring for new sales managers or, or, or other positions in other leaders, whenever you're hiring for a, a leader, um, in your sales department, recruitment has definitely changed. Um, so being intentional, it's kind of kinda back to prospecting when you think about it. It
Stephanie Downs:Is.
Jaleigh long:And, and making sure that you have got your ideal candidate in mind. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, I think you're going to hear lots of things from, from potential candidates, their wants, their needs, what's important to them. Is it location, is it title, is it money? Is it re overall responsibility? Right? You have to dig in deeper on exactly what is going to get that person, that candidate to choose us as much as we choose them. Yeah.
Stephanie Downs:And we have to sell on that more than we had to in the, in the past. Right. We've gotta sell why to come work for us more than ever before.
Jaleigh long:I, I, I would say inform and, and I really, yeah, I like that. I, I really would say inform because I think there are some perceptions out there that may not be accurate about what we do, the industry we're in, the customers we serve, So really informing them how much fulfillment we get from watching our team, watching our sellers, watching our leaders grow and figuring out their career path. Um, along with solving problems, along with the marketing, along with achieving business goals. So I think it's more, it's, it's a, it's a longer process, but you better have a process for recruitment. Yeah.
Stephanie Downs:You need the process. There's gotta be a recruitment strategy in place. Let
Matt Sunshine:Me, let me follow up on that just because on a podcast that we, we were on yesterday, someone brought up one of the big differences between now and perhaps five years ago. What, there's just less managers than ever before. And because of that, there's not a, um, there's not a succession plan, there's not a, there's not a bench of of managers. And this was, this was, uh, I think it only came up yesterday. It was, and I just, Do you, are you guys seeing that that same thing? Is, is that different than it was, Is that a good thing? Is that gonna change? What do you think, Katelin or originally, either one,
Katelin Tinely:That there'll be less sales managers or
Matt Sunshine:Yeah. Like,
Katelin Tinely:Just doing it
Matt Sunshine:Well there, I mean,
Stephanie Downs:Or no consolidated, like consolidated positions even.
Jaleigh long:I think, I think that's our greatest responsibility as leaders is to tap people on the shoulders to discover their talents, to understand who will make a great leader for your team and for the future and for the business. And diversity is key there. That is what makes this such a thriving industry as well. Whether it's the communities you serve or the customers that you have, or the ones that you're trying to attain. And that is the greatest responsibility for our leader is to go out and define future leaders. Right.
Katelin Tinely:That's a question that I, when we inter any inter any sales interview, I always ask that question is, do you have interest in sales management? And that is a huge plus. If they say yes, that, you know, we, we need that. You're right. I mean, when I look at the team, you know, when I look at our teams now, it's, there's less people that have an interest in Yeah. In sales management, right? Sure. So I think finding those people, finding the right salespeople, but also having, finding people that have that desire is important because we need, we need a greater bench for sure.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. And
Jaleigh long:I don't think managers, the number of managers are, are going away or decreasing. I think it, that's an industry thing. There are tons of partners and media groups that we work with every single day that have leaders and managers and coaches within their organization. We have to get outside, Right. And see what they're doing and look at that talent as well. Mm-hmm.
Stephanie Downs:<affirmative>. That's
Katelin Tinely:Good.
Stephanie Downs:So Katelin, if you were giving advice to a new sales leader, you know, you were hiring somebody and onboarding a new sales leader, what advice would you give them?
Katelin Tinely:Well, I would say first learn about your team. Learn about every single member of your team. Yeah. Talk to them. Know what drives them, and then drive them. Um, recruit to recruit, uh, you know, never stop recruiting, you know, Julie, I mean, it's changed so much. There's so much more of, there's so much more competition. It's so much harder to keep, you know, to, to retain great sales talent. So being aware of what your a talent wants mm-hmm.<affirmative> and then driving them and finding more a's, and then also failing fast if it's not gonna work out. Yes. You probably know it pretty soon and don't, you know, try not to let that drag on longer than it needs to drag on so you can have a, a team that's that, that has more a on it,
Stephanie Downs:Right? Yes. So constantly recruit, constantly, um, uh, grow and develop them based off what's important to them. Right. Knowing their talents,<laugh>, conducting growth guides,<laugh>, lot of things that you can do. What advice would you give Julie?
Jaleigh long:Invest in yourself. Yeah. And whether that is, um, reading on your own, getting a fantastic mentor mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that is a real life relationship where you're also giving and getting<laugh>. Um, but, and, but achieve success. So you can get to the, to, to what's next. If that's the way you're built, if that is what you want, but you've got to, um, to bet on yourself and stretch yourself. Go outside, be a part of as many projects as you can for your company. Again, if that is how you're built,
Stephanie Downs:You dig.
Jaleigh long:Um, there's lots of work to be done. And I promised you, um, once you do stretch yourself and get outside and put yourself on a committee, put yourself on a project to do more and ask more, you will learn so much for you. Yeah. What you want and what you can achieve.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. One of my favorite quotes, and I have no clue where this came from, I mean we've all heard it in a variety of ways, is that, you know, you're not learning, if you're in your comfort zone mm-hmm.<affirmative>, so I like that about stretch yourself, do something different, try new learning and development things. Um, cuz it really does, it makes us stronger as sales leaders when we're doing that. Okay. So let's do a look forward. So thinking the next three to five years, how do you think, um, you know, sales organizations are going to evolve? You can interpret that any way that you would like Caitlin coming to you first.
Katelin Tinely:I just think, you know, right now, especially, we're experiencing so much disruption, not only in our industry, but the industries that we're servicing mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So, and I think there's gonna be even greater consolidation. So we need to be more of a resource. We need to be that one stop shop for our clients, and we need to have those relationships so that we're the one that gets the meeting, we're the one that gets that call and we're the one that gets the buy. Yeah. Um, really having those strong relationships in a, in a growing, in a ever increasing consolidated space.
Stephanie Downs:Yes. And that goes back to all of the things we were talking at about at the beginning of the podcast, Right. Of building those relationships and having a culture that fuels that to happen. I mean, all of that. Julie, what about you? How do you see it evolving?
Jaleigh long:Yeah, I mean, the future excites me when I think about where we've come from and where we're going and how more acceptable it is for each person to be true to themself.
Stephanie Downs:Mm-hmm.<affirmative>,
Jaleigh long:So you can accept who you are. So the person across the desk can also be them, their self as well. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I think that's exciting and I think we're gonna find more opportunities when we allow people to do that. Um, automation is clearly a part of this. Yeah. And while that might feel technical to some people, as long as you feel like you're at a place where you can be you, you will make that your own
Stephanie Downs:<laugh>.
Jaleigh long:And and I think that's exciting because other people will feel like, I've got, we've had a conversation this week, I've gotta stick to the rules. How do I do this? And Matt, you said it, how do we teach people how to break the rules? Yeah. And I think as long as you're true to yourself and you're doing what's right for the business, you can't lose. Yeah. And that's exciting.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah. Very much so. Matt, any final thoughts?
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, a couple of things. Um, you know, I always like to, at, at this part of the, of these podcasts, really talk about maybe something that stood out, something that I, I thought was, was really telling really important. And Jaleigh, you've you've framed it up in just one word. You said it, you said it in one word, and I, and I can't put enough emphasis on it. You said"caring," Right? When you show people that you care, that really goes a long, long way. I, I don't think that we can, um, I don't think that can be overstated. I, I think you absolutely have to care. And I don't know if you can teach caring, right? It's kind of like one of those things. We talk about curiosity. I can ask, I can teach you how to ask questions. I can't teach you how to be curious. I can show you tactics to care, but I can't teach you how to really care, care about someone's success, care about the way they c you can grow and develop them. Whether that is to be a sales leader or to be the very best sales person, or to be an account manager or to take on another role. There's so many opportunities. And I think that when we can find people that have that caring in them, um, we can teach'em a lot of the other things. And so I just really wanted to emphasize that. Cause I really do think it's, it's an important piece and, and I didn't want us to overlook it. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So with that, I wanna say thank you Caitlin and Julie for joining us. It has been our pleasure to, to chat with you and I know everyone listening got a ton out of it. So thank you for being our guest. If you want to connect with Julie or Caitlin, we will put their LinkedIn information in the show notes so you can grab it there. And we look forward to, uh, seeing you or listening with you on another podcast in the future for improving sales performance. See you guys, This has been improving sales performance. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, join us every week by clicking that subscribe button. For more on the topics covered in the show, visit our website, the center for sales strategy.com. There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance. And if you'd like to connect with any of us, including today's guests, please do. You can find our contact information in the show notes. Until next time, get out there and sell.
