Paul M. Caffrey (00:00.95)
And as I mentioned, I'm delighted to be joined by Chief Sales Energiser and host of Small Talk for C... Let me start that again.
Alice Heiman (00:10.918)
sales talk. Sometimes I mess it up on my own podcast.
Paul M. Caffrey (00:12.222)
Yeah, I don't know why it's a small thing.
It's yeah, it's quite funny. And the funny thing is, I've been podcasting, she's for 11 or 12 years and I speak for a living. So I'm actually going to get this recorded because it's funny.
Alice Heiman (00:25.118)
I know, but even that sometimes it's just like you get in a mood and then you're, I don't know what happens.
Paul M. Caffrey (00:31.174)
Yeah. Okay. Well, look, I'm delighted to be joined by Chief Sales Energizer and host of Sales Talk for CEO's podcast, Alice Hyman. Alice, how are you doing?
Alice Heiman (00:44.295)
I'm great, how are you doing?
Paul M. Caffrey (00:46.55)
I am doing really good. And this is a conversation I've been looking forward to because. You tend to get things off to an interesting start. I noticed when I was doing the research for this, that you are providing services to CEOs, yet you call them out as potentially being the problem.
Alice Heiman (01:08.001)
That is true. I often find that the CEO is the sales prevention department at their own company.
Paul M. Caffrey (01:15.89)
Yeah, sales. I mean, I remember many years ago, we used to joke about that. We used to have a sales prevention officer. Well, for us, it was actually the technology team who were trying to kibosh the solutions we were selling. It definitely wasn't the CEO. What causes a CEO to block sales?
Alice Heiman (01:33.982)
Well, obviously they don't do it on purpose, right? I mean, no one wants to block their own sales, but they do realize pretty quickly once we get into a conversation about it. You see, the CEO is really the only one at the company who has the cache or let's say power, right? To make things happen in different departments. So as the sales leader, I might need legal
to hurry up and get my contracts through, but I can't make legal do anything because they don't report to me, right? And so if a CEO allows legal to continue taking two and three weeks on the contracts, that's sales prevention because sales will go away. You know, now with really big complex sales, like the ones that I work on with my clients,
Paul M. Caffrey (02:24.077)
Yeah.
Alice Heiman (02:30.95)
You know, these big companies understand the contracts take time, but it is really annoying to the buyer and to the seller, of course, when we can't get a contract through legal in less than three weeks. And trust me, it's happening everywhere. So that's just one small example of being the sales prevention department. One other is just simply a CEO who maybe was in sales years ago or...
Paul M. Caffrey (02:46.573)
Yeah.
Alice Heiman (02:59.09)
They started their company years ago and did the selling, even though they had no sales background. And sales happened a certain way. But now 10 or 20 years later, even five years later, sales is very different. Our go-to-market strategies have changed completely. The buyer's behavior has changed. And so we have to use modern methods. And a CEO who is insisting on salespeople continuing to do...
the type of selling that worked years ago is just getting us nowhere. And the salespeople, what are they gonna do? That's their leader. They have to do what they're being told, but they're failing and it's miserable for everyone. That's sales prevention.
Paul M. Caffrey (03:43.378)
Yeah. Yes, there's so many things, and I'm sure people are listening and maybe thinking, oh, that could be me. I'm not wanting to admit that. Um, I mean, with the story, as we were talking before we got started, you're working mainly with companies that are five, 10, 15 years in, and are relatively established in their market. However.
You know, a switch has probably went off or maybe that CEO or founder, maybe they want to become the chairman. Maybe they want to take investment. Maybe they want to actually exit the business at some point. Um, what, what is the first place a CEO should look to start if they've got that mindset of wanting to change something.
Alice Heiman (04:26.93)
Well, usually when a CEO comes to me, it's through a referral. Someone else has said, oh, I've worked with Alice. I think she can help you. So they find me or maybe they've heard me speak at a conference. Like last week I was at the ACE Tech conference in Whistler. So, you know, I'm around these CEOs all the time. And what happens is they have a flat quarter or, um, they've gone through too many VPs of sales and they, they keep finding themselves.
Paul M. Caffrey (04:41.355)
Ah, really?
Alice Heiman (04:56.722)
back in the position of having to run sales because they can't find a good sales leader and they're not understanding why, right? Either they, it's usually they're making a bad choice or more likely they have set this person up for failure, right, they set this VP up for failure because they really don't know what the VP is supposed to be doing or the head of salesperson is supposed to be doing. So they've come to me because they're struggling with that.
or they know that they're a 10 million and they got there fairly easily, but in order to be ready to sell, they need to be a 20 million and they don't know how to go from 10 to 20 or whatever that gap is. So that's when I usually get to meet them. And they tell me about what's happening and what they'd like to happen. And we start to dig in there to see what should happen next. So typically,
We have to change their go-to-market strategy almost always. Either they have to get their sellers up to speed on the more modern methods so that they're getting better results, or they need to change the structure of their sales organization to support the way a buyer wants to buy, right? They had it set up and it was working for a time, but it's not gonna work in the future.
Paul M. Caffrey (06:14.29)
Okay.
Alice Heiman (06:20.39)
So we have to dig into that. And usually the first thing I dig into is what's happening with your current customers? Because it's so much easier to get more business from current customers than it is to go out and get, you know, brand new business, land new logos. That's a lot harder and a lot more costly. So that's typically the first thing I dig into when they come to me and I say, well, let's take a look at what's happening with your existing customers. Are they satisfied?
Are they more than satisfied? Are they loyal? Are they successful using what you sold them? And we examine all of that and then determine which of these customers, based on the answer, if they're not even satisfied, we're not going to go back and sell them more. We're going to go get them satisfied. But if they're satisfied or loyal, then what else can we bring to them that's going to help them be successful? And the revenue can start flowing in very quickly there, where it would flow in much more slowly.
Paul M. Caffrey (06:48.408)
Okay.
Alice Heiman (07:18.242)
as we just focus all of our attention on going out to get new logos.
Paul M. Caffrey (07:22.614)
Yeah. And there are so many different things that we could jump down into there. I mean, going through a lot of VP of sales, if you're going to bring in a VP of sales, you've kind of got to let them do their thing. If you're going to be dictating to them, what's the point in having them there? And if they're maybe not aligned with what you expect, that's going to be a big problem. So it sounds like there's a lot of work done on a strategic level to actually get clear on where you want to go and broadly speaking, how you're going to get there.
Alice Heiman (07:52.314)
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing you said about, you know, letting the VP do their job. Well, if you hire the right VP, right, and you are aligned and they understand your vision, and they understand how to sell in today's marketplace, what the customers need, and they understand the customer focus, then you've got to let them go, right? But you've got to hire somebody smarter than you, right? So that you trust them and you believe in them.
And together you can collaborate to get where you want to go versus struggling and, you know, butting heads on what should be done. And that's what I see happening a lot.
Paul M. Caffrey (08:28.362)
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's so interesting when you see, I mean, I remember speaking with a CEO and they outlined their vision of how they wanted to grow the business and then speak into the VP of sales. And then the VP of sales was very against outbound and didn't want to do any of it and wanted to work on the existing accounts. However, that was not in sync with what the CEO were thinking. Needless to say, that didn't last very long. You know, they did part ways probably sooner.
than they should have. And that obviously stunts the growth for company. So when it comes to setting.
Alice Heiman (09:01.55)
It does. It's done your growth and it sets you back, Paul. I mean, it does both because you have to now start over again and put more effort into that, right? And today, really, everybody needs to have a really good inbound motion and a really great outbound motion. You just can't do it with one anymore. And companies that are trying are really feeling miserably. So we really have to think about that.
and how we're going to market.
Paul M. Caffrey (09:32.03)
Yeah. And I mean, so often I come across, you know, let's say the mature companies that we're talking about. And they've had a level of success and they've got the senior salespeople in place and they don't want to disturb or change what they do. They know they're not following best practice, but they are producing. So it's sort of like, let's leave them to it. And then there's the other side. We're going to bring some people in and we're going to have that fresh take and we're going to do that outbound motion. But the challenge is.
that I've come across and that CEO is sharing with me is, well, how many do I bring in? Do I bring in appointment setters? Do I bring in closers? Do I bring in somebody who does both? What advice do you give to someone who's maybe at that 10 million with those steady producers they don't want to maybe disturb, but then they wanna get to 20 and they're potentially looking at building an outbound motion.
Alice Heiman (10:24.39)
Yeah, you know, I think it's going to be a little bit different for every company because it really does depend on the buyer journey, right? So if you can do a product-led type of motion, you know, that would be important, but not all companies can do that, right? And if you have recurring revenue, you know, that's to be considered as well. So it really depends what you're selling and who you're selling it to. You know, if you're in manufacturing, if you're in...
software as a service, SaaS, or if you're in selling software that's not software as a service, which still is out there, believe it or not, or any other technical components, parts, pieces, trucks, whatever it is you're selling, it really depends. So if you start with your buyer journey, it will inform you on what you need in terms of humans to touch those buyers. So in some cases,
There are companies that I know that have no salespeople at all. They have a find, try, buy model, which is product-led, right? And then once people get in there, they have a customer support or customer service, probably both in many cases. So customer support to handle inbound, you know, this doesn't work kind of stuff, and customer success to say, how is it working? Are you successful? Are you getting what you need? Do you need to talk to a...
are support people. And are you ready to buy, right? Are you ready to convert? But they're not salespeople per se, they're more about helping you use the product and be successful with it so that you will buy. So that's a model that's working really well in many companies today, business to business. And when I say business to business, business to consumer, I'm not talking about retail products and stuff, but...
Paul M. Caffrey (12:07.906)
Okay.
Alice Heiman (12:21.582)
salespeople who might be buying a software for themselves, but then it leads to their company buying that software, right? So we have some models like that with Nimble and Scratchpad and some other companies that are selling sales-related tools and things. And I think for a lot of software as a service, it's possible to have people try it before they buy it, right? But that's not going to be the way for everyone. So...
Paul M. Caffrey (12:49.492)
Okay.
Alice Heiman (12:50.27)
you know, you're going to need some outbound model where you're reaching out to people most likely to buy from you. Where outbound really fails is when we're not reaching out to the right people and when they have never heard of us, of course. It makes outbound really, really hard. So those two things have to happen if you're going to have a good outbound motion. But with that, on the other side, the inbound motion has to be running as well. So
on putting out all the great content and being wherever your customers are at trade shows, at events, online, on social media, right? So both of those have to be in tandem so that people are aware of you, they've heard of you. So when they get a call, they're like, oh yeah, I do, I've heard of that. I need that, right? So that email, LinkedIn.
phone call kind of a cadence that you're going to do has only it's only going to work if you've also got some great content out there that people have read some social media posts some videos a podcast a show webinars right things that people can engage in so they really are very intertwined.
Paul M. Caffrey (14:10.554)
OK, so then we're looking at sales and we want to drum up leads, we want to drum up business. It sounds like a key part of that is having a marketing strategy baked in.
Alice Heiman (14:21.734)
Right? Well, a marketing strategy, and I want to even say a demand gen strategy, right? Because the marketing, traditional marketing, is very much about the brand, right? The look and feel of things, the website, some social media or other kinds of media, and even events. Right? Marketing really handles events as well, and trade shows and such. But demand gen.
as a part of marketing, it sort of lives in that space between sales and marketing, right? And it's really focused on making sure that salespeople can have conversations with people who can buy from them. So that crossover, that piece in between is so important. You absolutely have to have a very focused marketing and demand gen program.
Paul M. Caffrey (15:14.302)
OK, and when we when we talk demand, Jen and a lot of these terms will be new to some of these more established businesses, right? And I guess some people are thinking, is that a person? Is that a, you know, a revops person? Is that just somebody else who, you know, picks it up?
Alice Heiman (15:25.406)
Hehehe. Right, right.
So demand generation, when I say demand gen, it means demand generation. So you are generating a demand to speak to a salesperson, right? People who want to talk to sales. And that's done in a variety of different ways. But that's not, for example, we put out an e-book. Someone clicked on it. A salesperson should call them. No. A salesperson should not call them.
marketing should do their job and nurture them until they raise their hand and say, I would like to speak to a salesperson, right? So a demand gen person is, yes, you would have a person who understands demand gen, which is a very specific kind of marketing, right? And you would also have this more broad and general marketer.
who's understanding how to create the awareness, build the content, get the content out to the right places, and then work together with DemandGen, right, to make sure that people are raising their hand and saying, I wanna talk to someone. So the DemandGen piece is very focused on getting the conversion to, from, you know, a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead so that a salesperson can have a conversation.
Paul M. Caffrey (16:43.003)
Okay.
Paul M. Caffrey (16:55.846)
And I guess from a sales perspective, there are obvious metrics that we can use to determine if sales has been successful. From demand gen, I guess number of market and qualified leads that go across the sales is the main metric. What else should CEOs be looking for or how should they be checking if demand gen is working for them or not?
Alice Heiman (17:17.222)
Well, it kind of takes me to thinking about leading indicators and lagging indicators. So mostly today, senior leaders and C-level people are looking at lagging indicators. Did we hit a number or didn't we? Did we make this many calls or didn't we? Did we send this many emails or didn't we? Did we land this many customers? Did we meet the targets? Those are lagging. It's too late to influence them once you know them. Gone.
So, we want to look at some leading indicators, and number of emails sent doesn't necessarily lead me to anything, right? So we have to look at other things like not just open rates, but click-through rates. And we want to look at these leading indicators on a daily, weekly basis. So if the number of
click-throughs has gone down on any given message, we need to adapt quickly, right? And make the changes needed so that the click-through rate goes up. It can't wait another week because then by the time we're measuring it at the lagging indicator, it's like, well, we didn't do a good job and we can't change it now. It's in the past. Another is number of conversations. So...
Sellers are busy, they're doing lots of things, but the main thing they need to do every day is have conversations with people who can buy. And they need to have conversations in various stages, the very early stages of your pipeline or funnel, and then the later stages towards closing. So we wanna see how many conversations they're having at what point in the pipeline. And so we know if they're not having very many closing conversations that week.
We're not going to hit our number. But if we know it that day, that week, right? It doesn't get till the end of the month or quarter, and oh my gosh, we didn't hit our number. It's like, oh, wow, Alice hasn't been having very many closing conversations this week. Let me find out what's happening and coach her and see what we can do. Or Alice isn't having very many conversations with new prospects, which means her funnel will run dry. So let me coach her. But I'm seeing that daily and weekly.
Alice Heiman (19:35.63)
so that I can do something about it in the moment. So I think one of the most important indicators is conversations with people who can buy. And then second to that is at what stage in the pipeline or funnel are they so that we can make sure we're having enough conversations with people who can buy throughout the entire funnel, right? It can't just be in prospecting and it can't just be in closing, can't just be in the middle. It has to be through all phases.
all stages so that we can keep the velocity right and the motion in our pipelines.
Paul M. Caffrey (20:12.414)
Yeah, and I think you've touched upon something which is very difficult for these companies because a lot of them, they may they probably have a CRM at this point, right? It may not, you know, getting stuff at the right sale stage is probably a struggle, but actually capturing the activity below that so that you can see those leading indicators even more difficult. So tracking conversations absolutely, you know, makes sense. And it is a nice a nice thing to look at. When you.
Alice Heiman (20:40.934)
Yeah, and also, you know, when you're a lot of people have a lot of trouble managing their pipeline. I mean, it's one of the biggest problems I see when I get into a company. The pipeline is a mess. I call it a funnel pipeline. It's the same thing. What you're talking about is tracking the opportunities. Right. And that is another leading indicator. If you're looking at opportunities by stage and also by velocity. And so that's something that, again, needs to be looked at daily, weekly is are those opportunities moving, especially for
Paul M. Caffrey (20:51.724)
Yeah.
Alice Heiman (21:10.246)
these longer sales cycles. Opportunities can sit in the stage for a long time, but they should have lots of next actions that are keeping them moving. We've got to be careful. We've got to manage those funnels very closely and watch those opportunities to see if they're moving. Now, if they're not moving, it's probably because salespeople are not having enough conversations with the buyers. So it's all intertwined.
Paul M. Caffrey (21:37.13)
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the tech companies, they do velocity really well. So if they're closing over a four week period, they're looking at 20 percent in first week, 40 percent in 70 percent week three and then hitting the month, not leaving everything to the end of the month, which is probably more traditionally what happens in these companies. And sometimes there isn't that, I guess, manufactured pressure or real pressure that comes from being a publicly
where you actually have to hit targets, where if it goes into next month, it doesn't really matter so much. Do you bring in your sale, you know, cadences like that into these companies? Or is that something that isn't so important when it comes to actually trying to increase revenue?
Alice Heiman (22:23.746)
Well, if you're talking about moving things in the pipeline and how they're doing that, yes, I mean, that's something that I do focus on. So we have to see what the sellers are doing. And many times it just comes down to the next action, right? So sellers wait too long between the next action and they don't have a valid business reason to call on the buyers. And remember in a complex sale that in the world I work in, there's, you know, sometimes five.
to 12 people involved in making a decision. And it's the seller's job or the sales team because they should be working in a team, right? And they should have sales engineers if needed or subject matter experts, customer success people, senior level people who are involved. They should all be touching the customer or the prospect at some point, right? And if they're not doing that frequently enough, it really slows down the velocity, right? So...
A lot of times people tell me they have a very, very long sales cycle and I examine it and I'm like, wow, you are making your sales cycle long. It's not your customer because you don't keep this cadence that is needed to keep in touch with them and keep them engaged and help them in their decision making process, right? Their buyer journey, they need to be moved along. You know, they don't know what to do.
Somehow, salespeople and senior executives think that the people who are buying from them know how to buy from them. But that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Most of the people buying from you have never bought what you sell. Or if maybe they have, it was 10 years ago, or the people who bought it originally aren't even there anymore. So you've got a group of people who are...
just trying to do the best they can every day to do their regular job. And now they're also on this buying committee to buy this new software or hardware or whatever product is you're selling. And they don't know how to buy it from you. They don't even know how the buying process works at their own company half the time. Will it have to go through legal? Is purchasing going to get involved in this one? Does so and so have to sign off on this? Do we need the CFO? Is the CEO going to get involved? They don't know.
Alice Heiman (24:40.546)
So it's funny to me that the sellers somehow think that people know how to buy from them. They don't. It's your job as the seller to guide the buying process and help them understand how the people in their company should be involved because they're making a decision that should impact their company in a very positive way once the decision is made. So we've got to get the right people involved and we've got to help them know who they are. Look,
Paul M. Caffrey (24:47.799)
Yeah, it's...
Alice Heiman (25:09.978)
We've done this many, many times. We've closed deals many, many times. We know who's been involved at the other companies we closed those deals with. We knew how long it took. We knew whether legal had to get involved. We know all those things. They may not. So it's really our job as sellers to understand that buyer journey really well and guide them through it so that it doesn't.
drag on because that's not helping them either when the sale cycle just gets longer and longer and it keeps dragging on.
Paul M. Caffrey (25:40.879)
Yeah.
And there's nothing worse than when, you know, you've brought somebody through a sales cycle and at the end, they get a surprise because they don't realize they're at the end and they don't realize this is when it's actually time to act. A couple of things that I see happen a lot is there's naturally that feel on that. Well, we did a qualification meeting this week and we're going to do a demo next week. And then we're going to do commercials, maybe in two weeks time. We seem to have a week as a nice buffer when realistically that can be one or two days. You know, you can turn something from.
weeks into four or five days, if it makes sense for the customer, you're able to get them through all the steps that they need to get through. And one thing which I found works really well is we're familiar with mutual plans, but having that in such a way that, you know, you're going to invest a lot of time in this and we're going to invest time on our side. This is actually what the process looks like. These are the meetings.
Let's book something in provisionally. So then you're short on the time to help them make a confident yes, no decision. But then the other thing which I think is, you know, it's really, really important is there's just there's no surprises. But you know that, as you said earlier on, legal is a problem. It might take us two or three weeks. That is a hassle. So get out in front of it. Or if your service agreement is a bit tricky, whatever it might be.
call out that this can be a sticking point. And if this becomes a sticking point, what are we actually gonna do about it? Because you're now a team and then they can say, well, I'll push my CEO to do it. So when that stage comes along, you can then go, it's happened, are we still gonna do that? They may not want it in the moment, but as they verbally said it, they're much more likely to than not. When we're talking about getting these sales motions in play,
Paul M. Caffrey (27:30.15)
I noticed that you speak a lot about building out a sales order, building a sales team. How how should somebody in this situation go to build a sales team? Because, you know, when they know that they can just add more people without maybe increasing costs too much where the business hasn't caught up.
Alice Heiman (27:50.874)
Yeah, well, what positions you need and what people fill them kind of goes back to what I said earlier about the customer journey, right? So in the early stage of your company, the CEO and the founder should be doing the selling. Hopefully they have a great board of advisors who will open their networks and all the first deals really come from that network. That's the best way for it to happen, right? It doesn't always happen that way, but that would be the best.
And everybody really has to sell in the beginning. But it comes a point where the CEO cannot do all of the selling and run the company. It's just not possible. And in many cases, a lot of these CEOs don't come from a sales background and don't want to do it. And they believe someone else can do it better. Now, in the early days, no one else can do it better because you're the entrepreneur. You have that entrepreneurial enthusiasm. You have the title of CEO and founder. You can open doors very easily that a salesperson cannot.
And when somebody makes an introduction, hey, I'd like you to meet the CEO, founder of our company that I'm on the board of this company. They're doing great things. Yeah, of course they're gonna say yes, right? Oh, I'd like you to meet the salesperson of the startup. Or I'd like you to meet the CEO of a startup. I mean, come on, right? So, when CEOs are telling me, oh, I can, in the early stages especially, I outsell my salespeople, of course you can. You have a title CEO and founder.
Paul M. Caffrey (29:03.159)
Yes.
Alice Heiman (29:15.982)
You can open the doors that they can't. So that's one thing. So you do need to do the selling in the beginning. And then you do need to do the sales management in the beginning as well. But I think what people fail to realize is they need help. And what they do is they'll go out and hire a seller first, when a lot of times they should have hired a customer success person first. So they keep doing the selling, but they get out of the onboarding business.
They get someone in, okay, great, I've closed this deal. You take it from here. I hand it off beautifully. You take it from here and make them super happy and super successful and I can go off and sell another deal. So you have to think, do I need a salesperson or do I need a customer success person? The second thing that most CEOs miss is having a sales coordinator. So before you have a salesperson, let's say you do have this customer success person in place so that you can.
Get it off your plate and onto theirs. If you have a sales coordinator working for you, and this could be your EA, it could be your chief of staff, but it's someone who understands sales. So it can't be an EA that has no understanding of sales. It has to be somebody who understands sales and a bit of marketing as well would be super helpful because in the beginning, you may not even really have the marketing help that you need, right? So you now have somebody who can write emails for you and send them on your behalf.
You have someone who can follow up and schedule all of the meetings so nothing gets missed. And you have somebody who can keep all of the information, do all the record keeping in the CRM. Now, if you're a CEO and you're trying to be the salesperson and run your company, imagine having someone who's a sales coordinator, who's helping you. Right. This relieves you of so much of the work and pressure.
so that all you really have to do is meet the people, talk them through the buying, their buyer journey, get them introduced to the right people at your company, and close those deals. You're not doing all the administrative work. What bogs the CEO down is all that administrative work, and they don't get rid of it soon enough. So if I was doing a startup today, especially in kind of a technology or innovative type of startup that's gonna go, right? I would first get that person
Alice Heiman (31:40.018)
who's my assistant, my right hand, who understands sales. And then I would get that customer success person. And those two people will now watch me do what I do, and I'll have them document everything. And then when I'm ready to bring a salesperson in, I now have this documentation which makes it easier for the seller. So I've got some sales process written down that maps to our customer journey.
and I can bring a seller in and have them be successful now versus just hiring a seller first and hoping they can do what I've been doing as the founder and go close some deals.
Paul M. Caffrey (32:18.886)
Yeah, there's so much great advice there. And I mean, even auditing your calendar and seeing, are you doing, you know, 10, 20 dollar tasks when you could be doing much more and having that person to help you with that is invaluable. There's a few questions I tend to ask most guests. It's quick fire. So I'm going to run them. How do you know, Alice? What is your number one prospecting tip?
Alice Heiman (32:30.736)
Right.
Alice Heiman (32:41.26)
Okay.
Alice Heiman (32:45.694)
Oh my gosh. So my number one prospecting tip is referrals, referrals. So everybody makes prospecting so hard because they do cold outreach. That is not the best way to get new business. Look at your own network, look at all the people you know, look at the people that you do business with and start there. Ask them to make introductions for you. That is the best prospecting possible.
And then second is to put on events or trade shows, webinars, things like that, and get to know people that way and follow up with them. Those two things are way easier than cold outreach. So really my number one prospecting tip is do referral selling.
Paul M. Caffrey (33:38.87)
Really, really like that. And from a sales perspective, Alice, what's your number one sales tip?
Alice Heiman (33:46.599)
Gosh, I guess my number one sales tip is to understand the customer journey. I just think we don't. I don't think we understand their journey. I don't think we understand the buyers, a day in the life of the buyers. So I think the more that we can understand the day in the life of the buyer and their journey to purchasing our product, the better we will be at selling.
Paul M. Caffrey (34:07.754)
Yeah, it's super important because a conversation has happened. The problem is ongoing in a business before you even come along or someone looks to even consider a solution. So, yeah, so important to know what impact that's having for somebody who is maybe working for one of these companies, one of these CEOs, and they're ambitious and they want to get ahead and they want to get promoted. What advice would you give somebody looking to get promoted?
Alice Heiman (34:34.078)
Gosh, so much probably, but I guess the main thing is keep track of your accomplishments and make a little brag book. I mean, we need humble brag, but keep track of your accomplishments and make them known in a humble sort of a way.
Paul M. Caffrey (34:53.15)
Yeah, that's fantastic advice. And yeah, I I've got a little document called my wins and you keep it there. And the key thing with that is you'll forget in three, six, nine months time. What worked? You only remember the large deals that you signed. There's a whole lot there and they make the bones of great stories when you're in those interview processes. So really, really like that. A brag book. Everybody should have one. Now, we're going to come on and talk a little bit about your podcast.
Alice Heiman (35:04.062)
Yes.
Paul M. Caffrey (35:21.834)
your sales talk for CEO's podcast. But before we do, I'm guessing it could be influenced by the podcast itself. What books do you recommend sales professionals read to improve?
Alice Heiman (35:33.674)
Oh my gosh, I have so many. Go to my blog on my website. I write blogs about books frequently. I'm constantly reading, so I could go on and on about books to read. But I think when you're first starting out in sales, two books that I really love are To Sell as Human by Daniel Pink and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, a very old, old book, but a very important one.
I think both of those help you understand the customer, and that's what's really important. If you have a highly complex sale and you need to get positioned properly to close those deals, I recommend Strategic Selling by Steve Hyman and Bob Miller. Yes, Steve Hyman is my father, and that is an excellent book. It's been around a long time as well, but I highly recommend it. And again, another one for...
Helping you have great conversations with your customers is Conceptual Selling, also written by my dad, Steve Heiman and Bob Miller. Those are some of the great books that I love, but also something I've read very recently for CEOs to read is Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. Just really will help you think differently about positioning your company in the marketplace.
Paul M. Caffrey (36:50.674)
Excellent. I mean, so many great recommendations there. Daniel stuff is fantastic. And it's the first person who's recommended their father. That's kind of cool. First family member getting a shout out. Very, very nice. For for yourself, when we're talking about, you know, sales preparation and ready for to sell. You know, what does doing the work before the work look like for you, Alice?
Alice Heiman (37:14.13)
Well, for me, it's a lot of research. So I don't do outbound because I'm at a place in my career now where people find me. And I am very lucky because I have amazing CEOs that I get to work with, right? But when I do have someone recommended to me, what I do is a lot of research. So I get on their website. I Google. I go to all the social media.
And I don't just research the CEO. I research the other key players in the company as well. And then, of course, I look at what the salespeople are up to. So I spend quite a bit of time researching. And then the next piece is I prepare the questions that I want to ask based on the research that I've done. And I get those questions ready and make sure that I am thinking about this from their point of view, not mine, so that I can go into that first conversation.
really ready to listen and hear what they have to say and be able to understand what it is that they have currently and what they really want. So that is pretty much how I do the preparation. It's the research and then preparing the questions and then getting my mindset into, you know, from their frame of reference, trying to put myself in their shoes.
Paul M. Caffrey (38:37.326)
Okay, excellent. So there's so many great things there that you mentioned. I mean, you're preparing your questions, looking at things from their point of view and so much more. So I was just, I was looking at your podcast, Sales Talk for CEOs, 115 episodes. You've had some incredible guests. I saw Tiffany Bova has been on. I also saw that G from Lemlist was on recently. Actually, Adam Robinson as well. I mean, he's, you know, he's doing amazing things with his company,
How's the podcast going? If people check it out, what can they expect?
Alice Heiman (39:11.582)
Oh my gosh, podcasting for me is so much fun because I get to do what I love. I talk to CEOs, right? I mean, how amazing is that? I also talk to experts who have great advice for CEOs. So that's a lot of fun as well. And typically the podcast, I look for CEOs who are in tech or some kind of innovative company. They're at least five years into their business. So they have a story to tell and they're doing at least 5 million in revenues.
actually gone out and had to sell something, right? And they can tell the story of how they started their company and who was doing the selling at first and how they grew their sales and how they got to where they are right now today. So those stories are really interesting for the listeners because, you know, everybody has a journey and they're interested in everybody else's journey. So that makes it really fun. But I learned the most amazing things from the CEOs that I interview and they share things that other CEOs can.
can try and do and they share what they failed at as well as what they were successful at. So it makes for a lot of really fun conversation.
Paul M. Caffrey (40:20.566)
Look, it sounds great. And I can only imagine the quality of conversation because some of those guests are truly exceptional, doing amazing, amazing things. So absolutely something worth checking out. And if people want to find out a bit more, Alice, how can they reach you?
Alice Heiman (40:35.93)
Yeah, go to aliceheimann.com or find me on LinkedIn. But if you do ask me to connect on LinkedIn, let me know that you heard me here on Paul's show.
Paul M. Caffrey (40:46.594)
Great, well, Alice, thanks so much for joining us. I look forward to the next time we talk.
Alice Heiman (40:51.207)
Thank you.
