Sales Masterclass with Allison Shih, Board Of Directors for Atlanta Technology Professionals

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Alison Shih about her journey from hair salon to leading salesperson and how to sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:16) We're finally here. I'm so excited. You are the reason that so many great people listen over the past several years, so thank you for that.

(Alison Shih at 00:00:24) Well, thank you for putting out great content. It's an easy recommend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:27) And the way that this all got started was we were doing something with ATP, and we'll talk about that in a second. But it was an event, and then we were prepping for that. And then after one of the prep calls, I was like, wow, Alison really knows a lot about sales. I'm going to start picking her brain on ABM and sales strategy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:46) You dumped like an hour of the most brilliant knowledge on us. I then turned that — I took all of my notes from the hour, I took a break, went and had lunch, then came back for the next two hours and cut it down into bullet points, summaries, and then actionable things our sales team can do. And then I delivered it the next morning at our sales team meeting, and it was incredibly useful, and we have successfully implemented the majority of your strategies over the past three weeks or so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:12) So thank you for that.

(Alison Shih at 00:01:13) Wow. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so excited that you took it. And it's early stages, but I'd love to follow along that journey and hear every six months or so kind of what the results are. It takes time, obviously, but yeah.

(Alison Shih at 00:01:27) That's so exciting. Well done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) So I was curious, what's the first thing that you've ever sold?

(Alison Shih at 00:01:34) Oh gosh, probably my parents on letting me do things that they didn't want me to do. You know, it is funny. My first paid job was at a hair salon when I was in high school. It was a great way to get your hair done for free, and that was a top expense when you're in high school.

(Alison Shih at 00:01:51) But I worked at a local salon. It's called Salon 124. They branched out. I think they have like eight or nine locations now. But I started out and, you know, I would help the stylists and do blow drys for the women that would come, and then I would sell them products and just help them understand — or listen, I guess — to what their concerns were about their hair.

(Alison Shih at 00:02:15) "Oh, I can never get this much volume," or "It's always so frizzy." Like, "Oh, well, use this product and it will make that stop or it will make that start." So that's probably where it started, is yeah, at a hair salon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:28) Were your parents in sales?

(Alison Shih at 00:02:30) You know, it is. My dad's personality — I'm kind of a mini me of him. So he's done a lot of different sales throughout his life, from linens to vacations to rapid roll doors. And then the second half of his life, he got into, like, as a financial broker, which if you want to talk about a difficult sale, it's getting people to give you their money so that you can grow it and then give it back to them later. But that was probably the hardest sell, even though most people don't think of that as a sales job, but for sure it is.

(Alison Shih at 00:03:07) So yeah, I guess you could say I probably get it from him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:11) Yeah, I 100% agree. The financial services space was my first exposure ever to sales, and you basically show people their entire future in retirement, and then you say, "Okay, now transfer all that money to my accounts."

(Alison Shih at 00:03:23) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:24) I'll take care of it.

(Alison Shih at 00:03:26) Yeah. Well, and discipline — I mean, speaking of sales, one of the hardest things is just the discipline around it. Managing money is the same thing. Exercise is the same thing. People know what they need to do, and they want to do it, but creating the discipline around actually doing it every day, you know, that's the hard part. It's the discipline.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:51) How do you build that up?

(Alison Shih at 00:03:53) I think some of it, you just have to have that grind in you. There is definitely — you know, we talk about nature versus nurture, and there's a reason that not everyone is in sales or good at sales. There's definitely how you're wired plays into it, and you have to be willing to have that attitude of the grind and accepting that you've got to put the work in every day. And then beyond that, I think learning what works for you. You know, there are different types of people.

(Alison Shih at 00:04:23) I am very structured, so I need to build out calendars. Some people use, you know, their CRM systems and put reminders and tasks. I have notes everywhere, like to-do lists all over my desk and in my phone. And, you know, some people just kind of go day to day and magically it happens. I mean, it's odd that there's no real right way to make someone do it. They just kind of have to figure out what works for them.

(Alison Shih at 00:04:48) But for me, I've definitely leaned into processed and programmatic approaches.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:56) Yeah. I found that to be true when hiring salespeople. So it's really hard. First of all, they tend to be creative, and so structure is a little bit harder to do with really great salespeople. But the best salespeople do have forms of structure. What we found is that we can give people a time frame to ramp, and so we're not so particular about micromanaging them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:20) We're just like, "All right, here's the time frame. By this point in time, you should be earning this amount of money." And if they are, then they stay, and if they're not, then they don't stay. And that tends — I can't ever really predict it, by the way. Like, I'm not — my predictor is not very good. I look for people that are really hungry, that have that grind and that interest. And then if they have that, I was like, "All right, that's a check mark." And I feel like after spending some time with them, that is worth investing in them. Then I'll bring them on the team, and we'll see how it goes.

(Alison Shih at 00:05:47) Yeah. I think it's different too if there's someone that is newer in their career versus someone that has an established career. There are definitely intangibles and things that you can look for. I mean, a lot of people look for athletes, you know, former athletes, someone that played high school sports or college sports that have shown the discipline, have shown the grind, that they understand that it's due every day. You know, rent is due every day.

(Alison Shih at 00:06:17) You can't take a day off. And one more is the difference between average and excellence. You know, if today you're like, "Hey, everybody has to make 25 calls," and then you've got that one person that's willing to make 26, at the end of the week, that's five more than everyone else. At the end of the month, that's 20 more than everyone else. And so that "one more" mentality, kind of as a part of the grind, not just doing the bare minimum, but always having that mindset to like, "All right, if I can do 20, I can do 21."

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:47) I love that. Yeah. One of — I'm thinking about Madison right now. She's amazing. And that was one of the few people that I hired on the spot. I don't do it often, but sometimes I'm in interviews and the person impresses me so much that I just offer them a job right on the spot. She's been here just over a year now, and she was — I think she played soccer or volleyball. Something stood out to me about that. First of all, the discipline of being on a schedule. People who are on sports, they can show up on time, they know how to play as a team, and then they're coachable. That's a super important quality for me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:21) And you're right. Like, we haven't specifically put job postings for athletes. But when I find out that they are former athletes, that's definitely a plus one in my book.

(Alison Shih at 00:07:32) Yeah, for sure. It's just, again, like you said, they've got the mentality and they know the discipline, and they've done it. And so even though they don't have necessarily career experience, they have some of those intangibles.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:43) So you said something to me the other day that has just rung in my head over and over. And we currently sell podcast production services to CMOs, chief marketing officers, and that sort of level of marketing person. And you had said, in your next hires, one of the strategies you could use is you could look for people who have already been selling to that persona for five-plus years because they'll have all these relationships and so on. It's amazing how simple that is, but I didn't think about that. Tell me more about that. It sounds really simple.

(Alison Shih at 00:08:24) Yeah. You know, again, a lot of the strategy behind it is simple. It's how do you execute, right? So I am at a point in my career where when I was, you know, first out of college and just getting into IT, there was a lot of the grind. You know, it was lots of phone calls, lots of knocking on doors, lots of emails, and it was like you just hit the numbers. And if you do enough, the law of averages will hit in, and you'll get enough opportunities. And if you have enough opportunities, you'll close enough deals.

(Alison Shih at 00:09:05) But after almost 20 years, I've now had the chance to build those relationships. And so I don't have to make a hundred phone calls anymore to get a meeting. I usually make one, and it's probably a text. Like, it's not even, you know — like, "Hey, so-and-so." And so I do think it's just different depending on where you're at in your career.

(Alison Shih at 00:09:20) But after ten or so years, I think the best salespeople, the salespeople with the most consistency and the longest track records, are the ones that are active in their community. And so for me, as you know, I sit on the board of Atlanta Technology Professionals. I sit on the board of IT Girl Foundation. I'm heavily involved with Hire Gear CXO. So all of these different organizations in the IT community, I show up.

(Alison Shih at 00:09:47) You know, I build relationships. I give my time back. I give my talents back. And so when opportunities come up or if people need something, they know me. Or if I need to ask, they're going to take the meeting because they know — they know I'm going to be there. They know my character. They know my capabilities.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:05) I actually happen to know the founder of IT Girls. Pretty cool.

(Alison Shih at 00:10:08) Yeah, me too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:12) So you mentioned a couple examples about getting active in the community. How would that look like if I'm in Dallas, Texas, or if I'm in New York City, and I have — I'm a sales — well, let's actually take it from a founder standpoint, because a lot of our listeners are technologists and founders or mid-level technology managers that haven't ever networked before. Maybe they're a little nervous to do so, trying to build their, you know, Rolodex up. What are some basic tips for them to get started, just get moving and start taking action?

(Alison Shih at 00:10:44) Yeah. So I would recommend to find kind of a cause that you're passionate about. It feels less like work when you're doing good. And so there's a lot of nonprofits that are national that leverage a tech skill. Since this is a tech podcast, I mean, there are things like TechBridge.

(Alison Shih at 00:11:05) They're national. There are organizations like Power My Learning, and they all have a different mission or a different cause that they support. Sometimes it's bridging the gap, the digital gap, you know, with underserved communities. Sometimes it's, again, helping underserved communities get into a career program. Year Up is another one that I believe is national.

(Alison Shih at 00:11:27) And so when you start volunteering at some of these nonprofits that are in the tech world, you'll find that you'll see your peers there, and you'll see salespeople there, and you'll see C-levels there. And you start to build a community, I guess, like a sub-community in your greater community of other folks that are in IT but also care and want to give back and, you know, help that next generation. And so those are just a few, but you can just Google. You know, there's also like things like SIM, Society of Information Management.

(Alison Shih at 00:12:02) That's a national organization. So some are nonprofits that are, you know, trying to do good and make a difference, and others are just kind of business fraternities that want to help educate folks. So just Google what's in your area and find something that you can, you know, get behind and be consistent with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:22) Give me an idea. At your peak of this community building, how much time were you spending a year or a month on doing things like this?

(Alison Shih at 00:12:34) So if you go and you're just involved as an attendee, you could probably do something, you know, once a week to once a month, usually after hours, kind of a networking event, a backpack drive, a day of volunteering to, you know, wipe machines, just depending on the organization. I sit on the board, so most of these are volunteer-led organizations that are in addition to people's day jobs. So there's a little more elbow grease that's put into, you know, planning some of the events. I chair the ATP Golf Tournament, so that's a lot of hours that we put into that one. So it really — people have the opportunity to be as engaged as they want to be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:21) Who won that, by the way, the golf tournament?

(Alison Shih at 00:13:24) I mean, there's —

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:25) Was it Grant?

(Alison Shih at 00:13:26) It was not Grant. Although he did place on the putting contest. I think he was number three.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:31) Anybody we interviewed, did they make it?

(Alison Shih at 00:13:35) I don't think so. I don't think so. I'd have to go back. I don't think we had any of ours. It's funny, there's a stigma, obviously, with the folks that have more salespeople on their team tend to do well because a lot of salespeople will take clients out once a week and go golf. And so they tend to be a little better. So there's always a running joke that there's usually some ringers on the sales teams.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:00) Well, I loved it. It was a great event. Does it happen annually?

(Alison Shih at 00:14:02) It does. Next year's our twentieth, so it's a big deal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:09) Twentieth? I know.

(Alison Shih at 00:14:09) Very, very exciting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:09) When did you get involved?

(Alison Shih at 00:14:10) This was my third year chairing. So I've been on the board for four years. I've been involved for probably ten, but board seat for four years and golf chair for three. So next year will be year four.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:26) Okay. So back to your story, right? You worked at this hair place, learned about sales. Your dad was in sales, so you picked up a lot from him. Eventually, you end up selling technology. I think there was some pharmaceutical in there. Can you walk me through how you got into the tech sales ultimately?

(Alison Shih at 00:14:44) Sure. So actually, going back to the hair salon, I loved it. I love working with people. I like to say I'm a flaming extrovert, and I just enjoy people. I like meeting new people. I like talking to people. And so I remember telling the owner of the salon that I just wanted to stay. Like, I'll just stay and work for him at corporate. Like, that was my plan.

(Alison Shih at 00:15:10) And he was like, "No, you will go to college, and you will get your degree. And if you want to come back and work for me at corporate, there will always be a place here for you." So he actually set me up with an internship, or I guess not an internship. It was a paid job working at a different hair salon in Athens. I went to the University of Georgia. Go Dawgs.

(Alison Shih at 00:15:24) And while I was there getting my marketing degree, one of the classes was a sales class. Professor Richard Ellis — he was amazing. So passionate, had an amazing story, and just really that enthusiasm that he had for sales. It definitely was inspiring. And so there was a sales competition, which essentially was a role play in front of a live audience and, you know, it was filmed, and they give you a scenario a week ahead of time and you come up with a little presentation. You could do PowerPoint, you do flip chart, whatever you want. And then you go in and try to make a sale to a fake buyer for this, you know, role play.

(Alison Shih at 00:15:56) So I did very well. I won that competition, and so I ended up getting a few different job offers through that. And one was Eli Lilly.

Alison Shih at 00:16:14) And so my stepmom was a physician's assistant for thirty years, and I grew up going to drug rep events where they would have a talk, and then you would get to have, you know, a show at the Fox Theater or Dave and Buster's or whatever. And so I was familiar with kind of the drug rep world. And when I got that offer, I was like, oh, yeah, that sounds fun. I had some nostalgia in there.

(Alison Shih at 00:16:38) So I went from having a marketing degree to studying neuroscience over a weekend. Like, it was crazy. I took my last final on a Friday, and I started on Monday. And so I did that for a few years, but in that process, I learned it was a lot about influence, but no real—I guess you couldn't be like, hey, sign this contract that you will write my prescription for the next 10 patients.

(Alison Shih at 00:17:06) So they can tell you whatever they want, and then if it didn't have good coverage on their insurance or whatever. So I was like, alright, this isn't exactly what I thought it was cracked up to be. I want to go into real kind of sales where there's contracts and people say yes and they sign something and then they have to do it. And that's when I got into tech.

(Alison Shih at 00:17:28) So I found a company that was close to my house, and they sold T1s back in the day. 1.5, you know, megs of Internet was lightning fast, and that's where it started.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:41) That is so cool. And then you went from that. How did you end up meeting Dave?

(Alison Shih at 00:17:46) So, gosh, to fast forward, when I was selling T1s, you would just go to office parks and do door knocking. You just walked in and talked to the receptionist, figure out who ran IT and dealt with the phone lines and the Internet. And one day, I just happenstance, I cold called a recruiting, a sales recruiting office. And so a lady popped out and was like, I have a client that's gonna wanna hire you. And then I moved into the staffing industry, and I did that for six years.

(Alison Shih at 00:18:14) And I had a baby, and I needed to get closer to home and kind of adjust my hours. Long story short, I ended up getting hit with a noncompete lawsuit, went through that lovely process, but it got me out of the industry. And so where I worked at Deltcom, the building, QTS Data Centers bought that building after I left. And so I knew some of the folks from the building and part of my network. Again, just building that network.

(Alison Shih at 00:18:44) And I reached out to a guy that I, you know, never worked with, but we were in the same building. And I said, hey, you know, I'm looking for a new gig. Are you guys hiring? And he was like, actually, yeah.

(Alison Shih at 00:18:54) And two weeks later, I was back in the building, and I started working at QTS, and that's where I met Dave.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) Oh, that is so cool. He is such a great human being. We love Dave.

(Alison Shih at 00:19:03) Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. He's amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:05) That night, he took Michelle and the family. We all went out to dinner together, and it was one of those long two, three hour dinners, but it was really good spending time with him.

(Alison Shih at 00:19:14) Yeah. It is interesting. When you build the network and you're out in the community, the line of client, colleague, friend gets very blurred because you do. You spend so much time. You volunteer with these people. You work with them, and they kind of become your friends as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:34) Well, I'm a nerd. Right? So a lot of my—when I started this show, I had very few relationships, and every night I would come home and I'd send a hundred emails out to different technology leaders. And I'd just use a CRM system.

(Alison Shih at 00:19:49) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:49) And I would handpick each person I saw in a row thinking that they might be the right person, but it just took me about an hour or two to get a hundred people, send the emails out. And they were just records of information. Right? There's names on a line and on a spreadsheet. And what's interesting is I can remember the day that—like, there's a guy named Brad Soza.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:07) He's been on the show multiple times. He's a personal friend. He's been to my kids' birthday parties. I've been to his family events, and I'm in his men's group and everything. And so he has been a huge influence in my life, but I can still, in my head, remember the day that I saw the record.

(Alison Shih at 00:20:24) Of this information, yeah. Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:26) And then as you get to learn these people and meet these different individuals that start on the screen as a name, you really start to understand that it's super hard. There's such little data on the actual screen. You can end up finding that somebody that you thought was inconsequential ends up being an incredibly influential source in the local community. For example, down in Tampa, Florida, I got involved in some of the community stuff after the podcast, and there's this guy. I can't remember his name, but he was a mid level technology leader, upper technology leader at Ashley Furniture, large furniture company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:04) Yeah. Yeah. And this guy was like the godfather of the tech scene. But if you look at his stuff, it's like he's mid level at this large company. You wouldn't think anything of it, but the amount of influence that individual had in the Tampa community was just jaw dropping.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:20) And so it's really given me a new respect to understand, when we're doing this cold outreach, who these people are.

(Alison Shih at 00:21:25) Yeah. And I'm guessing that today when you're reaching out, it's a different world than when you were reaching out five years ago.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:32) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it took about maybe seven months to a year before it flipped from us having to do outreach to us having a queue.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:44) And then we still do outreach, but it's more my team pulls headlines for interesting tech things that are happening. Sure. And then they pitch them to me, and then I say, yeah. And then we reach out to them to have those types of shows. But we still get a lot of people that, you know, wanna come on, then we do sponsorships too. So—

(Alison Shih at 00:22:01) Again, you gotta grind it first, a hundred emails a day. Yeah. And then a year down the road, now people start coming to you. And then five years down the road, you have created such an immense network of guests that if you wanna get to someone at Microsoft or Google or, you know, Meta or whatever, you just look on LinkedIn. You're like, oh, okay.

(Alison Shih at 00:22:21) So and so is connected to them, and then you reach out, hey, you know, Bob, will you please introduce me to Ramesh? And then it's done. And so, yeah. It's a—if you can stick with it, it doesn't get easier, but yet it gets, I guess, more efficient.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:42) Yeah. Well, you get to understand this concept of you can't build the relationship when you need something, which is what every salesperson is trying to do. They're like, I need—I need to sell, I need to hit my quota, I need a relationship with you. But what I found by, you know, accident or just experience of life is there are just these people that I continually interact with because I enjoy spending time with them. And then at some point, they might fit into some plan or they might be useful to some degree, but it's not going into it with that intention.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:14) It's like, hey, look. Your career is long. It's thirty plus years. You're gonna spend a lot of time with these people. You might as well start building relationships now just to know people in the space and adjacent spaces.

(Alison Shih at 00:23:26) Yes. And nowadays, there's so much noise. Right? There's emails. There's phone calls.

(Alison Shih at 00:23:34) There's texts. There's LinkedIn. There's just so much noise that everyone is getting sold to all the time. B2B, B2C, it doesn't matter. There's just a constant influx.

(Alison Shih at 00:23:47) So how do you differentiate? And one of the key ways to do it is through personal relationships and having someone vouch for you. And to your point, you can't go in saying what's in it for me. The people that do that don't make it because it's so off putting. Like, it's so unattractive.

(Alison Shih at 00:24:07) It's like a repellent. If I came to you and I'm like, Joel, I'm Alison. I do sales, you know, sales consulting. I helped—let me help you grow your business. You need me. You need me. It's so off putting. Immediately, guards are up and walls are up. And so, yeah, it's not gonna work. And you end up getting unofficially blackballed from things.

(Alison Shih at 00:24:28) Like, people just avoid you. Whereas if you seek first to understand and like you were saying, help people connect with other people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:37) Yeah. I get that in my email box every single day. I can bring you—like, no cost. I'll bring you 27 good leads a month, and I'm like, first of all, I don't know you. If you're willing—like, I don't know you, and I'm not gonna go put my brand in your hands.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:51) I don't know what type of outreach you're gonna send. I understand the principles of what can be done technologically. So I know you're basically just volunteering to send cold email and messages on our behalf. I don't know if I want you representing my company, but it really is—you nailed it. There is so much noise in both our personal lives, which we're getting sold to constantly, and our professional lives that the premium gets put on trust, especially now now that these AI bots are gonna just explode over the next four or five years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:20) Yeah. It's gonna be people knowing each other wanting to do business with other humans that they know.

(Alison Shih at 00:25:25) Yeah. And, look, I mean, there's a place for the AI. The best people out there will take the data that they can find, and then they will convert that with a personal relationship. They will get in, and then they're gonna be prepared. I've been doing this long enough, and I have enough friends, including my husband, you know, that listens to the sales pitches all day long.

(Alison Shih at 00:25:48) And the people that come in and say, tell me what's on your list of initiatives for this year. Immediately, it's like, my brain just went to sleep. It's the ones that come in and say, hey, I read your 10-K or, hey, I saw this news article, and it sounds like you guys are going through this, that, and the other.

(Alison Shih at 00:26:05) How does that impact your team? You're still asking a question and asking them to give you the information that you don't know, but you're showing you took initiative, and you're showing that, you know, you're not just sitting there saying, tell me how to sell to you. You are saying tell me how to sell to you, but you're not being as obvious about it. I guess—I think that style is much more appreciated.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:26) 100%. I get it all the time. Hey, do you have fifteen minutes for me to talk to me about how to start a podcast? At first, I took the calls.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:35) Right? The first couple calls I took. Then I realized really quickly, they just want me to tell them something that they could read on Google, and they're not gonna do it anyways.

(Alison Shih at 00:26:42) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:43) So then I—right. Yeah. Yeah. So then I thought, okay, well, I need to come up with a better response because I just ignored it for a while.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:51) And then I was at this event, and somebody did it to me in person. It wasn't an email this time. It was in person. And he was like—

(Alison Shih at 00:26:57) So cringey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:58) Yeah. Yeah. He was with two of his friends. And I thought to myself, I was like, alright. Here's what you're gonna do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:05) He's like, okay. I'm like, get in front of the camera. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, hit record, and that's it. He's like, well, then what do I do?

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:13) I was like, well, then you just publish it. He goes, well, and then what? How do I do that? I just—hit record. Just hit record.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:18) And then he kept asking me more questions, and I was like, dude, just hit record. Because at the end of the day, I could sit there and talk to you for ten hours about all the things I've learned over 700 plus episodes. Yeah. But they're not gonna mean anything. It's like me—you reading 20 sales books before you ever made your first pitch.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:34) Like, right. You only need enough to go take action. And then once you have that experience, that can bind to the knowledge, and now it's very powerful. But if you have no experience, it's not gonna be useful at all.

(Alison Shih at 00:27:46) Yeah. I will—at the risk of being contrary, and I don't think it really is because I absolutely agree. You gotta go have a few calls. Like, you gotta get some context for what it is, but there's an old adage that says practice makes perfect, and I disagree. Perfect practice makes perfect.

(Alison Shih at 00:28:06) If you practice the wrong things, you're gonna be really good at doing the wrong thing. And so I absolutely agree with you. Go get a little context, but then study. It is a craft. There are people that have more knowledge and more experience than you, and I mean, myself included always.

(Alison Shih at 00:28:24) And so I'm always listening to podcasts. Obviously, that's how we met. But just trying to learn and absorb as much as you can, and that gives you a greater chance of providing value. And look. We're all gonna make mistakes.

(Alison Shih at 00:28:39) I like to think that I'm trying to reduce the number of mistakes that I make, but I know I'm going to. So if I know I'm gonna make mistakes, I'd rather make new ones. Let's avoid the ones that other people have already made, and they can tell me, hey, this is an avoidable mistake, so do these things and you'll avoid it. And then let me make mistakes that, you know, that I don't know how to avoid.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:01) Oh, 100%. And there's so many different ways to achieve success. For me, personally, the thing that I have found that works with me is that the way I explain it to myself is this. Okay. Step one, I need to be running.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:19) Even if I'm running in circles, I need to be running because you can't do anything without the momentum. Yeah. You can't. So I was like, alright. Step one, run.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:29) Step two, learn and shape that path along the way. And yeah. But the reason why I—where I was coming—I don't think what you said was counter to what I was saying. I think it's complimentary because some people will sit there and they will just continuously learn and never take action. And it's like, look.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:46) Why don't you figure out how to make your video clip after you have a video clip? Like, you haven't even hit record yet. You haven't even had your first conversation yet and you're worried about your video clip. Like, hit record.

(Alison Shih at 00:29:58) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:58) Have your first conversation, then worry about your clip.

(Alison Shih at 00:30:01) So in the spirit of giving tactical advice, yes. I actually am a huge believer in role plays. Not only did I get my first job that way, but I think it's so good. And so to the point of hit record, when you start as a salesperson or if you're a leader and you're hiring salespeople and you want them to get more comfortable with the message, but you don't want them to completely bomb in front of your customers, practice. Record.

(Alison Shih at 00:30:29) Right? Get on a webinar or Zoom or whatever, hit record and have them pitch to you, pretend to be a client, and watch them fumble. Make them do it by themselves and just give an elevator pitch and record it. And then you'll watch those back, and you're like, oh my gosh, I said um so many times, or I didn't get that message across the right way.

(Alison Shih at 00:30:51) Let me—how can I restate it? And when you're doing it in front of your peers, it is absolutely humiliating. Their anxiety is—I mean, it's so uncomfortable to do. And so if you can figure it out there when anxiety is at its highest, then when you're in front of a customer and it's real, it's easy. Unbelievable and it's so much more polished and smooth.

(Alison Shih at 00:31:16) And, again, you've now avoided the pitfalls because you've already messed up when it didn't count.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:21) Yes. I learned that. Because remember, I didn't have any sales experience—

(Alison Shih at 00:31:25) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:26) Minus five years ago. But I've gotten to the point where I'm so comfortable, like, when I'm talking to salespeople in interviews. I'll be like, alright, let's do a sales call. Ring ring.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:34) And I'll have them pick up the phone, and they're like, "Wait, right now? We're not gonna—" I was like, "Yeah," because the principles of sales are—

(Alison Shee at 00:31:42) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:43) Very similar. It's, "What's your problem? How can I help?" Right?

(Alison Shee at 00:31:47) Learning the sales process. So not to give away some of my personal stuff, but I had the best interview actually going to work at QTS. And the guy that interviewed me, it was such a fun interview. So we started out a little bit just chitchatting, but then he asked me some research questions to see if I prepared for the interview about the company, about him. He asked me to pitch him that company. Like, "Hey, how would you sell this?" And I had no idea what data centers were, but I'd done enough research where I was like, "Well, I think this is how I would do it." And there were a few other fun parts of the interview. And at the end, he goes, "Alright, I'm an Eskimo. You are a refrigerator salesman. Sell me a refrigerator." And I was like, "Okay." And, you know, going back to that training, it's needs identification and then learning what their pain points are and then solutioning around that and then checking for buy-in and then doing the hard sell. Needless to say, I did sell him a refrigerator and I got the job because of it. But that is absolutely part of what I do now, and it's amazing. I know, because I do it to other people when I interview now, but how quickly people go into solutioning without really discovering what my problem is. They just assume it's to keep food cold, and I'm like, "We live in Alaska. Keeping food cold is not a problem." So you've got to figure out why would someone buy a refrigerator that isn't—if it has nothing to do with cold food.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:23) So when you first had that, what was the lead question to get the information?

(Alison Shee at 00:33:28) So when he said—I said, "Okay, well, tell me about your current situation. How are you currently storing your food? What are you currently doing?" And he told me, and I said, "Alright, how's that working for you?" "Well, it's not great." It's simple questions. It's just digging and seeking to understand. And you always start by building some rapport. And so I said, "Oh, thank you so much for taking the meeting. How are you?" And as we got to know each other, he told me he had a young child or he had two young kids. And so then as you start—but it's active listening skills, right? You have to pay attention when someone says something and then convert that later to an advantage for you or for them, right? To solve their problem or to think of unknown needs that they have but they're just not aware of.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:23) But that is the hardest thing to find, and it's almost impossible to train. I call them magic people when I come across the people who can do this. Even in—you know, I do pipeline review with my team. Am I qualified to do that? I don't know, which is another question I'll have for you later about how you do pipeline review because I've just been kind of winging it. But that is the one thing I found myself over and over and over is having them in the follow-up connect back to things that they've learned from the sales call or, you know, even if it's been three weeks, rather than just sending the email that says, "Hey, did you talk with your team yet about the contract?" You can ask the question and follow up professionally, but you're still selling in the email. There's still things you can inject at different points and ask them questions and engage with them. And so for me, I have found that one of the hardest things to do is to teach that. Some people do it really, really well. And other people, it's like you could give them 20 examples and it's just in one ear and out the other.

(Alison Shee at 00:35:26) Yes, I agree. I've seen, you know, in my career, I've been in meetings with people that are more tenured, that are more qualified—air quotes there. And you leave the meeting and there were three or four people from your company and two or three people from the other company. And you leave and they will say things like or ask a question that has already been answered. And I just sit there and I'm looking like, "Were we not in the same meeting?" That question was addressed. And not only did you not write it down or—however your system of record is—but you asked it again. And that shows you're not active listening. And to me, that's one of the cardinal sins of sales. Really just of life, but just practice active listening. And I'm sure there are ways to train for that. I mean, there's ways to train for everything. So, you know, maybe listening to a story and then asking—like reading comprehension, but do it audibly or something like that. I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:33) I know the answer to this question.

(Alison Shee at 00:36:34) Balling on this one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:35) I've got a good answer.

(Alison Shee at 00:36:37) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:38) Structure your ability to do this to your ability to provide for your family. Because I'm serious. If you can't figure that out on how to get ahead, whether you're a technology leader trying to sell your ideas to somebody or you're a podcast host interviewing other people or you're a salesperson interviewing a prospect and getting ready for a pitch, when you connect that ability directly to your income, it becomes a very clear differentiation between people who achieve a good career and people who are ultra-successful. Those ultra-successful people, they pay just a little bit more attention. They just see that extra opportunity and then they go for it.

(Alison Shee at 00:37:22) Yeah. Well, I definitely agree with you. That ability to convert in taking information and then translating into something of value.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:32) Let's say that Eskimo guy, right? He's like, "I'm digging a hole and I'm putting a cover on it and I don't need your refrigerator," right? He's just straight up not having it. He's literally got a bumper sticker that's anti-fridge, right?

(Alison Shee at 00:37:45) Oh, good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:45) Yeah, not a fridge guy. And you've got just this enormous amount of rejection. How do you handle rejection?

(Alison Shee at 00:37:54) Yeah. Well, the step one of sales—I don't care who you are and where—if I'm going to give you kind of one of my frameworks, it's: one, you start and you have to plan. The first question you always have to ask is what is your—call it a value wedge. What is the unique thing that you do that meets a need in the market? Once you know your value, what makes you special, why people should buy from you, you kind of have to have that. Then you need to go onto the market and say, "Okay, well, who in this vast world needs this thing?" It's not everyone. And so identifying who your target market is. And then once you identify your target market, then getting more granular. "Hey, this specific company, this specific person." So you have to start by taking that funnel and trying to be a little more intentional. Now that guy may live in the right area. He may have the right income level. And on paper, he has the needs that I think would match up to my solution. If I get in there and he is just throwing no's left and right, one of two things is true. One, either I haven't really uncovered his true need, or two, he's not my people. And that's okay. You are not going to sell your wares to everyone. And so cut bait as early as possible. And it might just be the wrong timing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:25) Mm-hmm.

(Alison Shee at 00:39:26) So not to say that you cut someone off and you burn that bridge—you never burn a bridge. But you also have to be discerning and say, "Hey, this is not the right target for me. I'm going to move on." Or the worst is, "Oh yeah, I'm really interested in your refrigerator. Will you tell me more? Well, can you come back next week? I'd like to hear more about it, but next week when my sister is in town, maybe she would want one. Then my mom's coming back next week and we would love for you to come in." And those are the people that say they're interested, but also are not. And they're wasting your time. So there are two ways that people waste—I guess you can waste your own time trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole or not being discerning with someone who is saying with their mouth that they're interested, but none of their actions support it. So those are—I mean, both things just, the gotchas that you've got to be aware of.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:24) We had this conversation literally, I think, Monday morning in our sales team meeting. We thought it was so interesting how we've noticed this pattern over the past couple—we were doing a close-loss review, and what we found is that the largest indicator of somebody not buying is being super excited and saying they're going to buy in the first call. Like, "We're doing this. We're 100% doing this. This is going to happen." Every time we hear that, inevitably, it just strings along and ages out, right? And then the people who do close are people—you know, they're curious. They're asking very specific questions right on the first call, right? Which means they're already thinking about it and assessing. And then they say, "Okay," and then they explain to you what the next steps are in a very clear way. "Okay, well, Sarah is my boss and I have to get her buy-in. I know she's got her budget cycle. It's on these dates, so we'll know about this time." And then they ignore you for whatever that time period is.

(Alison Shee at 00:41:21) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:21) When that time period comes along, "Alright, Sarah signed it. Send us over the contract," or whatever it is. And they're just very standard sales, and I like that.

(Alison Shee at 00:41:31) Yeah. Yeah. There is such a thing as a sales process that does exist. And it is important to have control over it the entire time. Now that doesn't mean you dictate. It means you have control. And so to your point, one of the first things at the beginning is, "Yeah, what does the buying process look like for you, Mr. Customer? Do you have buying authority? Is there a committee that has to vote on this?"—which nowadays, there's always a committee. "Who has the budget for this? Who's going to sign the actual contract? What's the timeframe?" And once you have all of that type of information, you're like, "Okay, when do you want to go live? January 1. Okay, well, it's May. So if you want to go live January 1, we should probably start doing implementation or prepping or whatever in Q4. Everyone knows that Thanksgiving and Christmas shuts down the world, at least in America, but generally globally. So now we're looking at October, September-October to start implementing. Okay, so we really need to sign by September 1 if you want to go live of January 1. Do you agree? Yes. Okay, great. Now if we have to sign by September 1, what's the buying process? Is there procurement? Is it a software? Do people have to click through? How long does a buying cycle take once it's approved? Forty-five days. Okay, now so September 1 now just became, you know, beginning of late July, beginning of August." I mean, you just back into everything. And if everyone has agreement, then you just hold people accountable. And of course, things change. But when the hemming and hawing starts, that's your first clue. Like, "Well, we're not going to hit January 1. So what changed on your end? Did this push out?" Because priorities do change. So there is a level of being flexible, but also holding people to timelines and process and reminding them the pain that they will have if they don't stick to that thing. But you have to learn what that pain is upfront in the very beginning, right? That needs identification and what problem are we solving so that you can constantly bring it back and remind throughout that process, even if it's a 12-month process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:49) Oh yeah. We came up with—we call it a notes template for our CRM, and we always find that new salespeople, they'll come out and say, "Oh, I had a great call." And it's like, "Alright, well, let's go look at your notes template and see all the answers to all the questions you're supposed to get." And they're like, "Well, that wasn't really relevant because of this or that." And you'll inevitably find that they basically know nothing about the deal because the other person drove everything.

(Alison Shee at 00:44:10) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:11) And then they just felt really good, and then now it's off in this black abyss, and they had every opportunity while they're on a call to just get these questions answered. But some people are too shy. I know because I used to be the person. I was too shy to ask the direct questions on sales calls, and it's so stupid too, Alison, because I was so shy to ask the direct questions because I was scared of losing the sale ultimately. Not doing the thing you need to do to get the sale.

(Alison Shee at 00:44:35) That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:35) And it just seems so backwards now. But at the time, I was just like, "Oh, I had such a good call."

(Alison Shee at 00:44:41) It was a great call.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:42) What was great about it?

(Alison Shee at 00:44:43) I don't know. We both like Georgia football. I mean, what's not great about that? You're—I mean, you're so spot on. The feelings can be so deceptive. And while I do believe building rapport is very important and, you know, building trust and becoming that trusted advisor—those are all real. Those are very important. However, without the teeth of those other answers, then you just made a best friend, but you'll probably never sell them anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:13) Yeah. And to your point, as you were saying that, I was like, "Man, I'm glad Josh is recording this." As you were describing backing into it, what it also does is it immediately weeds out the people that are not actually that interested, or at least they're not interested at that point in time, or it just—it gets everything. Rather than it being a mystery deal sitting in your pipeline, you have a really good understanding of, "Okay, here's the path to them having the product," and you can see where they fall off or you could see how far their seriousness goes or how far they've thought about it. So it's very, very beneficial to do the—we do that all the time. When we ask people, "When do you want your podcast to launch? Okay, well, if you want it to launch then, it takes six to eight weeks to build depending on how quickly you guys are. It usually takes 30 days for you guys to get to contracting. So this isn't something we should talk about in two months. You need to actually get this started to Sarah next week so that we can stay on the timeline." And that's all predicated on information they gave us saying that this is when they want their show to launch.

(Alison Shee at 00:46:14) So it's not—it's about them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:17) It is. Yeah.

(Alison Shee at 00:46:18) It is not about me. It is not about my solution. It truly is about you, your needs, what you are trying to accomplish. And if we can align, then that is a great relationship on both sides. I make a sale. You buy a product. It solves your problem. This is great. People buy from people all the time. So not wasting time on the people that aren't going to buy where you can then go spend more time researching and preparing for those that are going to buy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:47) Yes. We call it fat rabbits. You want to spend your effort chasing fat rabbits, not the skinny ones.

(Alison Shee at 00:46:54) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:54) It's a lot of effort to catch a rabbit, but you want the fat rabbits. You know? You don't want the skinny ones because you get more meat.

(Alison Shee at 00:47:01) That's right, absolutely. Well, just to kind of come back to a point you actually brought up earlier around pipeline management. So this is a very tricky art and science type of a thing. There are tools out there like Clari, C-L-A-R-I.

(Alison Shee at 00:47:20) I know, I'm like, I bet you're going to ask me about that. That's a tool out there. Salesforce has a lot of features and functionality built in to help with that. I think once you've established what your close ratio is, and it might be different for different salespeople. Somebody might have a 60% close rate.

(Alison Shee at 00:47:39) Someone else might have a 25% close rate. So kind of learning your team and what their average close rate is, that then can dictate how you manage pipeline reviews. And so, something I think we talked about before, I always start at the end. Are you at your quota? Have you closed the deals that you need to close?

(Alison Shee at 00:47:59) Great. What's your pipeline look like? So if you've already closed all the deals, obviously you build trust with me as a salesperson. And now I'm looking, how's your pipeline? Did you just blow it out?

(Alison Shee at 00:48:10) Now you're empty? Okay. So now we're going to be monitoring a little more closely. But if you're at quota or you're close to it, your pipeline is strong, then I step back and just say, what do you need from me? How can I support you?

(Alison Shee at 00:48:25) What are there internal barriers that you need me to address? Are there things that, how can I help you, salesperson? Now if their quota is not met and their pipeline is good, then I have to start asking questions like, is it a close rate issue? Are they not good at closing? Or is their pipeline not accurate?

(Alison Shee at 00:48:46) Or is this just a function of time? If do they just need a little more time to get that pipeline closed? What's going on in the world around us, in the market? What clients are they going after? Whales where the contract cycle is just longer?

(Alison Shee at 00:49:00) Or is this small to mid-market organizations that tend to buy quicker? So, again, not just looking at the numbers, but looking at the context around. So if they're not at their number and their pipeline is crap, then we have to start looking at, well, how many meetings are you having? Are you having enough meetings with the right audience to generate the kind of activity that we need to have opportunities and closes? And if they're not having enough meetings, then what are you doing all day?

(Alison Shee at 00:49:28) Are you making phone calls? Are you going to networking events? Are you volunteering your time? So kind of working backwards in the process. And, again, where are they at in their career? How long have they been with the organization? You talked about ramp ups. I absolutely believe in ramp ups. When you're holding a meeting, are you staying in control?

(Alison Shee at 00:49:49) What does it look like? How are you running your meetings? Who are you meeting with? So really looking at the data at every point in the funnel and then doing a deep dive for that person to figure out where are their gaps, and how can I, as your leader, coach you, give you training, make suggestions, make you do those god-awful role plays with me, forcing them to get better or going and making introductions for them, taking them with me on networking events and introducing them to the right people to help kind of kickstart their own networking?

(Alison Shee at 00:50:22) So just, I don't know if that helps.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:24) Yeah.

(Alison Shee at 00:50:24) But just figuring out where that person is at on their journey and then meeting them where they're at.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:31) I love it. Well, I have extracted a lot of information from you. I have many, many more questions, so we'll definitely have to let this air and then see what people like, how they respond to it, what questions they DM me, and things of that nature. And then we can have a follow-up one maybe in six months or a year. Does that sound good?

(Alison Shee at 00:50:49) Perfect. Yeah, absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:50) Nice. We did it. Alison, we made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Alison Shee at 00:50:54) I feel fabulous.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:55) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.