The One Mistake That Kills Startup Revenue Faster Than Anything Else

You can outwork smarter people.

When a founder or sales leader is in panic mode about revenue, what are the most common bad decisions you see them make?

Yeah, they put too much pressure on the prospect. I'm going to jump back in and try to save the deal, close the deal. And sometimes that just adds again, more confusion and chaos. A full pipeline solves a lot of problems.

Explain to me, Life Plum 12, what is a sales process and why does not having one kill revenue.

Yeah, I mean, it's basically a roadmap, right? It's, it's the starting point and the finish line and all of the places that you stop along the way to see all the, you know, the largest ball of yarn and the, the best, the best coffee in town. Like, it's all of those little milestones. It's all of the things that need to happen in order for you to get to the finish line. I cannot motivate the unmotivated. Well, because AI is going to do whatever you tell it to do. And if you have a broken process or a half-baked process, it'll just do it faster. And I'm like, eh, does AI suck? Or did you give it a half-baked process?

Guys, welcome back. Wow, we've got a little bit of reflection there. We are back for the Rev Intel Podcast today. I got Kristi Jones and we have a very, very fun-packed episode. Our guest today, look, she has a superpower that most founders desperately need, but they don't realize they're missing. It's the ability to turn revenue chaos into predictable systems. And if I'm right, you've spent over— you've spent years helping companies escape panic-driven decision cycles by building formal sales processes that actually work. You've built SDR teams from zero, helped founders transition— Jesus, I need you— from doing all the selling themselves to leading real sales teams. And you've got a philosophy that's deceptively simple. Um, I think if I'm right, it's do the right things and the right things will happen. So let's find out what these right things actually are. Um, Christy, give us a quick intro. Who are you? What do you do? And why should anybody stay here for the next hour to hear what you have to say?

Perfect. Thanks, Shane. I am Christy Jones. I've been a SaaS sales leader, like you said, for years. Thanks for not pointing out the exact number. Uh, where I have, uh, built out and scaled sales teams. I currently work with earlier stage B2B SaaS founders, like you said, trying to formalize, document, and processize everything going on so we can have some consistency. 'Cause consistency leads to scaling. So, that's sort of the primary get me started thing that I do with founders. But then secondarily, I actually come in and I call it project managing the hiring process. So, my team and I come in to help ensure that they don't mis-hire. Again, an early stage startups, if you mis-hire your first or second sales rep, it could set you back 6 to 12 months. So, we ride shotgun with our founders. We lead those interviews. We're there every step of the way to make sure that professional interviewees, such as sales professionals, I say buyer beware, do not pull the wool over my founder's eyes. So, we spend a lot of time making sure that that happens and is along with helping them onboard. We wanna make sure they have a positive first 2 or 3 weeks experience with the organization.

Absolutely. Okay. So let's talk about from panic to process. Okay. And something that I've heard, it's the kitchen table MBA. So you've got a kitchen table, kitchen table MBA. I think we spoke about this a little bit on our first episode that we had together, but growing up in an entrepreneurial family, what did you really learn though, at sitting at that table that most business school grads never figure out?

Yeah, I think a few things. Don't judge a book by its cover. You can outwork smarter people. I think my dad would say he wasn't the smartest guy in the classroom, but he was one of the hardest working people. And so he just outworked some people. My mom left college with an English degree and a Spanish minor, and math was not her thing, but she was able to get her real estate license. And I think really it was all about— I think it was more about communication and interpersonal skills It was the, you know, EQ, you know, how you treat people is how people will treat you. You know, don't judge a book by its cover. My dad would always say, just because someone lives in a really big house doesn't, you know, could mean that that's the most important thing to them. Maybe they don't take vacations, maybe they don't drive the nicest car, but just because somebody has a nice car, they could live in an apartment. But the fact of the matter is people choose to spend their money all different ways. And so just because they don't choose to spend their money the way you spend your money, Doesn't mean that they don't have the money. It just means they're, they've chosen to spend it a different way. So I think those are the things. Just, I think there was so much information by osmosis. My brother and I both left that kitchen table with financial literacy and financial acumen in ways that I think a lot of kids didn't because my parents debriefed every night at the kitchen table. Even though they worked in the same office, my mom is the agent, my dad is the owner broker, they didn't really see each other a lot during the day. And so we would come, everybody would come together and you had to, you know, once around the room, what happened at school today? But then we, we'd end with the business stuff and, you know, my brother and I would've already shared our what happened at school today part. And then you were just sort of eavesdropping. But I, you know, we were kind of office rats as I called it. We would pop in after school just to say hi or whatnot. And so, you know, we knew everybody's name, we knew who was doing well, we knew who the top agents were. And so, you know, I think modeling, I would say, you know, we got a really good education in modeling. They, they modeled the behavior. Of what a successful sales professional and sales leader looks like?

It is really important. And look, for me, like, my dad was the type of person— so we grew up in England, uh, we moved to the US. We moved at a time where money was flowing heavily, and obviously markets were going wild. And we arrived in the US with like a ton of, a ton of money in our accounts. And Even then, the only thing we heard was like, we wanted to buy stuff, but my dad is just that typical person. Nope, we're not. Don't buy it. It's a waste of money. He doesn't need it. Um, and it, and it's only like 20 years later. Well, actually 30 years later, cause I arrived in the US when I was 13, 1999. So let's say, all right, 26 years later, um, I'm just getting a good understanding of like, high-level business, uh, like economics, right? And understanding that at a fundamental level. And it's because I never— like, they don't teach you any of that in school.

No.

And it makes it really, really difficult. And one thing I learned very quickly was like, I learned how to generate cash as an employee. I learned how to generate cash. And then when I realized I could do it for myself, I was able to generate even more cash. But keeping my cash And not spending it and holding onto it, making it grow. That was something that I really, really, it took a lot of work and I really wish, like, I'm sure a lot of people wish they had that, but I want to talk about one thing, which is the waitressing signal. And I've heard this a few times. Your favorite job was waitressing because every tip is like a review. Uh, and it's like instant feedback on performance. So why don't most sales teams have the same clarity? About whether they're doing a great job or not?

Yeah, I think it comes down to the sales leader. And, you know, I think the sales rep, right? Absolutely every deal should give you an indication of how well you're doing. But we really should be doing a better job as sales leaders of giving more, I would say, in-the-moment feedback as opposed to the annual review or the biannual review. And I think, you know, I think one of the things that I'm concerned about as the world is shifting from, you know, into AI, what I call from the art of sales into really heavily leaning into the, the science of sales is, you know, we're, we're moving away from the type of coaching that we used to do. We're moving away from ride-alongs and sitting in on calls and demos and doing call reviews. I mean, I'm so old, Shane, that I would literally have to, like, I'd have my own headset and I would plug in, right? I would sit right next to my rep in order to coach a call. I'd have to sit next to them. Right, and plug in, which means that right after that call, we were still sitting next to each other, right? And so we were, I was, they were gonna get in-the-moment feedback. So, you know, as technology advances, there's pluses and minuses to everything. And I know that most sales reps didn't love me sitting next to them. But again, I didn't say anything, right? I'm on mute and there's, I'm just eavesdropping in, but I'm able to, you know, if I needed to scribble a note to hand, you know, to slide it across the desk in order to help them, you know, answer a question that they might not have known, or like I said, the instant feedback. So I am concerned about, I think that, and again, like I think I learned that right at the kitchen table, that daily debrief. And you know, not only were we deep, my parents debriefing the day, but advice was being given. My dad was the broker, the real estate broker. And so that's the person that the real estate agent would go to when they had questions or they needed some help closing a deal or they needed some legal information. To be shared, or how do I handle this? And so, you know, I do think that was modeled, but I think we need, you know, with everybody working remote, and, you know, the only way I listen to a call, because we don't even do that live anymore, is if, you know, if my technology, or you send me a call and say, hey, can you help with this? Or I, you know, pick out some calls and eavesdrop on them. But I do think that, that regular feedback is, is missing today. And think about, I mean, it was so much easier to coach people in the moment, and they, and they came along so much more quickly, right? They got better exponentially because I called it management by walking around, right? I would just walk through the bullpen, right? And I would, I would just, if I heard something interesting, I'd just kind of hang out. I might hide behind the cubicle wall, um, if I wasn't plugging in. But, you know, and then like just, and even the celebrations, right? Like you hear a great call and everybody walks over and high-fives you. And we just, we're missing so much of that these days that, you know, I worry about that next generation.

I'll tell you what, I do feel the same. I can remember it as like it was yesterday. There was this guy, Duperron Ribeiron, I think his name was Ribeiro or something like this. And he was the CEO from a predictive analytics company in Brazil and they were blowing up and doing so well. And this was in my like second year of my career at a very established publishing house.. And I remember having this guy on the call for about 22, 23 minutes. And it got to that point of like, you know how you build all that momentum and you're pitching and sharing how other clients are doing it. It's getting, and you're getting to that point of like, okay, cool. For 2 webinars, typically it's $10,500. On this occasion, look, it's the end of the year. I want to wrap this up. We've been talking for 2 years. Let's call it at $15,000. Are you all right with like, And it was that back and forth, back and forth. And it was so intense. And you could see the whole floor, like we had a number of tables lined up and then on other sections and the whole, like all the divisions on that floor were just like in awe. And you being the rep, like having that conversation and getting that buzz and feeling that and like, oh my God, look at all these people looking like it, it gives you a little bit more of that. You know, I've got to do it. I got to do it. And it didn't go through. The deal didn't happen. Okay. He said, you know what, no, I could do it.

I was looking for that happy ending. No.

I know. All right. No, but it didn't happen, right? Typical sales. And it was so close, but it was so worth it that you didn't like, you don't, you, I, you don't have that right now. I've closed the biggest deals of my life at home, but have had nobody to share it with. And it's because we are so isolated from everything around us that used to be so fruitful. So, um, This could like help us transition into the next piece quite well, which is the panic problem. And you talk a lot about panic being, uh, like causes bad decisions. And I think it's, for me, it's usually around cash flow or pipeline. Those are typically your biggest problems. But when a founder or sales leader is in panic mode about revenue, um, what are the most common bad decisions you see them make?

Yeah, they put too much pressure on the prospect. Right? When you, when you have an anemic pipeline and you can't, you know, you have to have— I, I'm working with a, I'm working with a customer now who needs $1 million in sales to close by the end of the year. The board is, is, the board has spoken, as I say. And that's every— and I just did pipeline review with them this morning, and that's every single deal. Like, that's their zero error, you know, zero error margin there. And so, as a result of that, there's a chance that they'll put undue pressure. Because at the end of the day, I said to them, "Do we expect these to close, period?" And they said, "Well, yeah." And I'm thinking, oof, the difference between it closing on December 31st and it closing on February 15th, like, that's gonna be maybe, you know, again, I'm all about creating sense of urgency. Don't get me wrong. I love a good sense of urgency, right? But in some cases, putting undue pressure on the prospect, will, you know, put us in a bad light, will maybe damage the relationship. And so I would say the same thing with founders who have any kind of sales team at all. Same, same thing, right? Putting undue pressure, um, micromanaging the deal because founders used to be the first seller of their company. You know, they'll have, when, when panic causes bad decisions, one of those bad decisions is I'm gonna jump back in and try to save the deal, close the deal. And sometimes that just adds again, more confusion and chaos because they've been working with Susan and now all of a sudden, you know, somebody that they've never met and don't really know or have any trust built with, you know, wants to jump in and thinks that they can save the day. Not only does it damage the relationship with Susan, but it possibly damages the relationship with the prospect. So those, you know, I say a full pipeline, as you know, a full pipeline solves a lot of problems.

I think I lost you for a second.

A full pipeline solves a lot of problems.

It does. And I remember my, my, my, my favorite coach, Marcus Kalki, uh, he said, Shane, 95% of all your problems can be solved with, uh, more pipeline. So just go get more pipeline. And it honestly is the truth because if you have that, then new in, more out is what I say, right? It's just quite, quite an easy thing to, to, to look at. So, uh, finding the Sales Acceleration Group, you founded Sales Acceleration Group in 2016. What was the specific problem you saw in the market that made you think, I need to build a company around solving this?

Yeah, I think, um, because founders are the first sellers, they also tend to be the first sales leaders. Um, and a lot of times they weren't qualified to do either, right? They definitely weren't. They, they used their Rolodex and the friends and family and the VC connections that they had. And then, you know, got themselves to $750,000 or $1 million. But they did it, they didn't do it the way that a true seller would do it, right? I call it the founder advantage. And so they used founder advantage, the fact that their, you know, title is founder or CEO. They probably have been immersed in the industry for years, right? They probably have in, you know, deep industry networking networks, contacts. And so how they got to that first million, I always say like, Another Christie-ism, what gets you here won't get you there. And so the method in which, right, which is why I come in to solve that sales playbook problem. The, the way you got to $1 million is not the way you're gonna get to $5 million, right? And so, you know, making, you know, that's, so then, you know, one of the problems is, well, we're now, we're transitioning, we've hired our first sales rep or two, and now I'm playing sales leader, but I want them to do it the way I did it. And that's where things start to fall apart because they don't have the title that you have. They don't have founder advantage, right? They don't have the title. They don't have the network connections. They don't have the 25 years in the industry. And oh, by the way, they did not give birth to the product, right? So they didn't give birth to that baby. So they don't know everything. You know, they don't know all the ins and outs of the product like you do. And so when the founder becomes the first sales leader after being the first sales rep, that can cause some friction as well.

It's tough. It is tough. It's a, it is a real tough one. So I wanna talk about a little bit more around the revenue process and signal around that, because it's a philosophy that I believe a lot of problems can be solved with. There's been a number of businesses that I've gone into and I've gone into the business and they're not even using a CRM. And I'm thinking, wow, okay, so I'm sure you're using a CR— like a spreadsheet or something, right?? And they said no. And I said, well, it's like, all right, Google Docs? No, it wasn't even that. I'm not even going to reveal what it was because I think it will make it quite obvious. I said, look, first of all, all of that needs to go right into— go buy a CRM today, put everything in there today. And I want to see what it looks like. And then you see like, no, no, add your own every note. And then you see the note, no, Add it more. Now enrich it. And like everything is now pumped up to the max, but like without sales, like that's one of the fundamental truths, but what even is a sales process today? A lot of founders hear the word sales process and they think they know it all. So it's, they think it's just a bureaucracy that slows things down. Um, so for those out there that like maybe new to it or just want to understand it at a very basic level, explain to me like I'm 12. What is a sales process and why does not having one kill revenue?

Yeah, I mean, it's basically a roadmap, right? It's, it's the starting point and the finish line and all of the places that you stop along the way to see all the, you know, the largest ball of yarn and the, uh, the best ca— the best coffee in town. Like it's all of those little milestones. It's all of the things that need to happen in order for you to get to the finish line. And so, you know, there, you know, there are, everybody's got a different motion, as I call it. But the bottom line is if you head out without a map or, you know, you know, Waze or whatever you're using to get to where your endpoint is, the fact of the matter is then how are you going? Here's the thing that kills me, Shane. We have like even companies that have a process. When I come in and I, you know, kind of dig around and maybe sit in on a prospect call or two, it becomes very obvious that we are the only ones that know about the process. We know what's hap— what should happen next, but we haven't shared that with the prospect. So again, it would be like you and I deciding we're gonna drive from St. Louis where I live, you know, down to Florida, 'cause it's getting cold here and we wanna go somewhere warm for the winter. And just saying like, you know, like, hey, so like, you know, how long is it gonna take us? Or, you know, where are we gonna, like, you know, it's, it's a, you know, it's a 20+ hour drive. Are we gonna stop along the way? Are we gonna spend the night somewhere? When are we going to eat? You know, how long, how many miles to the gallon does your car get? And me basically not telling you anything and asking you just to, oh, just Shane, just trust me. We're going to get to Miami. I promise you.

Right.

And so, you know, like it's funny when I say that, right? Because you would be like, well, that sounds pretty controlling, right? I mean, I sound like a, like a control freak, right? I sound like a control freak. But once we have a formal process in place. That because we, we will know where we're going, but we also always don't, we always don't know the answer to some of your questions, right? Well, when should we stop? Right? When should we stop? How do we know that we're headed the right way? How do we know that we're gonna get there by tomorrow morning? Right? What are the indicators along the way? So yes, we have to map out a formal sales process and then we need to not keep it a secret. So I normally, when I'm working with prospects, I say, you know, I have that discovery call. And normally I have 2 because that's part of my process. The first one's a little bit of get to know you, figure out what the business problem is. And then the second one is, well, let's narrow down an, to an SOW, right? To a statement of work. So I do, so part of my process includes 2 discovery calls, not 1. And then I say, after that, I'm gonna put, send you over the SOW to you in a Word document. You're gonna look it over and you're gonna redline anything that you don't like. Either, hey, I don't wanna do this anymore, I changed my mind. Or, hey, we didn't, I forgot to tell you that We need this help. And so we'll add that in. And then and only then do I put the financials to it. So then I say, once you send that back to me, you know, and we've got, again, we have, I've got, I'm holding people accountable. We've got deadlines. So when I get off that call, I say, I'm gonna have the SOW due by the end of the day tomorrow. How long will it take you to review it and send it back to me? And you're gonna tell me. And then I'm gonna schedule a call for the following day because I'm gonna say to them, when you send it back to me, I'm gonna clean it up and then I'll put the financials to it and then we're gonna meet again. Right? And then, and, and you know, and then at that point, if it's good, I'm gonna send you over an electronic version to sign. Then I'm gonna send you over the invoice, which has to be paid before we get started. I mean, like, I'm outlining everything. So why on earth, but I hear sellers all the time not outlining what the process looks like so that everybody knows what's coming next and it's not a surprise.

It's true. It's very true. And it makes it more like One thing I literally just have, I've recently had this conversation and it's why wouldn't you want to make your prospect's life easier? And it shows them you're prepared. It shows them you're organized. It shows them you're structured. It shows them that you have shit under control versus showing up to a call like, oh my gosh, like the times that I have seen people show up to a call unprepared and then the call take 12 minutes and then they wonder why is this deal not closing? Is outrageous. And I think that comes down to discipline, right? Some of these people, they get older, they think that they know it all. Nothing against old people. It's just older generations have a very, very different view. And it's to say, you know what, I'll say it's more so on the European side. So you say a common problem is lack of documentation and discipline around sales process. Why is discipline so hard for sales teams? Aren't they supposed to be naturally driven?

Yeah. Uh, yes, they should be naturally driven. But discipline again, and discipline's not just, if you're not a disciplined person by, in, in, by nature, right? That means in your personal life too. That means, you know, when the alarm goes off in the morning and you're supposed to get up and go to the gym, you don't, you hit the snooze button. Mm-hmm. You know, or, you know, you're, you know, you, you know that you need to get 8 hours of sleep, but you're still up at midnight, you know, playing video games or whatever you're doing. So I think, you know, discipline is not just a professional, trait. And it's not a skill, by the way, it's a trait. And so, um, yes, I think there's lots of, uh, lack of discipline in sales. But if you're not like, I, I say we, I say this is my other Christyism, you know, I cannot motivate the unmotivated. I can only inspire the self-motivated. And so, and so if you're going to put the process together, well, and this goes back to having an accountability culture, right? So I say to people like, we can't hold anybody accountable to expectations that we haven't set. We can't set expectations if we haven't written things down. Right? So I, I can say to you, hey, I'm gonna need you to close $1 million by the end of the year, but I haven't told you how I expect you to get there. Is that $1 million deal or do I need 5 deals at $200,000? Like, what do I need from you? Right? Yeah.

And so, absolutely.

Yeah. So I, I think that the, the, the fact, the discipline problem is like, let's talk about the redheaded stepchild. Let's talk about prospecting and filling your pipeline, right? That requires a tremendous amount of discipline because by the way, like not everything in sales is fun, right? What's fun? What's fun? Getting the DocuSign back, right? That's fun. All the other stuff before that, not as fun. And the least fun thing about sales is filling your pipeline because most people's, you know, God love 'em, most people don't have marketing departments that are bringing in enough inbound leads to fill their pipeline. And so, you know, setting aside, like time blocking your calendar for prospecting, not fun, requires discipline and is necessary. So I think the lack of discipline just comes from the not fun part.

Look, for me, in terms of that grind, I think it's well worth it for me. And I don't know, I'm one of those weird people. My dad always said, yeah, CEOs and entrepreneurs are really weird anyway. That's why you're the way you are. And I'm like, yep, I know I'm a very, very strange person. And it was like, I was very fortunate. Not, I'm not here to brag, but I set up my first business in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. I got my first invoice from Cognism for £4,000 for the quarter. And within 3 days, I had my first like £22,000 in revenue. And it was amazing, that call and that buzz. And you're just like, holy shit. And then I hired people to do it for me and screwed up the whole business. So don't hire people to do it for you.

You didn't have a formal process, right?

It is very, very true. It's very, very true. And it's one of the traps, right, that we'll talk about right now. So you help transit, you help founders transition from founder-led selling to building their first sales team. I'm, I'm, I'm in a lot of those processes right now. So what's the biggest mistake founders make when they try to hire their first salesperson?

Hiring someone that has sold before and basically handing them a laptop thinking that they'll just figure it out, right? No onboarding, no formal processes, no playbook. Noah, I, I was with a separate client, um, last week, at the end of last week, and I realized that they had hired 7 new account managers. But in talking to the Salesforce admin and talking to them about Trailhead, because I'm like, oh, I think you should be able to find that information on Trailhead. And they said, hey, while we're talking about that, like, do you think that the account managers should be using Trailhead? And I said, well, didn't you put them through Salesforce training? Like, you know, have them get some Salesforce certifications or put them through the sales courses? They're like, no. And I was like, okay, well, no wonder they're not using Salesforce the way it was designed to be used, right? And so, you know, just it, and again, you don't know what you don't know, right? Like if you've been a Salesforce administrator, but you've never been responsible for onboarding, you know, which this individual had not been, you know, responsible for onboarding anybody, then they didn't, they didn't know. And they were like, well, I'm not really their boss. Right. So I didn't, you know, I wasn't sure I could tell them what to do. Um, but yeah, I mean, the number of people, I've got another client right now. I'm working with them because they mis-hired 3 sales reps in a 6-month, none of the 3 stayed longer than that. 3 months was the shortest time and 6 months was the longest time. And I said, well, like, tell me about that. Well, like, well, they came from the industry, right? They've sold, they'd sold into this industry before, but they hadn't sold your product before.

Right?

And they hadn't maybe sold to your persona before. And you have a 6-figure, quarter-million-dollar average sale and a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. And they might not have done that before. So, one of the most important things that I do, here's the tip of the day. When I'm hiring sales rep number 1, 2, or 3 for my founders, when we're build, when we're starting to build and scale that team, I'm looking for someone who has done almost the identical process that we have. Same average sale, same sales cycle, same sales stages, talking to someone similar, not necessarily the exact persona, but someone adjac— you know, same or adjacent. Because even though I'm gonna onboard them, right? I've, I, I told you I'm gonna give you good formal onboarding, but I've got a much better chance of them succeeding and them onboarding more quickly if what we're doing looks like what they've done before. So it's like, you know, why would I hire somebody, like if you've got a $20,000 90-day sales cycle, why would you hire somebody who came from the industry but has only done 6-figure deals that lasted 12 months? Right? You, you're gonna say to yourself, well, but, but it's gotta be, it's gonna be easier. It's a 90-day sales cycle. Well, but we're not used to creating sense of urgency or holding people accountable or having one meeting a week. With a prospect, if you've got an 18-month sales cycle, you're used to having one meeting a month maybe, or one every other month maybe. Right? And you're used to talking to 8 people in the organization, not 2. And so it, you know, it sounds like, well, that should be easier if you've done the hard things. Well, no, but if you've never done that thing, that's hard.

Yeah.

So make your life easy. Find somebody who's done exactly what you're doing and the way you're doing it. So that they go, oh, this is very familiar to me. I know this motion.

Well, I wanna talk about red flags with that when you are hiring salespeople, and I have made God knows how many mistakes hiring certain people. And I remember, I remember one time I had a meeting with this individual and it was my first year of business and we were talking about something and he just said, well, you did this and you went through this and you did this. And I just was on this call and I was just like, wow, this person just hasn't— like, I thought I was bad and I thought I was quite a nightmare when I was an employer, even like at school, but then even employer at certain companies. And I had to just leave the call. I honestly, like, there's 4 of us on it, 2, my 2 co-founders and this one individual who we were, uh, like just having a conversation with about his behavior and how he talks. And that made me never want to run or build a sales, and I will never run a sales agency again, ever in my life. I hate it that much. And people know that. So when you're helping a company hire salespeople, what is the one red flag in a candidate that makes you immediately say, this person won't work out, but they won't work out?

Um, oh, one red flag. There's always, there's so many more. Than just one. Mm-hmm. Um, again, like not really having a process. So the very first interview question I ask somebody is, you know, pick out of all your past jobs, pick up the one that you think closely mirrors us and walk me, just like I said, we're going from St. Louis to Miami. I want you to walk me step by step through your process, starting with how you even get a lead. And if they can't walk me through that, then I know that they probably didn't You know, didn't succeed at that previous job. So, you know, and then, you know, then I follow that up with, great, you've just outlined the entire process. Where's your superpower lie? Which part of the process is your super strength, is your secret weapon? And if they can't answer that, then I'm like, then they don't know themselves well enough, right? Lack of self-awareness. And so you can't lean into that superpower. You can't, I always say like, if you're going through the whole process, uh, Back in the day, I read the book Good to Great. It still sticks with me today. And basically it says you can't take a D skill and make it an A skill. You just can't. So you have to have awareness that that D skill, maybe you can get that to a B minus, right? But you're never gonna get that to an A, but you can get a B minus skill to an A. And so if the deal's going south, you'll have to lean into your superpower, right? Or your secret weapon or whatever it is that you know that you do better than most people. That you have extreme confidence in. So when I ask that question and you can't answer that question, and, or, or you say like, oh, well, like, you know, I'm really good with people, or, you know, discovery. And I go, so I'm gonna dig deep, right? I'm like, discovery's my superpower. And I said, well, tell me why. Why do you do, you know, and I say, your superpower is something that, you know, you outshine your coworkers and your competitors in, right? And so what makes, like, what about discovery? Makes you your superpower. You know, I'm just great at questioning. You know, people tell me things, but what I haven't heard yet is I'm able to uncover business problems and the financial impact of those business problems in a 45-minute call.

That is like very, very accurate, very, very specific, and very, very— it does make a big difference. It does. I, I don't think I've ever used that, and I think that's a huge nugget to take away from, from today's from today's episode. So there's one question, there's one actually position on your, on, on your profile, and it's about a company called Gainsight. And, and I want to ask you a question about that. But for those that don't know, like, who, what is Gainsight? Maybe if you could tell a little bit about the financials, their size, and then we can go into that question about that, which I think is quite important and helpful to most that are listening.

Sure. Um, Gainsight is, uh, was the number one unicorn the number one unicorn in their space. And so they provided customer success. They provide, they're still around, they provide customer success software. And, um, I started working for them, I don't know, 10 plus, let's see, I mean, 10 years, I don't know, 12, 13 years ago, um, and built out their first SDR team. And so they were, I think they had just gotten Series E funding. So somewhere between Series B and Series E, I think they were Series D when I bought, when I came on, but they were working on E and they got E shortly after I joined. So, a pretty big organization with a lot of funding, but a lot of expectations that went along with that. So, I, you know, I was fortunate enough to build out their first SDR team from 0 to 13 in about 6 weeks. So, again, talk about hiring pressure. You gotta get, kind of get that as right as you can get that. But it was a most amazing experience. And again, there's a lot of customer success software platforms out there, but, but we were so early in the, in the journey that I said, I sat in the bullpen with my SDR team and all I would hear all day long is Gainsight, G-A-I-N-S-I-G-H-T, we're customer success software. And, and you could hear people like, I don't know what that means. Like, well, do you have like account management and like that stuff? Because we couldn't figure out who to talk to because most companies didn't have a director of customer success at that point. And so, particularly in the Midwest, right? So, we spent our time on the coast. Talking to the East and West Coast and kind of worked our way into the Midwest over time. Um, but yeah, very, uh, a very, very interesting opportunity for, you know, you very rarely as a sales leader, Shane, you know, do you get to build out your sales team from zero? Like I've only done it that one time.

Wow. Wow. It is an interesting journey. It definitely is. But what did you do differently though in that period that made it work? Like most companies struggle even with one good SDR. So what did you do that was so different that did make it work?

Yeah, I did a few things. We did a, we did a lot of education. I was, I'm, you know, like I said, sell, the art of sales. I did a lot of art of sales training. I did a ton of call coaching. I divided the team. I had 2 inbound SDRs and the rest were outbound. I, and then over time, I realized that I needed to partner much more closely with marketing. So initially, we weren't getting really any, I call it like ground cover, right? We weren't getting any air cover from marketing. We were just out, we were basically in the marketing department and the sales department. And marketing was doing a lot, a lot of brand building, if you will, trying to get our name out there. Um, and putting together, we, we were the very first to put together the very first customer success conference. And it wasn't a user conference. The majority of people who came, uh, to Pulse, as we called it, were not Gainsight customers. So we were really building out, we were, you know, we were creating a category, right? We were category creators. And so, I took people, ironically, I took people from all over. I took, I took 3 or 4 people from an organization here in St. Louis that did outsourced SDR work. So, I took some people from there. I took some people from retail. I took a couple of younger people and I put them on the inbound side because the majority of people who came inbound were not ICP. They were just customer success curious, right? And so they did not, right? They were just customer success curious. They weren't, they weren't ICP. And so I didn't want, you know, I wanted to let the junior people kind of grow up with the inbound and then they could move to outbound. But really, I mean, I just remember doing a ton of call monitoring. I remember having, you know, regular meetings, but remember, like, so I had my office, everybody just sat right outside me. So that management by walking around, was super helpful because I could hear things happening in real time. Like, let's bring our problems. But I think the most impactful thing I did was reach out to the CMO and say, I need help, right? Like, I need you to help warm some stuff up. And because we were all, we were just doing this, we were just doing territory-based, like, fire shot, right? Throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it would stick. And when I, once I finally got, you know, once marketing got involved, we decided to do, we used, we stole straight outta the development playbook, the sprint concept. And so every 6, yep. Every, because here was the deal. These are younger, these are younger sales reps, right? Kids outta college, as I affectionately call them. And it's too hard for them to call into manufacturing and then find, you know, a financial company and then healthcare company because we were for everybody, right? As long as you were, selling SaaS for the most part into wherever, then we were for you. But what happened was, is that you gotta switch your brain. Like every time a new lead would come up in your, you know, in your Salesforce, you know, instance, you're like, okay, I gotta change. You know, like if we're talking to, I think my, I always use this as a, is the easy example. If I'm calling it a financial institution, you know, credit unions call them members, banks call them customers. Right? And so you gotta make those nuanced switches in, you know, in real time. So instead of making them do that all the time, we said, we're gonna do 4 to 6 week sprints into manufacturing. So the Friday before we would start that sprint, we would do a training, a 2-hour training session. We'd give 'em all the vernacular. Here are the business problems. Here are the objections you might hear. We prepped them. And then all 13, except for the inbound, all 11 SDRs are now doing the same thing, hearing each other over the cubicle walls. And coming and having the same conversations, the same problems are coming up that we can solve in real time as opposed to why, you know, somebody going, well, have you had this problem? Well, no, I haven't. But that's because they didn't call into manufacturing. So then we would move to the next industry and the next industry and the next industry. Best thing I ever did was help, was do the same thing, have them do the same thing over and over and over again. Because in 6 weeks they got proficient.

Those reps. It's putting in those reps. It was the one thing that I was in a very— when we met, I was probably one year in, but I was in a very dark place in my life. And it was just the one thing I had. I was sitting on my sofa, just like ready to give up. And I still remember it to this day. And it was just like, you can carry on feeling like a bum, or you can get your ass up and go to the gym right now. And it was 2 AM, like 1 or 2 AM in the morning. And it was a 24-hour gym. I paid for the gym membership. I got there and lo and behold, those reps for my mental health and then my physical health and a small piece of my spiritual health became— it strengthened so much. And that was very easily transferred into how I operate in business. And then those reps again in business over the past 3 years, I think because of the initial stages from like 2014 to 2020 and then 2020 to 2023, which was like, Service pre-AI, then mega with AI, and now like accelerated AI. These reps have become like 1 by 1 to 10 by 10 to now like 100 by 100 reps. It's absolutely insane. So one other piece I think that's really interesting when it comes to developing a sales team and understanding sales is I'm noticing one thing where I see people have a very hard time listening. And I mean, like active listening, not listening to respond. I'm sure you've had that phase in your life where you used to just listen because you were waiting for that one thing that you thought 3 minutes to say, like, and then he or she interrupts.

I got this nugget.

I have to share my nugget. And it's just about like, if you just listen to what the person is saying, Like you don't have to think about anything. You will just ask a natural, curious question. So you say that's one of the hardest lessons you've learned, and it is not what you say, but how you say it. Can you, so can you give us, give us an example of a time when you said the right thing the wrong way and it backfired?

Oh yeah, I got that. I got that example in my back pocket. Um, I was, I was the VP of sales, uh, working for a small company, fewer than Fewer than 50 employees, about probably this time, $6 or $7 million in revenue. I had full revenue responsibility, net new and the BDR team and the customer success team. And the owner called an impromptu meeting, like to all the executives, which were about 4 or 5 of us. And he's like, come to my, you know, just come to my office, like impromptu meeting. You know, so I show up and back in the, back in the day, this was not, I didn't have a laptop. We had, we had, um, PCs back then. So We didn't schlep that to the office, right? So I grab my, you know, my notebook and my pencil or pen, and I get to the office, I get to his office, and the channel partner manager is standing next to me and the ops manager and whatever. And the owner starts saying things, the CEO owner starts saying things that were sort of like, like he, like he's giving us action, right? Like, I want this, I wanna do this. And so I'm like quickly scribbling notes or whatever. And the girl next to me says, who was a friend of mine, Angie, and she says, can I borrow your pencil? And I was like, you didn't bring anything to write with? Right? And I said it out loud. I was frustrated. I was like, who comes to a meeting with the owner and doesn't bring anything to write with? And I was like, you didn't bring anything to write with? And I said it again, like, as my, as my parents would say, I don't really own an inside voice. So, you know, everybody in the room heard or whatever. And, and she wasn't offended because I have a pretty direct communication style and we were friends. So that didn't like, that didn't actually hurt her feelings, but it bothered the boss. And so about 30 minutes later, he showed up in my office and said, like, you can't talk to people like that. And I was shocked because I was like, I thought she was in the wrong and I was in the right. But he didn't like the culture that that was building, right? He didn't like, and he acknowledged that it didn't bother her. You know, he's like, I could see on Angie's face that it didn't bother her., but it bothered me and I don't want my employees talking to each other that way. And I was like teary, like I was like, first off, no one likes to get called out. And secondly, like this was my livelihood. I was the second most important person in that building, right? I mean, reporting up to him and had full revenue responsibility. And so, um, I like, you know, swallowed my pride, took a big, like, you know, took a big glass of wine that night and sat down and got, and kind of got you know, right with myself and called my dad. I was supposed to, you know, call my dad because, because my dad had had a business coach. And ironically, my dad's business coach, even though my dad was in Kansas, my dad's business coach was in St. Louis. It was in my back. He was in my backyard. And I said, can I have Jeff's phone number? And he's like, what's going on? And I told him and he goes, sure. And so he says, he goes, I don't think you did as much damage as you think you did. And I said, well, I'm flipping out because I'm the breadwinner of my family and I can't afford to lose this job. Not only do I really love what I do, like I can't, I can't put my family in this situation because I can't keep my mouth shut. And so I hired a business coach and about 3 days later I walked in, 'cause the boss had kind of said like, you know, you need, I need to know whether or not this is something you're gonna get a handle on or not. And about 3 days later I walked into his office and said, I heard you. I, you know, I'm sorry, I heard you and I'm gonna fix the problem. I've hired myself a business coach. And he was like, oh, he's like, well, tell me more. And so I did. And he said, I'll pay for it because I was intending to pay outta my own pocket. And so he said, I'll pay for it. And about 6 months later, things had gone so nicely that he brought the guy in to work with every executive in the company.

Wow. That is incredible. I've had, 2, let's say the most impactful one, I literally had one last year. Well, no, actually, sorry, this year. And then I think the biggest impact, impactful statement I had was one from one of my dad's friends. So it was back in 2015, I just got into sales. And this is why you don't listen to somebody like Grant Cardone when you are getting into your sales career. And like the first thing I read, I still remember, it's like, I want to know how to close. And then I was like, well, I know how to close now, but I can't open shit. Like, what the hell is going on here? You can't close what doesn't exist, right? Exactly right. And then I have to go to the open side. I'm like, all right, now I know how to prospect, but I can't handle this middle situation. This is where everything's fucking up. And it was like, but then it was this point of like, it's about confidence. And I was like, all right, so I'm going to be confident and I'm going to exude confidence so that It shines through and it shows like a well-rounded character. And I bought this personality to this dinner where I'm late 20s and I'm around my dad's friends and I was speaking to him and I talked about a job that I was doing and how it was so great. And he looked at me and he said, you sound just so arrogant. I said, I thought I'm confident. And he said, no, you sound arrogant as shit. And I wouldn't want to talk to you., and I was just like, uh, I didn't know what to say. And those words rang like they hit home big time, right? And I learned how to kind of humble myself big time. But then this character, I don't know if you've seen it, but you probably, I'm sure you have. I don't think I'm the only crazy person in the world, but this character emerged when I became a founder CEO and this personality developed where I had to be in control and I had to be confident. I had to be disciplined. But, and I was nice until nice didn't get me what I needed to do or getting what I needed to get done. And then nice turned into a bit of anger and anger turned into how do I instill fear to get things done? And then I lost my business, a lot of what I did because of those actions and because of those behaviors. And then I learned through my podcast journey how to behave and what you are actually doing as a CEO and how you're supposed to be creating opportunities and wealth for others. And then that transitioned into the next role, which I was very kind and I was very happy and I was very supportive and I was a big team player. And I even was like, you're not the winner of this. You're, it's not your vehicle. So take this, take a step back and be number 2, number 3 and make this person really good. And after a while, got to a point though where, um, I had a blowup in a meeting, a big blowup because a lot of the narrative was around perfection and everything is good and everything is hunky-dory. And I'm a British man who was raised in New Jersey where people tell you off if you fuck around, right? And if you don't do just little things, right? You get told off. And that was my narrative. I'm going to tell him off. I told him off. I told that guy off last week. And I got to that point in this meeting and it was an outburst and the feedback was nobody wants to work with you. Because you're not, like, you're not presenting yourself as somebody easy to work with. You're very emotionally driven and you let it get the best of you. And even though you perform and you can deliver and you can create, like, massive results, the person who you are seen as is not a person that somebody else wants to be around. And I figured out that that is a big weakness of mine that I don't know how to control because it's something where I can't be this fake person. So what is the answer? Own your own business, and then you can be that, that nutcase and get a bit of guidance. So what's a bit of feedback from you on that, on, on that, those characters that emerge and those personalities? How do they emerge? What are your opinions? Or how do you, um, recommend or suggest people change those behaviors?

Yeah, it's funny. I'll tell, I'll tell a similar story since we're both being vulnerable today. Um, about 3 years into me starting my own business, Things were not going well and I was flipping out. And again, call my dad. Yeah. Call my dad again. My favorite business owner was my father. Always, always my go-to. And I, you know, I said to him, I said, I think I'm gonna have to go back and get, I called it a real job. You know, I'm gonna have to go back. Like, this was like my, like, as if it was my play job, but I was making more money at my play job than I ever did at my real job. I was like, I think I'm gonna have to go back and get a real job. And he goes, no, no, no, no. That's a bad idea. He says, I said, why is that a bad idea? I says, because he says, because in this job you can tell people what they need to hear that they don't want to hear. And instead of firing you, they're gonna pay you. And dad's, my dad said for the very first time, he said, I was always afraid. I was constantly worried about you getting fired because you were so honest. It was the, it's not what you say, how you say it. And he said, absolutely. He goes, he goes, and you're not wrong. He goes, you are normally right. But that's not like a, you can say what you need to say. Like it was a read your audience. Right. And so I wasn't really reading my audience all the time. Right. And it came across, you know, for you, it came across sometimes as arrogant for me. Sometimes it came across as disrespectful. Right. And just not knowing my place, like overstepping my bounds. Right. And, and, you know, and the, you know, the writing utensil example. That was a private conversation that should have happened with Angie after the fact, right? I should have slipped her a pencil to make a quick note or whatever, and then afterwards been like, hey chica, like, you can't come to the boss's office empty-handed, right? You froze for a second. All right. Yeah. I think, you know, you can't come to the boss's office empty-handed, right? But that was a private, you know, we, we praise in public, right? Here's the, here's the standard that your parents taught you, right? We praise in public and we reprimand in private. And I had not done that. And, and again, goes back to the situation that you're in is sometimes because the companies are so small. And here's the, here's the, here's the real honest answer I think is people see it as a family, right? They talk about it all the time, right? But we're a family, right? They've been with me from the beginning. We're a family. Well, sometimes you talk to your family shitty, right? And you know that they're not, you know, they may get their feelings hurt and get bruised, but they're not going anywhere because They're blood, right? But these people aren't, to your point, these aren't your family. These are your employees, right? And even though it may feel like it and you may celebrate holidays together or you're there with every birth of a child and death of a parent, it's still not a family. It's a business. And so, you know, you've got to make sure that you're reprimanding in private. And again, it's okay. Again, I'm like you, I'm passionate.

I say we're passionate people. They're passionate people.

Yeah, that's the right word. You know, again, like, but there's no, like, here's what, you know, as I've gotten older, I've come up with this motto. Everyone's doing the best they can in that moment. I truly, you know, aside from a few bad people, right? Like when something bad happens, you know, when I get, when, you know, somebody says something out of character that's a little bit hurtful or whatever, I say to myself, instead of, you know, coming back at them and getting defensive, I'm like, hmm. I wonder what happened before we got on the phone together, right? I'm trying to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and say like, they're doing the best they can in the moment. Now, my, my backside of that statement is over time, sometimes people's best are not good enough for me, right? So if you're doing the best you can day in and day out, but it's not working for me, or it's not going to get the desired result that the company needs. Then I can acknowledge that you are doing the best that you can, but your best isn't gonna be good enough for where we need to take the company. And so we may have to part ways in order for you to be successful. Like, I'm always like, and I'm, I'm like so much like older, wiser in my 50s, right? And even in my 40s I was, but in my 20s and 30s, not so much. Um, but I mean, like I, I say to them, I'm like, I go, hey, I go, you must really hate coming to work every day. Right? I mean, you're struggling, you're frustrated, getting out of bed must be really hard. And so why don't we agree to part ways and I'll help you find a, find the right role for you where you can be successful and love getting out of work every day. And it's a win-win. Like there's, there should be no, like, again, I'm going to fire you if you do something unethical, right? Like on the spot. But if you're trying, and again, I call it will versus skill. If your will is there, but your skill's just not, like, yes, you could develop it over time, but we may not, again, I work with early stage startups. We might not have that much time. Right? And so let's put you in a position in a more mature company with a, you know, much more, let's say, consistent training program or something that we might not, or somebody who's, you know, I, I always say like every day's a new day at a startup, right? Like, oh, we're just gonna, you know, we, we need to change pricing or messaging or whatever. Like, you know, you need to be more willow than oak. But if you need more oak trees, right? If you're more oak and you need something very sturdy on a day-in-day basis, startup, like I said, the startup fit is not for everyone. It's not. Right. And so I think like when founders get frustrated, first, like, you know, first off, you know, it's passion, right? This is, like I said, this is your baby. You gave birth to this. You don't want something to go wrong, right? And you think even, you know, you're like, and your baby's beautiful. To you, you know? Yeah. But, but again, like a lot of times I also see that when people get frustrated and founders blow up, it's because they haven't set proper expectations. They're just in their head. Here, what I'm expecting of Shane is in my head, but I haven't sat down and have an expectation conversation with you. So you are doing your best, right? But you don't, but you don't know the realistic or unrealistic expectations I might have. But if I had shared those with you, you might say, hey, Christy, like, based on my skill set, I'm not capable of doing what you're asking for. So either you need to train me up, or again, perhaps we need to part ways. But I also find that people, uh, high achievers like us, we take our— the expectations we have of ourselves and we place them on others without telling.

Amazing. It's amazing how you've said that. It is. It's, it's absolutely a nail on it. And that's what screwed me up. And I, I had no idea because I, You know what it was? Growing up in high school, I was always afraid to answer the question in the class. And typically my answer was right. I was, I thought the only, I thought the only way to get, I felt very stupid in school and I thought the only way to get recognition was to be funny and humorous, which ended up being like, right, the class clown. And, um, It was like, I just didn't know any better. I really just didn't know any better until I got into business. And because I thought I was so inadequate in business, even though my motivation and my discipline and drive was so high, I thought, well, they could just do it. I'm like, I'm a nobody. I've screwed up so many things in my life. Like, surely this person can work better than me or is better than me. And it came to me that I was, Shane, you're too much. You are too much. You just don't stop. Other people can't operate at your speed. You don't know when to, and it's because I have that addictive personality, but you got it. Know thyself is definitely something that is seriously, seriously important. So we're approaching the top of the hour and I think we've had a really good, but there's a few, a few little pieces we didn't touch too much on the AI, on the AI piece, but I do want to I, I wanna have you chime in on it because it is important. And then we do have to, we do have to talk a little bit about the handy dandy book that a few of my clients are gonna get too. So you said without a formal sales process, AI will just add chaos, which it will, and it will add a lot of confusion. Mm-hmm. Um, we're all rushing to use it. I'm using it in multiple ways, especially in sales. So why is it dangerous if you don't have processes first?

Well, 'cause AI's gonna do whatever you tell it to do, and if you have a broken process or a half-baked process, it'll just do it faster, right? It'll just take your broken or your half-baked process and just do it faster. So, but you know, this is a really, I mean, AI is gonna force us, I think, because I think people are gonna implement AI into broken or half-baked processes and have it blow up. And then, you know, in X number of months from now, they're gonna be like, AI sucks and it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing or whatever. And I'm like, eh, does AI suck or did you give it a half-baked process?

Right?

Did you feed it a half-baked process? I mean, it's, it's just like a prompt, right? You know, like the minute I started, the minute I started adding this last sentence to every one of my prompts, and then please review what I've asked of you and ask me any questions that you have one at a time that will help you better complete the assignment. Right? And so just adding that right to, at the end of my prompts, now my chat always asks me questions. It never says, oh, nope, I'm good to go. Like, right? It's, I forced it to stop and slow down and reread everything, right? Because now it's being asked to ask me questions. So now it has to go back to make sure, does it really understand it or does not really understand it? And the questions will let me know where I came up short, right? Yeah. But yeah, but I think people are gonna find out that just adding AI to the mix is, if you don't have something that not only just formal and, and documented, but successful, right? Yeah. If you've done this, if the process has been successful in a more manual way, then it should be successful when you speed it up by using AI. And so, you know, if it's been successful, formalize it, document it, pressure test it, right? You gotta pressure test it. Like, I, again, like, let's not go all in. Like, let's have 1 or 2 people pressure test it. Before we, you know, roll AI out to the entire team. But yeah, I don't think what people— people are very excited. I'm very excited. I know you're very excited about AI and all the things it can do for us. It really has already changed my life. And positive— I mean, as a solopreneur with a couple of 1099s, like, it's been game-changing for me. I'm getting a lot of shit done, like, right? I'm like, get shit done, let's get shit done. But, but if I didn't have— but I have a very formal, right? I have a very formal interview process. I have a very formal sales playbook process. I have a very formal, you know, hiring pro— I've got all of these. I've built out all of my systems, right? So I can plug and play different clients into them. So I, I basically, like the other day, I just fed it my playbook. I said, here's the playbook that I've built. I'd like, and, and it's funny 'cause I wanted, I said it, I wanna expand the playbook to add sales AI prompts and a couple other things that are more AI in nature. I'd never built a, I'd never had a playbook with AI prompts. But I said, but the first thing I did was fed it, fed it my process. I fed it the playbook. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And said, based on this, you know, tell me all the categories of sales prompts that I should be creating and then let's create 'em together.

Wow. That's a really helpful one. So let's go into how you've acquired so much knowledge and then do you have a hard stop at, do you have a hard stop? We've gone over 10. Are you all right for another 10, 5 minutes? Yeah, I'm fine.

Or are you all right? Uh, I don't know, because I closed my window out for you, so I didn't have any. Let me double check. I think I'm good. Yep, I'm good. Oh yeah, I'm good. I've got another hour. I know we don't need to spend all that much time, but I've got more time. Um, all right. So I have been— so first off, I was a beta tester of the original ChatGPT. So I got in the beta group pretty early on. So I've been playing around with it for a while. And then, but recently, like, I attended 5 conferences over the summer. I decided I wanted to go out there and hear what people were doing. What, what, what, you know, A, I like, people were kind of freaked out. So I wanted to like get out, get in and rub elbows with the people. I wanted to sit with people at lunch and like, what are you doing? And how are you handling this? And what are your wor— you know, what are you worried about? And so I, you know, I'm a member of Pavilion. I belong to a group. I, again, I belong to a group of executives and entrepreneurs out of Indianapolis. So like even, Wednesday, I'm driving up for an afternoon conference that they're having in person. I'm a member of Modern Sales Pros. I'm on Slack channels. Like, I'm like, I am trying, you know, there's a— you have to be careful because for about 3 months I like read everything, sat in on every webinar about everything, you know, AI and go-to-market, AI and marketing, AI and sales. How are we going to, you know, lead a hybrid team of agents and humans? And so I've been digesting everything. Now I'm trying to make some decisions. Oh, and I've demoed a ton of, a ton of new platforms that are AI-driven. So AI agents, you know, all kinds of new AI, AI, AI. So I've been immersing myself. So now I'm like, I could continue to do this forever, right? But I had to— now I'm taking a step back and saying, okay, I think I have enough information now to be dangerous. So now I need to be making some decisions so that I can advise my clients on, you know, what does the future sales team look like in the next 12 months? Because that's all we really care about right now. Like, I'm trying not to look past 2026. So at some point, like, are we going to use agents or not use agents? Are we just going to have humans? Are we going to have a hybrid? What does that mean? Sales leaders are, by the way, there's no preparation. There are, I've been looking, there are no classes out there for sales leaders on how to, how to build or manage a hybrid sales team of agents and humans. So if anybody's, if anybody's interested, it's not me, by the way. I'm not interested in building that course. But, but if somebody's interested, let me know. Or if you already have it out there, call me and let me know where it is. I can, I can take it.. But, you know, I've been trying to come up with the characteristics and the traits that are gonna be needed, the skills, the traits, the characteristics of the next generation sales leader that will probably not just be managing humans going forward. So I would tell people, like, again, do what I did. This is my recommendation. You know, immerse yourself for 2 to 3 months. Like, just jump into every pond that, you know, that you can get your toes into. A little of this, a little of that. Like I said, go-to-market, marketing, and sales. I don't normally even play much in marketing, but I think marketing's gonna become way more important going forward. In fact, I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna go on a limb, make a prediction. So we're gonna listen to this in a year. I'm predicting that at some point the first 2 stages of the sales cycle are actually gonna be owned by marketing.

I agree. I don't wanna speak to a seller. I do not wanna be handed off to a seller, and I do not wanna be switching people either.

Yep. I think marketing is gonna become more and more important, and we are gonna still need closers. I think we're still gonna need closers., but I think that people are gonna use AI to qualify themselves in and do their own discovery, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Using your, using your chatbot or your AI to say, hey, you know, what have I not thought about? You know, pressure test my idea. You know, tell me which vendors are clo— most closely aligned with my business problems and how to, you know, how to solve them based on everything you know about me. So, I, I think jump in with both feet and then I'm starting the back-off process where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go down these 3 paths. I'm gonna continue to pay attention to this. I'm gonna make these recommendations for my clients. And then I'm, again, I'm in, like I said, I'm in all of these communities, so I'm not gonna lose track of anything. But I had to stop, like, I mean, the number of newsletters I was getting every day was like 40. And I'm like, I've started to unsubscribe from a bunch of stuff, right? Yeah. Because I'm like, okay, me too. But I figured out which ones are the people I need to be listening to. Right. So, so I'm like, I'm picking out certain people and certain companies and I'm like, okay, I like what you got going on here. So now I'm just gonna follow you and I'm getting rid of all these other people. So I'm gonna take my 40 newsletters down to 7. Right. And, and, and I figured out, I, I jumped into everything and now I know who I think the early adopters are, the people who really have got it figured out, the people who are headed in the right direction, the people that are not going crazy but are making good strategic business decisions around AI.

So that's my recommendation. I agree. And I think the last two pieces, they're a lot about, let's say, sharpening the saw. Okay. And anybody who's a Stephen Covey fan will know what that means. But the one thing that has changed my life significantly, exponentially, the first occasion was a life coach. And that was from a bad breakup where I needed to understand. That was the first bad breakup I've ever had., and it was for understanding leaving somebody gives opportunity to achieve more versus guilt for not doing. That was great. Then when I wanted to start my own business, it was a life coach that helped me step into the role of a CEO. That was game-changing. It, I think it had a profound difference on my life. Then I had multiple coaches that I paid. My biggest investment was I think £23,000, £24,000 for like 3 months of coaching. It was about 25% of the gross revenue of the company, but that was a performance business coach that changed my life. Wow. And I believe mentors have had such a big impact for me, and I believe people discredit them and they don't understand the power of it. But your advice to someone in charge of revenue who wants to go faster is find someone to mentor you who's where you want to be. And that's don't ask a fat doctor how to be skinny. And how to figure out what they did to actually get there. No, no reason to reinvent the wheel, uh, or do anything that's already been built. That's practical. How do you find that mentor when you don't have access to those people?

Yeah, it's funny that you say that because I'm a, I'm a coach junkie, as I would say. Like, I mean, again, like, and I, A, because I'm a like immediate satisfaction gratification girl. And so like, why would I try to figure, like, I'm smart. I think I'm very smart. I think I'll be able to figure it out over time. I have, you know, resources. I can go to YouTube or chat or whatever, but if someone else can teach me faster and I don't have to go through the pain of doing it wrong first and then doing it right. So honestly, I think the first place to go to is talk to your, talk to your network. Like when I need a coach for something, I go to my network and go, who you guys got? Right? Because, because by the way, your circle matters. And you and I are like, you and I are like very, very, you're like, we're like siblings from another mother. Um, like, because we surround ourselves with, with top 10 percenters, right? With the top people. Like we, we surround ourselves with winners, with ambitious people, with smart people. And so I built that network intentionally. And so when I need help, I don't know, I'm, you're to your point, I probably don't know who the mentor is. Right? But someone else does. Someone else has been where I've been. And again, like, again, I'm like, why do I want to, why do I want to go out there and post on LinkedIn and have to interview 40 people? Right? No. Somebody's already been where I've been. And so if I make 3 phone calls, I probably get 3 different names of very high-level co— I mean, you've had a bunch of good coaches. I've had a bunch of good coaches. And so now I have to interview 3 people and find the one that best fits me. But I wanna go back to something you said that I wanna make sure people didn't gloss over. You spent what was an exorbitant amount of money at the time, in your opinion. Yeah.

But how much money did you get from your £23,000 investment?

This year alone, I did £526,000 for myself. Right. And I feel the same way, right? I feel the same way, like when I wrote my book, I'll just transition into the book conversation for you. Um, I hired a, I hired a book coach, a local woman who had ghost, who had ghostwritten a ton of books. Um, including, you know, some books that you, that you'd heard of, the Go-Giver. She had ghostwritten some of the Go-Giver books. Um, and so what I needed was, I, I have discipline. What I don't have is a lot of extra time. As a solopreneur. And I know I wanted to write a book, so I needed, I, I know myself and I know that sometimes I really, what I really hired was an accountability culture coach. Yeah. Right. An accountability coach. Right. And so every week we met once a week for 90 minutes. Every session ended with homework for me. I had to turn my homework in and, you know, 7 days from then we were gonna review that. And it still took me 2 years to write the book., but, and I took a couple of like couple month breaks from that during high periods of high clients and where I just didn't feel like I was giving it my all. And I just said I needed, I need a couple months to, to go with, you know, get through the client load and then go back at it. Mm-hmm. But I, I thought to myself like, why would I've never, I, I'm a, by the way, I wanna point out that I have a, I'm a journalism major. Like I was a, I was an AP English girl in, in high school. I majored in journalism. Writing is my thing. And I still hired a coach because I'd never written a book. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yep. And so don't, like, you know, sometimes the, the coach is gonna be paid and sometimes it'll be unpaid, like in a mentorship, but there's no reason to go it alone. And there's plenty of people like us, like, you know, the last section of my book, I talk about now it's time for your give back. Right? And so my motto is I've got 30 minutes for everyone. And people take me up on that all the time. I must have 6 or 7 30-minute meetings this week with people who just want to pick my brain about something. And I think that's my responsibility from all the people that helped me along the way, paid or unpaid. If I can help someone else in a 30-minute phone call, I feel like that, again, we started off, I'll come full circle with Shane, do the right things and the right things will happen. I believe that helping people where I have knowledge that they don't, that's the right thing to do.

And as a result of that, I think the universe will take care of me. You couldn't have been more right on that. And, uh, I, I will agree. So last question, last question. What's the last question? It was just here. If a founder is— no, no, no, not that one. I don't wanna do that one. Jesus Christ. All right, here we go. So it's a— so I always want to give a tactical challenge, right? And this is one of the differences about, um, this episode on this occasion. And it's— you've helped. So here's a 30-day challenge for anybody that's listening. This is— my guests will make an impact in your life. They are hand-selected. I believe they are game changers. And if you listen to what these guys or girls have to say, ladies and gentlemen, You will see an exponential change in your business. So, Kristi, you've helped dozens of companies go from chaos to clarity. What's one simple tactical challenge you'd give to our listeners, both investors and founders, to implement in the next 30 days that would make a measurable difference in their revenue?

Write down your expectations for every department head, depending on how many you have, or every direct report that you have. Ask them to do the same. And then in the next 30 days, sit down with every— make sure that someone has sat down with every employee and clearly outlined the expectations. So that I wanna make sure that every— I always say this— every employee every day should go home. And when they walk through the door, whether it's the cat or the spouse or the child, and when someone says, how was your day? You can answer that question because you know whether or not you had a good or a bad day. Or an average day. Because if you don't know what's expected of you on a day-to-day basis, how do you know when you walk through the door at night and someone says, "How was your day?" Because most people will just say, "It was fine." But stop saying, "It was fine," and start saying, "I had the most incredible day," or, "You know what? I had a really disappointing day," or, "I didn't get as much accomplished today as I, as I had hoped and planned." But if people don't really know what's expected of them, How do you answer that question at the end of the day? So make sure that every employee that is under your umbrella, if you're at the top of the food chain or you're a leader, understands what a good, medium, or bad day looks like and what those expectations are. And then, by the way, let's make sure we reward good behavior and let's make sure we reprimand in private and coach where needed.

All right, perfect. I think that's the best way to wrap it up. Are there any last words? For anybody that's listening, where can they find you? When they— where can they learn more? Where can they buy the book, which is fantastic.

Where, where can we, where can we send them? Yep. Uh, please connect with me on LinkedIn after you've heard this episode. Connect with me and I always want your one takeaway. So what was the one thing that you heard today that really resonated with you that you're gonna do differently than you did before? And then if you'd like to know more about me or the book, uh, you can go to christiekayjones.com. There's a book tab at the top and, or you can go to sellingyourwayin.com to get the book. But it's, it's a, the book is everywhere that you normally buy your books.

Awesome. All right. Well, I think that's a great way to wrap it up. That's it for me for now. And I'll see you guys on the next one. Thanks, Shane. Thank you very much for taking the time to watch this episode and staying here the whole way through. If you like what you saw, click subscribe. It'll take you 2 seconds. It helps me help me reach amazing guests and deliver valuable content for you. And if you ever want to find out what we do as a business, go to www.gorevintel.com, and that is the place where we help you make decisions that are backed by intelligence, and it's for founder CEOs. That's it for me for now. I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.