75: Navigating Sales Chaos- with Liz Heiman

Liz Heiman

Lori Highby: [: 00:00:00

Kris Harrington: Yes, I did. I, okay. I gave it some thought and my answer is "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. I think that sums up kind of my [00:01:00] perspective about myself and that whole belief. Sure. In, in, in yourself. So when I hear it playing in my mind, I'm like, yeah, that, that works. But I, I also followed up and I asked Chat GPT and Chat GPT's answer was Unstoppable by Sia. So I'll take that one. Okay.

Lori Highby: Okay. It's funny that yours was what Chat GPT said for me. Yeah.

That's great. Okay. Oh, that's fun. I love that determination, motivation, going in deep with what we believe in. I love it. That's right.

nd Coca-Cola. Liz earned her [: 00:02:00

Liz Heiman: Oh, thanks so much. I'm glad to be here.

Lori Highby: I'm excited for this conversation. We, we love having a mix of those serving the manufacturing industry and those actually working, you know, hands on in, in the ground floor.

So, great to have you here and excited for your insights. That being said, what are some of the biggest comments, sales problems that you see in manufacturing companies?

Liz Heiman: Oh, my favorite question.

So it's really interesting because there are some trends that I'm seeing consistently. One of 'em is one of the things that I hear often is our distributors are not delivering the way they used to.

Hmm. So we used to count [: 00:03:00

Yeah. Yeah.

And, and I think the third one is just the sense of chaos. Like my sales organization is chaos and it creates chaos in my organization.

I think those are the three things that I hear most often. You know, and then the kind of the fourth one is this new AI landscape, this new sales landscape. What does this mean for us? And I think those are, I mean, there's a whole zillion more that we could talk about, but I think those are really the big ones.

Lori Highby: Oh man. I wanna kind of unpack all those. I don't know if we have enough time.

as well, Liz. So, you know, [: 00:04:00

Can you just dive into that a little bit? Yeah. And talk about how you're addressing that one.

Liz Heiman: Yeah. I think we have to start from the beginning, which is the general change in the world. If you think about even three years ago, how many emails you got compared to how many you received a day now, and my guess is it it has tripled or quadrupled or is 10 times more.

I, was talking to another person the other day and he said, I get 4,000 emails a month. I'm like, that's about what I get. So the amount of noise in our world, whether we're a distributor or we're a buyer, or a salesperson, or a CEO, whoever we are, the amount of noise in our world has gone up so much that we can't even process what's in front of us.

to look at it and delete it. [: 00:05:00

So when we're talking about our distributors, our distributors are inundated in the same way that everyone else is. Yep. They're trying to figure out in all of the noise that they're working in and all of the different messaging, everybody's sending them more information. What am I prioritizing and how am I prioritizing it?

And many companies haven't thought about how do we need to make sure that our distributors are prioritizing us in this very noisy world? Mm-hmm.

Lori Highby: Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a valid, valid, valid argument. And there is overwhelm in messaging everywhere. Everyone's trying to be the brightest and the loudest. Loudest and the new, newest and the greatest, you know?

But I, and [: 00:06:00

Liz Heiman: Yes, yes. Right. And it's not gonna be good enough to have your AI talk to my ai.

No, we're not gonna get anywhere. No, no. And, and I kind of feel like that's where we're going. Yeah, let's just, you know, I, I'm gonna send out so much content and then as a user, I now need an AI bot to figure out what I need and what I don't, 'cause I can't do it myself. So it should, our AI bots actually find something to talk about, we can have a conversation. I'm curious, but I do think, I'm curious.

Kris Harrington: Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. Complete your thought there.

Liz Heiman: I was just gonna say, and we can dig into it later. There are some things about AI that are gonna be really helpful also.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. Yeah.

Kris knows I'm definitely an [: 00:07:00

It's just about using it the right way. And that's what, that is the part that is the bigger challenge here. Mm-hmm. Let's unpack that. This is the way we've, we've always done it mentality. Like I, I'm, I'm definitely frus, I'm personally frustrated with that mindset. Yeah.

Liz Heiman: Well, there's a couple things about sales that make this true, or maybe that in, in other arenas. In a manufacturing organization, there's often no one who's an expert in sales.

And certainly the CEO typically didn't come into it as a salesperson.

of a mystery. And and so the [: 00:08:00

Just go one direction and start knocking on doors, and then tomorrow go a different direction and start knocking on doors. And while that may have worked in the past in a post Covid world, just knocking on doors is harder than ever. It's harder than ever to get through to people aren't physically in their offices.

So it's a, it's, we don't have the experience in a modern world to figure out what we should be doing differently. So we'll just keep doing what we're doing and we don't even know what we don't know. So for a CEO, they don't even know what they don't, they have no idea what the options are. And often the only thing they've heard is stuff that doesn't make sense to them.

So, sure, let's just keep doing, let's just do more. Of what we've always done, even though it isn't working. If we do more meaningful.

cause I've got a client that [: 00:09:00

Yeah. You, if you wanna keep throwing money at it, I, it don't hold me accountable for what happens. Right, right. Oh my goodness.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. And you. I'm curious your, your view, Liz, because I think sometimes they know or they've, they've been informed on something, something, I know there's a lot of noise, right. And sometimes difficult to cut through that noise, but.

Sometimes they do know, but the change management piece of it is so challenging that not everybody maybe takes the initiative. And I, I don't wanna put any words in, I'm curious what, you know, sometimes they do know and that change is hard. So, so do you, do, would you agree with that statement? I'm curious your thoughts.

o agree with that statement. [: 00:10:00

Mm-hmm. So they know that what they're doing isn't working. They know they need to do something different, but they don't really know how to do that different thing and they dunno how to manage. It's that change management piece that you were talking about.

Mm-hmm. I've never really managed my sales team. We have a morning, you know, huddle and everybody tells me what they're doing and off they go. And that's not really managing a sales team. So they don't know how to manage or lead a sales team to get the results that they want. They don't understand how to implement the kinds of changes and the, and, and sort of these generic put process in place or get a strategy.

Aren't really very helpful because you know, you, you guys know, I know. It's really hard to create a good strategy. It takes time. Mm-hmm. And investment and time. And then not only do you have to invest in creating it, now you have to invest time and money and effort into getting everybody to make that change.

[: 00:11:00

Lori Highby: Yeah, it's just scary. It's, and there's unknowns involved and I think that is part of the fear as well.

Liz Heiman: And I, I will tell you, I have a client that a ton of money into building a sales organization and a year and a half in, he fired everybody because, and I think, 'cause he actually purchased a company that had a sales organization and he just didn't really understand how long it takes to, to create a new sales organization or take a sales organization that isn't working and make it work. Yeah. Yeah. It's a huge investment in time and money and pain and effort. Yeah.

t thing we do in my personal [: 00:12:00

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Kris Harrington: Mm-hmm.

So, I, I'm curious, you mentioned chaos, so talk about chaos and what you meant by that and, you know, the unpredictable nature of sales. And, and can you, can you tell us a little bit about that and your thoughts there?

Liz Heiman: Okay, let me, I wanna share two different things about chaos. The first is we really don't understand what the day in a life of a salesperson is, so we push, push, push, just keep pushing. If we keep pushing, they'll do more, but we don't really understand what does that actually take from first phone call to close deal?

why do our salespeople feel [: 00:14:00

We don't know how to help them. So that's one piece. I think the other piece is that we manage every other part of our organization in a way that we don't manage sales. So imagine if you were walked onto the production floor, right? And you walked in and you went, okay, we're ready for the next round of production.

And somebody says, oh, we didn't order the parts, we didn't order the materials. Somebody's head would roll, right? What do you mean? For sure? Mm-hmm. Or, or imagine looking around your production floor and going, well, there's just piles of stuff everywhere. I have no idea what stage any of this stuff is.

on't know what we need to do [: 00:15:00

Oh, we've been so busy closing deals and creating solutions that we weren't prospecting. That's like not ordering the parts. It takes months for those prospects to become something actionable. Right? Or, or if you ask, if you go through your sales person's funnel and you say, Hey, what's going on with this one?

What's going on with this one? And they're like, I don't even remember who that was. I don't, and I've done this myself. I'm like, I see the notes. I don't remember that person. I don't remember what's going on with that. But moreover, they didn't put any notes in, they have no action action plan. They don't remember what the last conversation was.

that you don't know what the [: 00:16:00

You know, the, the funnel piece is the sales rep says, yep. They said it's a, it's a deal. They said yes. They didn't write a check and they didn't sign a contract. So the deal is not closed.

Lori Highby: Yep.

Liz Heiman: It's not packaged and tied with a bow. It's still sitting out there undone. Meanwhile, chances are your company is starting to produce product 'cause sales reps said it's closed.

So these are the kinds of things that create utter chaos. If your sales team hasn't prospected and you don't have deals in the funnel, you have cashflow that looks like this. How do you run a business? When your cash flow is so inconsistent. Mm-hmm. How you order the right materials when you have no idea what anybody is selling or what.

aos comes from. We allow it. [: 00:17:00

Kris Harrington: Such a great analogy. I really and Lori and I right here nodding our heads and agreeing that.

Lori Highby: We've seen it. Yeah. We've heard it might have witnessed it and experienced it ourselves in different ways.

Kris Harrington: We might have done it. Yes. All, all we've all it.

Yeah.

Lori Highby: Maybe we'll admit some of that. Well, we're both in small companies and That's right. We're wearing the sales hat, so I know like my energy. And things are going well in the areas where my energy is going, right? Yes. Like if I'm focusing on sales, great. But now we have a new client, so I'm gonna go onboard them and build out their strategy.

But now the sales funnel is small and tiny. 'cause I didn't put my energy there. So it's, it's every scale sized organization has that same problem, obviously. So what's the solution? How do we make it less chaotic and more predictable, make all our lives easier?

Liz Heiman: There's a couple things. One is a funnel, uh uh, or a pipeline that's actually managed.

call it a funnel because you [: 00:18:00

I think the second thing is to have strategy. So it's not just about process, it's also about strategy. Process supports a strategy. If you have process or you have activity, but you have no strategy, you still have chaos because it's not working toward any goal. So we need to have a strategy. We can't just pull numbers out of thin air and say, magically go do this.

re going to hit this number, [: 00:19:00

Who's gonna do what? Who do we want to buy? What product do we want them to buy? What industries do we want to go to? Which accounts do we want to grow? Like you can't just throw a number in the air, A number's not a strategy. A strategy is a clear path to get from where I am to where I wanna be. And that means you have to assess the situation, figure out how you're positioned, and then build a plan to get you where you're going.

And I think that piece. We think we've done it. We've done some planning, but we haven't really created strategy.

Lori Highby: I yeah, I I'm hearing what you're saying and a lot of it's resonating with me and I know that's 'cause we've talked about this off the podcast 'cause we've, I. Take that approach from a marketing perspective, we believe there needs to be a strategic plan around your marketing initiatives, which totally makes sense.

k 'em, walk 'em through, and [: 00:20:00

Liz Heiman: It's not.

Yep. It's not seamless forth and a truth certainly needed to be less bumpy.

Kris Harrington: Would, would you say there are specific KPIs that help with this specific strategy work that you're talking about? You know, any KPIs that you think about that are really critical as part of that?

Liz Heiman: Well, the first thing is we tend to focus on KPIs around how many phone calls did you make?

Well, if you have somebody and all that person does is outbound cold calling, then you better keep track of how many phone calls they make. But if you have account executives who are managing dealers and doing direct sales, there are a lot more important KPIs than how many phone calls did you make? You get to that when they haven't met the other KPIs and you're like, well, let's start at the beginning.

g enough phone calls? So the [: 00:21:00

And then we qualify them yet again, and then we create proposals and then we try to close deals and that during that process, leads fall out of the funnel constantly. In fact, more fallout than we'll ever close. So if we don't understand our sales math, we're always behind. And when I sit down with a company and I make them do their sales math, and they're like, we need how many people to land on our website or see us at a trade show?

, thousands, thousands. And, [: 00:22:00

Yeah. Or at least you, you know, meeting our target market or ideal customer profile. So if you start with the math and then you can think about. If that's what it looks like, how do we either make the math better or how do we make sure that we've got enough leads that we can work them, and how do we make sure that they're getting worked?

the lead in and never get it [: 00:23:00

Well, good luck doing anything with a thousand things at the top of your funnel. Like you have to actually move them through. Yep. So it's that kind of thinking about the math and putting the KPIs around the math that's required to get, to get the result.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. I really like that you said the math. I started thinking about some of the things that I look at, but certainly, you know, I.

Everything you just highlighted is so critical. 'cause it's a great reminder. I know in, in our business, I think about the, the sales cycle, the time it takes to close a deal, right? Right. So if you're shorter, much shorter than that time. The average time I. Then likely it's not coming as fast as you are really hoping and trying to build some, you know, budget around.

w, it would be an outlier to [: 00:24:00

So you, you are going to have to have a lot of touch points before everybody is confident that they're moving forward. So I think that, and I share some of mine just to add a few to what you're saying, but y you reminded me of some that you know [00:25:00] we should be thinking about as well.

Liz Heiman: And everybody has their own math.

So every company needs to understand how long is my sales cycle? I can almost guarantee if you tell me your sales cycle is three months, it's six to nine months because you don't start measuring until they're asking for a solution. So sure, when we, we really start thinking about the math. I think there's another piece to this and that is that all the math, the strategy, the process is all really important.

But the other thing is to be effective in a modern world, we have to be trusted advisors. And we've been saying that for years and years. Yes. And people keep telling me, you know, there's all this fluff about, you know, relationship selling is dead.

Mm. Yeah, no, your relationships are more important than they've ever been.

out curiosity creativity and [: 00:26:00

And that we're willing to figure out how to make things work for them. And so good sales tactics and good sales behavior is not less important, but more important than ever.

Lori Highby: Yeah. I love that. There's a couple things that are keep resonating with, with me and what you're saying and knowing the numbers and, and the math is so important because it gives you targets to shoot for, but it also gives you an opportunity to reflect and say, what can I do to change this from a 20% conversion rate to a 30% conversion?

at. And the other thing that [: 00:27:00

It's a heavy moving target because of technology and AI and the way that people want to be in charge of making that purchasing, purchasing decision is constantly changing. Mm-hmm. And as a good, trusted advisor, we need to be aware of that changing process.

Liz Heiman: I think there's a couple things that come out of what you said, because you're absolutely right.

r to make a buying decision? [: 00:28:00

Is my customer's problem? In their words? Not my words, not my vocabulary, not what I think. Yeah. What is my customer? Say when they talk about it like, no CEO ever, Kristina, you'll love this. No CEO ever said, what I really want more than anything in the world is a CMI was making so happy ton of money setting up like right.

They don't say that. That's not their words. That's not what they care about. What they care about is I need better predictability and I need my sales team to give me information in a way that's digestible. That's what they say.

Yeah, I need more sales and I need to manage it better. But if I'm going to them talking about, well, this CRM has this many, this isn't, and that many dots, and we can, you know, nobody cares.

I want [: 00:29:00

We talked about this just before. There are multiple people involved in the buying decision. Mm-hmm. However many that is, whether it's three or 15, every single one of them has a different relationship to the problem. They care about it, different amounts. They describe it differently. They're feelings about making the change are different.

And we have to understand when we walk in and have those conversations, we're not talking to everybody about ROI because the technician is using it every day could care less. Yeah, about the ROI if it makes my day better. So starting with the customer and their problem and their relationship to the problem and talking to them about that is how we have conversations that make us feel like trusted advisors.

Lori Highby: Mm-hmm. Love [: 00:30:00

Kris Harrington: I do too.

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Lori Highby: [: 00:31:00

Kris Harrington: Well, I am in preparation for this discussion with Liz and knowing that we were talking about sales, and I think it just fits exactly with what we were just talking about.

I was reminded of something I've learned in the past. Okay. And that is that in sales timing is everything.

Lori Highby: Mm-hmm.

Kris Harrington: So we can't talk people into buying our products or whatever it is we sell, right? We, our customers have challenges. They all have problems to solve. The problem that you're helping them solve has to first be something they're aware of.

e painful. It has to be more [: 00:32:00

You have to have a relationship with customers. Through, you're nurturing that relationship the whole time so that they know who you are, that you solved that problem, you've defined the problem, you understand the problem very well, so that when it does reach that priority, you are the company that they're gonna reach out to a hundred percent to talk to.

And, you know, timing is everything. We, we can, we can really hope that they're ready to solve this problem right now, but we can't move. We can't force ourself up their priority ladder. Really. They have to, to have that. And that's why I think that language that Liz talked about is so important. So, I learned that.

[: 00:33:00

Lori Highby: Yeah, so this is more time sensitive, I would say. So I, when the episode is, is aired and people are listening, I don't know how true or relevant it'll be. But it's still somewhat fascinating and I, I guess to some extent it's about capturing market share, right?

So, at, at the time of the recording of this show, this is right after TikTok was shut down and turned back on again. And like obviously there's a lot of things to unpack there. And this is where the marketer in me is gonna say, don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially ones that you don't own.

on Instagram, and willing to [: 00:34:00

And that's been done in the past with. Twitch and YouTube and you know, trying to just take over. I mean, social media is a massive giant of people, right? Yeah. And people is the ultimate product of these platforms. So I thought it was an interesting strategic business move to, to take, but obviously this, as of today, is very new information.

So Sure. Again, that's why I kind of prefaced with when this show does go live, who knows where things will be in that world.

Kris Harrington: Yeah, no, I hadn't heard that. But I, I do find that very interesting and smart, right? It's taking initiative, while it was certainly in the headlines, it's something that was coming.

Yeah. At least there was risk. Right. And anytime there's a known risk for sure. There's an opportunity if you can reduce the risk. And I think that's what they were trying to do there.

hare is, is big for sure. So [: 00:35:00

Liz Heiman: I'm gonna tell you, I wanna just say one thing first, which is, this is one of the cool things we can do with AI as really pay attention to what trends are happening and how it might make opportunities for us.

Lori Highby: Uhhuh. Oh yeah, good point.

Liz Heiman: Okay, so here's what I learned recently, which was that 80%. American manufacturing companies do not, cannot predict revenue within 25%. Ooh, 80% of American companies. Wow. Wow. Which I, I figured this out and, and I'm saying it out loud now and it doesn't sound right, but I'm pretty sure that it is.

That means that if you have a $40 million company. You do not know if you're going to make $50,000 or 30 I, I'm sorry, a $40 million company. You don't know if you're going to make $50 million or $30 million. Wow. And how do you run a company like that?

Lori Highby: Yeah.

Kris Harrington: That's powerful.

ori Highby: That is, that is [: 00:36:00

That's that's crazy.

Kris Harrington: That's a point that can drive home. Right? Right. We can go back and I'll remember what was our forecast and where do we arrive. Yeah. Right. And start 80% of American companies. Wow. Very interesting stat. Thank you.

Lori Highby: Yeah. Really interesting. So Liz, if anyone was interested in getting in touch with you, what's the best way that they can reach you?

Liz Heiman: You can find me on LinkedIn, Liz Heiman, H-E-I-M-A-N, and just tell me where you met me or where you heard me. And you can also go to my website, which is regarding sales.com. You can schedule a free 30 minute strategy session, or you can just look for with lots of articles about sales and sales leadership.

And so, find us there.

Lori Highby: All right, great. We will include all that information in our show notes. Thank you so much for the thoughtful conversation we had today. Much appreciated.

Liz Heiman: Well, thanks for having me. You guys have a great day.

by: All right, you too. This [: 00:37:00