What do nurturing a two-way dialogue, adjusting to your client's timeline, and serving as a problem-solving alley have in common? They're important focus points that most sales teams forget to express during the navigation of their sales process.
Putting your customer first is one of the oldest rules in the book.
How can you implement this mindset from the discovery phase all the way through to presentation?
Ed Montgomery, Sales Manager at Dispatch is a consistent top-producer and is here to show us his ways.
In this episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Ed to discuss how to implement some of the most unique client-centric sales techniques used today.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Ed Montgomery:
As a Sales Manager, Ed has proven knowledge of principles to increase sales revenue, including: enhanced marketing strategy and tactics, product demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems. He’s spent his career developing and demonstrating knowledge of B2B business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, leadership techniques, and coordination of people and resources.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:04
Yeah, exactly right.
Ed Montgomery 0:05
But we're all humans that does that doesn't know what we need doesn't change and what we want doesn't change that hasn't done anything. You know, the fact that we have we work in a, in a sort of cold entity which is very black and white, did you get paid? Did you not get paid? So
Jonathan Fischer 0:19
yeah, this is it. We got to reintroduce the human element to it's a good way. The time is here, my friend. It is time everybody for another power packed episode of evolved sales life. Welcome back. I'm Jonathan Fisher, and every tech company whether you're Oh, I'm so sorry. Forgive me, everybody. We're gonna let's, let's rewind the tape here, guys. That was my intro from another episode. Oh, my goodness. I'm gonna lose my job. All right, let's try this again. You got? Are you still with me? Can we start our show? All right. Let's be welcome back. I'm Jonathan Fisher. In b2b sales. There's a lot of attention placed on things like prospecting qualifying sales funnels, sales enablement, pipeline management, and the like. And in most companies, all of these elements are directed to closing more business seems logical. But is it possible there's a more profitable and effective place to direct the focus of our sales efforts? Well, the share with us today why a client centered focus is critical to sales success, along with some practical applications is our guest, Ed Montgomery, a highly experienced business development leader Ed has spent decades developing multi channel go to market models, building leading successful b2b sales teams and generating explosive initial growth for startup businesses in a variety of sectors. It is a creative and passionate voice, having seen what works and doesn't work for putting the client first throughout the sales process. Ed Montgomery, welcome to our show.
Ed Montgomery 1:42
Jonathan, thanks very much. It's quite the introduction. It's it's always funny to me, though, that every time someone says experienced it's followed by the word decades, it's like well, yeah, that is.
Jonathan Fischer 1:54
They go by quickly, don't they? I know, I'm trying to get the initial stages of my career. I'm like, wait a minute, Netscape Navigator, and America Online things back when I started. So yeah, it's been it's been a minute.
Ed Montgomery 2:06
Absolutely. And that's, you know.
Jonathan Fischer 2:11
That's pretty funny. Well, a quick reminder to our audience that we definitely want to give our fantastic guests a chance to answer your questions live. So don't be bashful. We'll go ahead and start sending in your questions in the chat section. As we progress, and we will at the half hour, I will turn over to a q&a session and get your questions answered right here right now. I like okay, well, jumping in real quickly, by way of introduction, would you share with our audience what you do every day? Well,
Ed Montgomery 2:36
I'm I'm currently enterprise sales manager for dispatch. And dispatch is an on demand courier services system where we can help you get stuff from A to B, sort of like Uber. And we can actually say that now because most people know what that is and how that looks and how it works. We're a business to business type organization, though, and we are focused on, you know, commercial, those sorts of commercial efforts. So we're really big in the trades. And we have a national footprint. We're currently in 65, markets opening three next month for the month after that three after that, we just continue to grow. But it's, it's been a super ride. And I've been with them now. Three and a half years. And, you know, through they're sharp, they're really bad. We're dispatch will be about six years old at the end of this year, I think so.
Jonathan Fischer 3:24
Excellent. Congratulations on that I'm
Ed Montgomery 3:26
working. Oh, the last piece of that is I'm kind of focused on the team. For HVAC. We're aligned vertically, so that we're kind of staying in sort of an expert mode space. And because of my experience as a contractor, where I own my own company for a while, renovate and build houses, I just know HVAC really well. So that came a natural fit for me. And so I spent my time serving those customers around the country.
Jonathan Fischer 3:51
Very good. So you have a lot of b2b experience. And I know you have previous experiences before your your current role. And we're going to talk about today the key insight that you bring, which is your selling has to be client centric. Now, what's the counterpoint to that word, as you see it is the focus in most sales operations.
Ed Montgomery 4:11
Well, I mean, it's, you see, the myths focus all over the place all the time, LinkedIn, air just about everywhere. A lot of sales, training, a lot of sales things that are they're being pushed out there. It talks about what you can do to make more money, how you can get more to the bottom line and everything else. And And honestly, that's, that's part of that paradox. Salespeople exists to generate revenue. That's the black and white of it, we're either getting paid or not, you know, if we don't do our job, the people in the back don't get checks and they don't get to eat. So it's very critical that we do exactly that. However, what we see so much is these training these focuses on how to pitch perfectly and how to what's the most effective tool to get someone to maneuver into a particular direction, you know, make that point was a buying decision. And it's it's more almost talking about manipulation than it is about selling. And then you just see a lot of it. And it's like I said, there's, there's some understanding of reasoning behind it because you got to generate revenue. But I just feel like there's, you know, at least in my personal experience has been a far better way to do it.
Jonathan Fischer 5:19
Let's, let's unpack that a little further. I mean, you know, honing one's own craft as a sales professional, certainly seems like that would have some merit. And as you already stated yourself, I mean, a sales pro is all about generating revenue. So that comes down to closing business or, as our friend Jeffrey Gitomer might say, opening new business, however, you want to phrase that? What what are the issues with it? What are the pitfalls that you see within that focus?
Ed Montgomery 5:44
Well, I think what happens is you can wind up with a lot of people who buy that become unhappy, that buy something that they don't really need. And what that ends up doing is, is hurting you and your company in the long run, simply because someone's gonna have a bad experience. And it's not just so much about selling something that they didn't need, it's selling something with bad expectations. You know, it's I've always thought of managing expectations is being a critical aspect of my job. And so I've actually created it's kind of a couple of one interesting tactic that people have. Now they've, if they follow me, like, you know, salespeople that I've been on calls with, and trainings that they see me do it a lot, and they're like, holy cow, you really do that. And it's just silly. But someone will ask a question, and I the I know the answers, yes. Or maybe I always say, no, they go, Can we do this? No. Well, I say that so quickly. But we could do it this way. Because what I've learned by saying no, and just cutting it off at the knees, the expectations suddenly drop, they people immediately go, oh, well, I can't do it. But then I come back and say, Well, I kind of can in here, this is how it can be done. And I build them right back up to where now they feel good about what how I answered it. And their expectations are where they should be, they are not something particularly high. Like I didn't say, oh, yeah, that happens all the time we do it. Yeah, it's just not the way to go. So I would say that's probably one of the biggest pitfalls is that what you're going to do is create a problem for yourself or your for your company, or at the very least for your customer in the future?
Jonathan Fischer 7:23
Well, I can see what you're saying. So in other words, if sales primarily about just pushing somebody into a decision that results in a transaction, you may be setting yourself up for these other issues to bite you in the proverbial Caboose.
Ed Montgomery 7:39
Yeah, and you're saying that what is the part that bugs me as well, that's the biggest thing, you're setting them up. And that's what probably bothers me the most, because you know, more of what we're selling, especially in a b2b environment, you're always selling something that is supposed to help them supposed to help them do their job, make their life easier, whatever. But I always focus on the individual and thinking even on that very personal level, what can I do to make their life easier. And if I'm doing that, that's great. But if if I'm selling in a manner that is not going to make their life easier, it's going to cause them a headache or a problem down the road, man, I have just blown it. Especially human to human, that part just aggravates me. But from a selling standpoint, it also means you're going to have unhappy people out there talking badly about you talking badly about your company, whatever, but they're not going to be sharing a positive experience. If you've done it wrong.
Jonathan Fischer 8:33
Well, and that's everything today. I mean, they say that you know what bad news travels 10 times faster. The good news, right? And those bad reviews can be so detrimental. Even Google, it takes 40 positive reviews to bury a negative review on Google, right? That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the math, that's actually the new algorithm, you have to get 40 Really good reviews before you get, you know, one or two star will be pulled out of the math to calculate your overall star rating with Google. That makes some sense, in a funny way, right? Because if you don't, that really says something we don't care enough to, to really make sure that every single client is happy. That doesn't make but but I'm going to push back a little bit ed, and just for the sake of the conversation, isn't that more of a delivery issue? I mean, isn't that really kind of failing in terms of promises as a company so isn't it more like your customer success side is just really a business development and sales issue. Talk to me about that. It can
Ed Montgomery 9:25
be obviously but but it's usually it's the person who's saying the words that's the one that's that's taking on the responsibility to back it up. Now one of my little favorite phrases in sales is promise as little as possible, but deliver everything you promise. So I try not to promise anything, I can't guarantee that I can't impact and make do but if it's all about, oh, I sell this product and somebody over here actually delivers and does that stuff. Last thing I'm gonna do is promise stuff they're going to do you know, now I could say this is what normally happens. This is how the process works and everything else but I am not going to over you know, it Is the sales Minister responsibility to set the rest of the folks up there to company for success? So that we all play from a position of strength. And so the customer sees that strength and experiences something positive.
Jonathan Fischer 10:14
That makes a lot of sense. Very quick side technical note, do you have anyone else on your network edge? Because seems like we're getting it cutting out just a little bit every so often.
Ed Montgomery 10:22
Um, I don't know that I do right at the moment wife did come home just a minute ago, but I don't I don't know if she's on using the wireless Wi Fi or not. I'm
Jonathan Fischer 10:29
sorry. Her office is
Ed Montgomery 10:31
upstairs. So
Jonathan Fischer 10:33
if you if you did multitasking, texture to astronaut, that'd be the divine for the sake of our audience here. We can take care of that little people. So a little filler while we're talking. I mean, I've seen I've seen what you're talking about it many times where, you know, it's not always because like, the sales person is trying to do something wrong. Maybe they get a little work cited, you know, could even be out of altruistic. I mean, literally, it's not like the old, you know, worn out cliche you see in movies of some, you know, Shyster or a sales pro, that does not have the best interest of the client at heart. This can even happen when a salesperson means well, maybe they get overexcited. Maybe they get a little bit over promising there because they're in the moment. And salespeople are talkers. I've seen happen there too. Would you agree with that? And is it is it
Ed Montgomery 11:23
Yeah, absolutely. And pressure risk? Well, and, and it's pressure. And of course, that's one of those pitfalls managers have to pay attention to too, we put so much pressure on somebody, they start toeing that line, because they feel under God, I gotta deliver, I gotta deliver something today, and I'm gonna make something happen. You know, I'm all for enthusiasm and making something happen, you know, that's exciting. That's fun. And that's what our job is, we got to push, we got to fight. And, frankly, you got to be a little competitive, I think to be, you know, successful in sales just because of the nature of the game. But you've got to watch that. And it's just like, man, you know, go with the sports metaphor a little further, don't cheat. Just play the game and play it hard. You know, but don't cheat. Sure.
Jonathan Fischer 12:05
What I like what you said they're like, you know, that the whole thing about hitting deadlines hitting goals, we understand that that motivates action, in ways that, you know, there's just not gonna happen on its own right. These are these are Franklin approaches that managers can use to generate better results from their team, we'd understand that however, when you're trying to qualify properly, it probably does make it hard to really actually sit on the other side of the table, and really make certain that you're, because you can hear what you want to hear. When you're asking questions. The customer says something you can hear it as for what it is,
Ed Montgomery 12:39
you ask questions to get certain answers, I'm gonna happen. Right. Right. But I will say that's one of the questions that I ask and when I kind of like interview customers and prospects, and one of the questions I like to ask is about pressures they're under. Yeah, what's, what sort of things pushes on them all day? No, I can understand them a little bit more. But we can talk about that more in a minute. But that's definitely it's one of those things. Because if I can understand their pressures, I can share my mind, you know, that sort of thing. You have these conversations that are much more person to person. And that is where I feel like you're you're selling from a stronger point. And they're buying from a stronger point. And it's, there's a whole lot more trust in there, just because you both understand what the other one is dealing with.
Jonathan Fischer 13:25
And I really like what you said right there, because I think it's makes a great segue, let's start to to move more to tour what is the, the, the better alternative that we want to talk about today? And what you just gave was a key if you can pick it up there. So so I'm putting myself in that chair, I've been in that chair many times of developing business for a company, right? You're feeling that pressure? How can you get out of that mode and demonstrate empathy to the other party, you just gave us a golden nugget right there. One way is to just ask them about their pressures. So instead of this becoming a play away, to be separated from them and hear what you want to hear and not effectively qualify all the sudden, you've actually flipped it exactly. 180. And you kind of united in this like feeling pressured state, and you could connect with that person, you're almost what you just shared is almost a way psychologically, to tap into your own empathy when you're feeling pressured. That's stuff. So it may unpack that further for us.
Ed Montgomery 14:19
Sure. Well, and that's that's works. And I start, pretty much all this starts with a mindset. And what I want to do and my my number one rule in sales, and I tell salespeople all the time, and I'm trying first rule of sales is care about the person you're selling to. You got to care about them. Because when you do that, when you get yourself in the thing where they're like, Okay, I care about Jonathan, I mean, Jonathan's a guy, he's got a day, he's got a family of work and everything else going on. I need to pay attention to that. And then when I can care about Jonathan, one thing, I know I'm gonna listen to you. I'm going to pay attention to you. I'm going to want what's good for you. I'm going to work hard for you. And so those things really, really important to to put yourself in that position first, where you your thing, Think about that other person, as a person. And and then that can, you know, move into how you do things, how you question how you qualify how you do all the stuff that salespeople do. And I do it too. And you mentioned that qualifying a prospect you threw that out there. That's it's this critical is perfect is that when you're in this mindset, the questions that I asked and I, you know, I asked kind of the same basic stuff, it's almost like an interview. And I won't go into the part about how you get to this step, because it doesn't just happen on like a cold call, Hey, I want to ask you 10 questions with six follow ups, let's do this. But the questions I asked Have nothing to do with me or my business. And they should, what they, they should enlighten me to things where my business can fit in their business, but they don't have to be about my business or even the the focus of it. And they're not in the beginning. It's talking about your your primary goal or focus every day, what's the purpose of your job? You can tell me, you start telling Well, I do this, this and this. And that's the most important thing I got to deal with. Okay, what sort of issues or challenges are in your way? Every day? What's that look like? They talked about that. And then I'd ask about, okay, what strategies you've got to kind of overcome or address those issues, head them off? What do you do? Talk about those things there? And then it's getting into the pressures, question, what sort of pressures you face every day, biggest customer complaints? What goes on? And then I'm understand those things, then I can say, Okay, what about biggest customer compliments? What do you hear that are great, you know, on a regular basis when customers say about you, and then I get into? What are the benefits of working with you? What are your customers work with you what's good for them. And by asking those things, and go in those directions, what I'm doing is I'm moving around the desk, and I'm sitting next to them, looking at their customer. So that now we're shoulder to shoulder, selling their business, not mine. Then as we get through them and get towards the end of it, that's when I asked myself in my head, what can I do to help? There should be something in there and, you know, knowing what my company does, and knowing my stuff really well, there shouldn't be something or I wouldn't have gotten this far bothered to go this far with him, I wouldn't have called him in the first place, you know, I kind of have a feeling they need something that we do. And so now I'm at that point, and I've got that, and now I've got the best information because the one of those true statements in the world as people buy more because of what we know about them, that we what we know about us, they will ask us all about us and ask us all our detail information. Oh, what about this? How do you handle that? You know, because but they're gonna start doing that, when they realize you understand them. And that's when it's really going to become more of that conversation, you're gonna have a much more productive, trusting sort of conversation and those things lead to it. So when you get down to the, when I say it out loud to the person, how can we help? They tell me and we and then they'll go right into? So what's the next step? How do we move forward?
Jonathan Fischer 18:03
I don't think a lot of sense, once you have that level of connection, and there being that open with you, I do have a question sort of just a little bit earlier on like even some of the questions you're asking that, as you said it, you're on their, their side of the table, you're sitting at their desk looking at their customer challenges. Even getting to that point, I can see that being a challenge. So how do you million from A to B to C? Can you set that up? Just your break.
Ed Montgomery 18:29
This is again, this is where you know, moving from a cold call in there's, this is where smart selling is smart selling, number one identifying quality prospects. So you know who does business we most of us are not dealing with something that's just a straight out of the gate startup somewhere. But even when you do that, you're defining your ideal customer. When a visit, the company has been in business for a little while, like dispatch, I can we can look at it easy go. These are our ideal customers. So I can go out and find people that look like that. Now we've gotten cold call. And that's where you're going to have, you want to practice being fairly smooth to say things like, you know, and I've got one cold call every day that you know where it starts and goes right through it on on, say it quickly and smoothly and easily and say, This is why you know we work with companies like yours doing this. Is that something you ever have to deal with? If they say yes, and most of them do, because if I've identified them properly and looking, you know, on the web, or whatever, and anything I can use to research them. If I've identified them properly, the answer that question is going to be yes. Then the next thing is, can I email you some introductory information? And I do that because that takes the first push back the first stiff arm out of the way, which is always a go Yeah, that's that's something I could talk about. But I'm busy right now. Can you email me something? I want to get rid of that right out of the gate. So say can I all ask for today because it's cold call is can I have permission to send you a quick email, just introduce what we do. And then I'll follow up after that. answers. Usually it makes sense. Yep. And then once they get that, again, this is qualifying them, it's getting them to self select. It's a marker. Yeah, it's getting them to raise their hand, say, Yeah, I'm interested, I give them that information. And I send out X number of those every day. And then I'm gonna have x number of people raise their hand and say, yep, talk to me, again, I'm going right back to them. And we're going to talk now I've got permission to spend some time with them and learn more about them and talk about what we're doing. So that's how I get
Jonathan Fischer 20:29
let's move up just a level. So you've run teams, and you have to motivate men and women that are sales professionals to operate with your client centric methodology. Talk to us about that. Because, you know, you kind of have a bit of an irony here, where you're, you're gonna be the one who you were putting deadlines, you know, you're you're setting goals, and you have expectations, you're measuring KPIs. How do you how do you balance that? And what are some of your best practices as a sales leader?
Ed Montgomery 20:54
Well, the idea is to talk most about the you don't do KPIs for KPIs sake, you know, it's not Well, I gotta have 40 phone calls. Today, I'm at 38. You know, the idea, though, is those numbers exist, they should exist, because they're shown to work. And so that's why you can go back. So as a manager, you want to make sure that everyone's clear on the idea that 40 phone calls and day is done, because 40 phone calls results into some number of meetings, which results in some number of sales, and those sales will make you successful. And so the KPIs have to matter. So one of the worst things we can do, and my wife actually tells a story from the past on her very first sales job. She was outselling everyone in this telemarketing thing selling printer parts and stuff. It was kind of neat for Xerox way back in the day, I'll say their name, and, but her manager is always like, you're not making enough phone calls. And she's like, she points to the board. But But, um, yeah, she had a different way of doing it. That worked extremely well. So we, as managers, we don't want to ever take the eye off the ball, which again, cold hard fact is, we're here to generate revenue. And so we need to look at that. Now. You know, that being said, you can manage revenue backwards and just go, okay, you know, you can do whatever you want. But if you don't hit these numbers, then what? I don't like that, because it's a pass fail test. At the end of the quarter, you're like, didn't hit the numbers by you. That's no good. Yeah. You know, you don't shoot the dog. You know, the puppy just because it has an accent on the rug. You teach it? You know, but you got to have teachable moments. So KPIs offer teachable moments.
Jonathan Fischer 22:38
Yeah, I think we've all most of us, I think can relate to having a manager who gets a little stuck. Process. Sure. And immediately comes to mind the whole TPS reports, thing and office space, right.
Ed Montgomery 22:51
Come in on Saturday, yeah.
Jonathan Fischer 23:01
So what are some other tips and tricks that you can share with our audience? And in terms of making certain that we're keeping things client centric? Can we you know, especially in some of our very fast moving startups that tend to be in our listening audience? Are there some red flags, you can let us know, hey, we're getting old to focus on the clothes, maybe there's some issues, let's let's make some adjustment here.
Ed Montgomery 23:22
Um, you know, it's interesting, you bring that up, because one of the things about me, I have ADD, you know, had my whole life diagnosing, and it's. So it's one of those things where people like, now, they look at me, Wow, you're so detail oriented, I'm like, No, I'm not. But I want to be, and wanting your want to is going to is probably the most powerful driving force you could possibly have. So I would say the very first thing is, you have to want to care about the other people, and you have to want to understand them. So some things tactically speaking. And again, you know, what I do for myself, I make a make little lists and notes that I have. So I just follow these things. I have a little whiteboard here that I put on, that I write you know, I, I've been doing this 36 years, and I still have goals with a demo written right up there. So that I can glance at it right before I go into anything to make sure that what I'm doing is I'm showing a solution to their problem, not anybody else's. There's, that's good. And I'm using their examples, and I'm gonna build enthusiasm for our product or service. So I'm going to present this in a way that builds excitement. Because the final thing is, I want to check, wanting to say yes, let's buy that thing. So, but it's having those things in there. The other thing I would say that's a very smart thing to do, and it's a lot of people find it a little awkward, but especially for cold calling and things like that. You got just a brief couple of seconds to kind of get things in. You want to learn practice, test, and find the best way to get the best response from somebody. What We easily in an unobtrusive way. And the best way to do that. Try it live with real people. When you start finding pause responses, go to the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror three or four times, every day out loud, look at it yourself. Just say it, just say it and say it and say it so that it comes very naturally. It'll become your voice, your cadence, your pace, and it's smooth. And if you're paying attention to how people react, then it's going to get better and better, more refined as you go on. But there's, there's no, there's no excuse for not practicing. You got to do that.
Jonathan Fischer 25:38
Yeah, so I mean, obviously, keeping those those tactical skills sharp, that's, that's really great advice. Still staying on that leadership rubric, and keeping the team motivated with that client centric focus, when we still have to measure these other metrics? Would you agree? Is there some use and maybe telling more customer stories? I mean, most, most sales managers don't talk about that. They're just going to talk about the numbers, right? And they're gonna celebrate the people that seem like they're hitting numbers, and they're gonna say, Hey, you better work hard, a little harder. And, you know, people aren't hitting the numbers. And they does that that much. I mean, in my own work through through the years have actually seen inside many companies, and I only want hand to count the ones where they talked that much about cost true customer success, like literally, like, here's what was happening in this company, they had this issue, and we got it solved. Yay, team, like, there's something is there some utility in that? Do you think soldiers and visit developing officers should become better storytellers? The,
Ed Montgomery 26:38
I think salespeople in general, being great storytellers is a critical aspect of your job. I mean, it just is. You can tell the story with enthusiasm and drama, and comedy and everything, but you bring all that to it, and people are gonna pay attention to it, they're gonna remember it. And again, that is one of those things that helps build enthusiasm is to be a good storyteller. And from a managerial standpoint, that's one of the things that like in our all of our meetings that we have, and we were always asking for success stories. But it's not like, hey, somebody's got 57,000 nose. No, it's right. Tell me about XYZ company, what what happened, and then they tell the story, and then you get to the Fifth Discipline. And but the idea is that you want to be able to have those stories and those successes, because telling the story is what's going to sink in and become effective. And as managers, we need to keep doing that. So give you a quick, fun example. One of the things that we come up against all the time, we building supply stores, and we're companies and we're trying to get them to start using dispatch for their on demand delivery. And, and people will their image pushback is and we got trucks, and we got our own stuff we don't get we never need to send somebody out. So I was a contractor. So I have to, but I'll always so I taught everyone this I even shot a video and we're building it in our house. And I said, all you got to do is ask them. So you mean you don't ever have customers calling in towards the end of day and say, I've run out of trim coil? Can you get something out to me? 100% of a building supply place that sells trim call is gonna go Oh, yeah, it happens couple times a week. Yes, it does. And it's because of what trim coil is. So we won't do it here. But I did a little video explaining buddy, this wood trim coil is and why it's such a pain in the butt. And why people call every day and say I need more tranquil and I ran out it's urgent. It's an urgent need. And so and that's where we happen to fit pretty well in those sorts of situations. So it's having that trim coil story being ready to go. The other one is dropping a bag of grout. Somebody drops a bag of grout in the driveway, you're doing a remodel and you know that $15 bag grouches cost me 100 bucks as the owner of that company, right? Because now I gotta pull somebody off the job to go out and get another one and bring it back and no one goes out and back. That doesn't happen. They go get coffee and stall and do whatever, you know, it takes time and you're paying them to be behind the windshield or sitting right or nothing. So, you know, it's it's knowing those sorts of things and having those little stories you can tell and that's but as a manager, that's what you want to do is make sure they hear those stories. The other thing is the back on these little acronym, you know these things that I use, people don't do what you expect they do what you inspect. So as a manager, you need to ask them to tell you the stories. So when you're gone up, when you're talking to when you're one on ones you just saying okay, here's KPIs. Here's this Alright, tell me what what was the most embarrassing call you had this week? Tell me and you get them telling stories?
Jonathan Fischer 29:31
Yeah, I love that. Well, a reminder to our audience that today's show is sponsored by overpass.com Are you looking to hire a team of ready to work remote sales professionals fast? There are 1000s of highly qualified sales reps waiting for you on the overpass talent marketplace. As the world's leading solution for hiring pre vetted talent. Overpass makes building an unstoppable Sales Team quick and easy. Filter by industry and experience, interview, hire and begin your onboarding process in as little as two days. Create your Free Account today@overpass.com? Well, it's been a great conversation, it's blown by, how would people find you, there's really two ways they could find you. If you're a business, and you're listening and you need to deliver anything from point A to point B, they could potentially look at your dispatch company for help. Correct? How would the best find you?
Ed Montgomery 30:21
Absolutely. The easiest thing, dispatch att.com. Because if you need something to quickly done right away, you can sign up right there free account and all that great stuff. Or you can just contact LinkedIn, I'm easy to read. That's
Jonathan Fischer 30:31
great. That'd be last mile delivery pinch hitting it. That's what makes it compares to Uber. So something else fell through, this could be a quick and easy solution for you very good. However, he personally has, if you want to talk to Ed Montgomery,
Ed Montgomery 30:42
LinkedIn, LinkedIn, is there. My cell number as published, I don't care. I'll talk to people all the time. You know, I'm happy to help anybody needs help. So just, you know, find me on LinkedIn and you can reach out.
Jonathan Fischer 30:53
Okay, good stuff. All right. Well, let's veer through just a little bit of q&a here. We've got a couple of questions. Here we have one, one guy who's very technical oriented, technically oriented, apparently named. Let's see here he was at for us from Andrew. He's wondering how, you know, is there like sort of a scientific methodology at play here that where you can kind of see ahead of time? You know, is there something like, as you're putting all those metrics on a spreadsheet, or however you like to measure the different approaches? Obviously, maybe more seat of the pants? As a manager, there's every every angle, right? Are there ways and I kind of asked this before, but let's maybe go deeper for Andrew sake, that you can spot that you're not because you're not client centric enough in your approach?
Ed Montgomery 31:34
Um, I would say that, you know, that's number one a great, great question, because I happen to be very data hungry type of person to in finding information out, I will say that what you've got to do is create a KPI that you can use that somehow measures the depth of what they know about their customers. And it's, it depends on what's important and what's not. Because again, you don't need you don't want KPIs that you're looking at their, you know, Hey, did you get their birthday? You know, yeah, that's a personal piece of information and shows you've gotten a very far away if you can get that piece of information at somebody, but however, is it worthwhile, you know, you find something else I would think to do. But I think you can't manage what you don't measure. And it's important to do that sort of thing. So, you know, with us, it is more down to those KPIs. And it's me looking at, called listening to call logs, watching, you know, looking at the notes in our CRM system, and making sure that things are in there accurately and everything else, and that the notes are good. So unfortunately, I really don't have a great spreadsheet item that does it. But what I do look at is, what are the notes look like after a meeting? If the notes are free meeting and nothing else? That's a teaching moment. You know, you've got, could you almost
Jonathan Fischer 32:55
create like a, this would be self reported, obviously. But could you almost feel like a star rating, you didn't want a 10 or one to five, and you know, the high end is, hey, we're about ready to grab, you know, ball tickets and go go see it together. And one is I know their name and location, what they do, you know, and kind of celebrate how well they know the customer. What does that strike you is something that could be useful in this? Yeah,
Ed Montgomery 33:15
I think it could be. It definitely could be. I like that.
Jonathan Fischer 33:20
So good stuff. And then Dennis is asking, what's the number one way people fail at being client centric.
Ed Montgomery 33:30
Being self centered, focusing on themselves and their own needs. I will say one of those, again, funny story, one of my very first, my very first sales job, actually, we were trained, we had scripts, we had a little booklet you could flip through and respond to certain actions. And what it did was, it did help you become smoother as far as responding to generic questions. But what it also did was it became such a crutch, that I wasn't actually paying attention to the people. And so I was calling in. And the person said, I asked him, Hey, is such and such there? No, I'm sorry. He died last night. And my instant response without doing anything else was oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Can you tell me who's in charge of buying office products now? What? Because that's the response when the person is no longer there, you know, and it's like, I wasn't paying attention. So the the biggest failure is not paying attention. And and so you've got to be paying attention all the time. And that goes all back to what I said about want to start with wanting to Yeah, yeah, having your own coaching man, Tim.
Jonathan Fischer 34:43
Yeah, I love it. Well, thanks for telling on yourself, Ed, that, you know, we can all miss the mark of our own best humans, you know,
Ed Montgomery 34:49
we're all human. You know, no one's gonna be perfect. And you gotta and honestly, you got to be willing to be bad at something beginning and that's okay. You know, just you're gonna get better at it soon.
Jonathan Fischer 35:00
Yeah, right? Hey, let me since you have been kind enough to be so vulnerable, let me add a question to the mix. If I could show as a fellow ADHD guy, what are some of your personal tips and tricks for staying focused on the right things, since you can think about everything at once, and you can probably get a lot done, but it's not gonna necessarily work with it doesn't always mesh as well with a systems as it might. What are your tip, and you can't get off track easily, sometimes, depending on the day, right? So what are your some of your tips? There's a lot of people in business development that fit that profile, right? What are some of your, your practices around that issue? So
Ed Montgomery 35:33
yeah, CRM, CRM, CRM. That is my life saver right there. And it is. Because, you know, again, I wanted to be organized, I wanted to be focused, so I created things that would help me do that. And so early on way back, you know, 106 years ago, every night before going to bed, I would make a list of here's the things I have to do tomorrow, and I would have them on the list. So that was what I did. So that's good. But the so I would have those things list. And so that's what I did. But now CRM most beautiful thing in the world, but you have to, you have to live in it. So use it for the tool that it is and use it in the moment. Don't put stuff off the key and then towards the end of the day, do it on the fly do while you're doing it. Because some people say Oh, but it's so slow doing that. No, it's not. It's better because you're become more efficient. And man, it's a beautiful thing. At the end of the night, I turn off my computer, I'm done a walk away. I don't remember a thing. Because tomorrow morning, it's telling me now my CRM works me all day every day, because I make sure it's in there. But that's
Jonathan Fischer 36:44
it's another another case in point as to why tech stack is so important in the mix as well, isn't it you gotta have a well developed tech stack, including and especially including that CRM piece. Oh, amen. Don't just go with it. Don't go with the free version. Right. I know a lot of startups are bootstrapping it. It's work develop out your HubSpot or go ahead and spring for Salesforce or get a solution that really works well. That's going to help guide the process of routine is gonna get you money. Yeah, make you money all day long, right, perfect investment. So thanks so much for being on the show today. It's been a fantastic ride and for our entire audience and for overpass.com. I want to thank you once again for being involved sales live.
Ed Montgomery 37:23
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me back.
Jonathan Fischer 37:26
All right. Take care everybody. Bye bye now.
