Podcast appearances and mentions of lori richardson

Our goal at Women Sales Pros is to help support women in existing B2B sales roles to thrive, to get into leadership if they want to, and to recognize the companies and allies doing great things.  This is a short episode with host Lori Richardson to cheer on 2025 and share resources like these ones:  Find podcasts, women in sales organizations, and more here at Women Sales Pros - https://womensalespros.com/resources/ Get an e-newsletter 2x a month with stories about women in sales and more resources subscribe: https://bit.ly/thewspnews Contribute: https://forms.gle/v9rRiPDUtgGqKaXA6 Past News Issues: bit.ly/past_news_issues Follow "Conversations with Women in Sales" for previous episodes here:  https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ On LinkedIn: https://womensalespros.com/podcast/

Welcome to our podcast series from The Super Network and Pop4D called Tubi Tuesdays Podcast! This podcast series is focused on discovering and doing commentaries/watch a longs for films found on the free streaming service Tubi, at TubiTVYour hosts for Tubi Tuesdays are Super Marcey, ‘The Terrible Australian' Bede Jermyn, Prof. Batch (From Pop4D & Web Tales: A Spider-Man Podcast) and Kollin (From Trash Panda Podcast), will take turns each week picking a film to watch and most of them will be ones we haven't seen before.Film Starts Playing At: 00:12:16Welcome back to The Tubi Tuesdays Podcast, the number one Tubi related podcast that's hosted by two Australians, one Canadian and one American! Welcome back to Christmas Month on Tubi Tuesdays, all four co-hosts are here with Super Marcey, Bede Jermyn, Prof. Batch and Kollin! This week is Marcey's turn to choose a film for every to watch and she has gone with a recent Christmas horror found footage anthology film The Christmas Tapes (2022)! Check out a special episode Marcey and Bede did about the film for Podcasters of Horror with interviews from two stars of the film! But anyways though, enjoy the episode and listen in to find out all the latest happenings on the show!The Christmas Tapes was written and directed by Robert Livings and Randy Nundlall Jr., it stars Greg Sestero, Vernon Wells, Dave Sheridan, Janice Angela Burt, Louise Harding, Ian Hopps, Jason Kuykendall, Todd Lubitsch, Caleb Lush, Romulo Reyes, Lori Richardson, Joshua Rose, Ruby Setnik and Devin Valdez.If you have never listened to a commentary before and want to watch the film along with the podcast, here is how it works. You simply need to grab a copy of the film or load it up on Tubi (you may need alcohol), and sync up the podcast audio with the film. We will tell you when to press and you follow along, it is that easy! Because we have watched the films on Tubi, it is a free service and there are ads, however we will give a warning when it comes up, so you can pause the film and provide time stamps to keep in sync.Highlights include:* Merry Christmas Month!* Unfortunately Prof. Batch was suffering from J-Rona and couldn't stay for the whole episode.* This film puts Dave Sheridan up as a nominee for Tubi Achievement Award 2024!* Vernon Wells is a great Aussie Santa!* The scarecrow seems to be the Breaking the Magician's Code dude! * There's more flannel in this film, we can't deny we love that!* Paranormal Perry might be the best film character!* Plus much, much more!Check out The Super Network on Patreon to gain early access to The Tubi Tuesdays Podcast!DISCLAIMER: This audio commentary isn't meant to be taken seriously, it is just a humourous look at a film. It is for entertainment purposes, we do not wish to offend anyone who worked on and in the film, we have respect for you all.Music provided by DeNNo, introduction and podcast editing by Super Marcey & Bede Jermyn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Andy highlights a crucial discussion from his latest podcast with industry experts Lori Richardson, Founder of Score More Sales, Steve Arnold, Co-Founder and CRO of Primerli, and Kyle Williams, Founder at Brickstack to discuss how falling in love with problems gets you to solutions more quickly. They emphasize the need for financial acumen, industry knowledge, and understanding the buyer's issues in a genuine way. By focusing on these areas, sellers can build trust and credibility, becoming trusted advisors. The conversation also highlights the importance of integrating business fundamentals into sales onboarding programs to enhance performance and meet buyer expectations.Listen to the full episode on Apple and SpotifyHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate.

AI  is a tool that can enhance productivity, but many salespeople depend on it too often. What is to come? No one knows for sure, but the advancement is rapid. Today Andy spotlights an important conversation from his latest podcast with a stellar roundtable of sales experts including Lori Richardson, Founder of Score More Sales, Steve Arnold, Co-Founder and CRO of Primerli, and Kyle Williams, Founder at Brickstack.  Together they discuss whether AI can enhance the value provided by sellers to buyers or if it might eventually replace human sellers altogether. They dive into the potential for AI to improve sales coaching, the importance of human interaction in sales, the risks of relying too heavily on AI, and AI-driven coaching tools and simulation technologies.Listen to the full episode on Apple and SpotifyHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate.

On today's episode of the Win Rate Podcast, Andy is joined by all-star sales panelists Lori Richardson, Founder of Score More Sales, Steve Arnold, Co-Founder and CRO of Primerli, and Kyle Williams, Founder at Brickstack. They discuss the importance of specialization in sales, the benefits of industry and business knowledge for sellers, and the potential of AI in sales roles. The conversation examines enabling salespeople through effective coaching, understanding business ecosystems, and leveraging technology to improve sales interactions. They also give their honest perspectives on the evolving role of AI and its impact on the future of sales training and buyer interactions.Host Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate.

On this episode of GoalChat, host Debra Eckerling talks about Intent with Bill Haase, Innovative Strategies; spiritual mentor Terri Ann Heiman; and Lori Richardson, Score More Sales. While Bill, Terri, and Lori each approach intent from a different perspective - finance, spirit, and sales - they were all in alignment about the power and benefits of intention. They each shared their experience with intent, as well as tips and goals for getting and staying intentional. Goals - Terri: Just for today, be present - Lori: Make a decision to not make a decision; sit with what's next for a little bit - you will know what to do - Bill: Make a decision and live with the risk Final Thoughts - Terri: When you set an intention, set an agreement with yourself to keep it - Lori: Summer is for growth - Bill: Live your life with intent Learn more about: Bill Haase: LinkedIn.com/in/bill-haase-a506299 Terri Ann Heiman: TerriAnnHeiman.com Lori Richardson: ScoreMoreSales.com Debra Eckerling: TheDEBMethod.com/blog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have known Michelle Benfer over the years and it was great to catch up with her in her role as SVP Sales, Business Line Owner at BILL. [Bill is (according to their website) the intelligent way to create and pay bills, send invoices, manage expenses, control budgets, and access the credit your business needs to grow—all on one platform.] Michelle is a sales leader and in our conversation we talked about how things have changed in sales, how there is some "bad behavior" happening more than before due to the tougher economy and some advice for reps about taking control of their destiny and the big job that front line sales managers have.  Fun fact: Michelle's mom was her sales role model, setting up calls like today's BDRs and SDRs do. When her parents started thinking about college for her and her siblings her mom got a job at Boston College so her kids would get free tuition (perk of working at a university). Mom was smart!  More about Michelle Benfer, ex Hubspot, Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital - now at Bill.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellehughesbenfer/ More from Women Sales Pros - sign up for our 2x month newsletter  https://bit.ly/thewspnews Page on LinkedIn "Women Sales Pros" or connect with Lori Richardson #seeitbeit  https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales/ https://www.instagram.com/womensalespros/   

Sales expert Lori Richardson joins Betsy and Billy to discuss the state of women in B2B sales, including the opportunities a sales career offers, the barriers women face and the actions you can take to attract and retain top women in the field.Lori Richardson is a top B2B sales influencer and a champion for getting more women into sales and sales leadership in B2B roles. In addition, she has run the data-backed sales strategy firm Score More Sales since 2002, after a career in sales and leadership. Lori is the author of “She Sells” — a book to help company leaders and sales leaders find, recruit, retain and promote more women into sales and leadership roles. She also hosts the award-winning podcast “Conversations with Women in Sales” and is a sales coach for Harvard Business School's MBA program.

Watch this episode on YouTubeAs women sales professionals, are we using our voice? Are we aware of our self worth and asking for what we deserve, demanding it?Do we think of a question, or something we want... play it over in our heads and hold our tongues when it comes to asking for it. This is where we can take a page out of our male allies playbook.Tune in to my conversation with @loririchardson, an advocate for more women in sales leadership, Author of She Sells: Attract, Promote and Retain Great women in Sales, Founder of Score More Sales head of Women Sales Pros for the past 10 years, Host of Conversations with Women in Sales podcast and my friend.After four decades of sales experience, Lori still considers herself a student of sales. She is an avid learner, leading with her curiosity. Tune in to learn how she transitioned from teaching to tech sales, excelled in her roles while supporting her son as a single mom. This conversation may be the motivation you need to take action, The A-ha to realize you have been playing small and the courage to lean in to the discomfort, try something new and get the outcome you deserve.For more content like this, join hundreds of other subscribers to The K2 Sales Academy. Our subscription based on line sales training platform. $495/year unlocks the Fundamentals of Sales program with built in knowledge checks, resource folder with scripts, templates and checklists as well as regular webinars. 1:1 and group coaching packages available as well. To access our free one week Trial visit The K2 Sales Academy

Are you tired of the high turnover rate in your sales team? How do you identify and retain top sales talent?  In a world where finding the right sales professionals can be challenging, Lori Richardson, a seasoned sales strategist with over 20 years of experience, joins Donald on "The Sales Evangelist Podcast" to share her invaluable insights on bringing in the right talent and keeping them motivated for long-term success.  In this episode, Lori offers practical advice for both sales professionals and leaders, shedding light on the qualities to look for in salespeople, the role of effective leadership, and how to identify the right company culture. If you're ready to revolutionize your sales team and boost your own sales career, you won't want to miss this episode! Qualities of Successful Salespeople Lori emphasizes the importance of key qualities in successful salespeople. She highlights the significance of coachability, strong will, and the ability to accept rejection without being deterred.  Lori also acknowledges the role of personal attitudes and beliefs, emphasizing the need for individuals to have a positive mindset and a commitment to continuous improvement in sales. Hiring the Right Talent Donald and Lori discuss the challenges of identifying the right talent for sales roles.  Lori stresses the necessity for individuals considering a sales career to test the waters and emphasizes the need for companies to look for coachability and sales DNA in potential hires.  Additionally, she provides insights into a comprehensive process that utilizes data to achieve more accurate hiring decisions, providing a proactive approach to identifying and nurturing sales talent. Tools and Processes for Evaluating Sales Talent Lori outlines the use of specific tools and processes that can aid sales leaders in evaluating and identifying top sales talent.  She highlights the importance of pre-hire assessments to understand potential hires better.  Additionally, she emphasizes the availability of solutions and programs tailored to help companies make informed decisions when hiring sales professionals. The Role of Sales Leadership What's the impact of sales leadership on the success and retention of sales talent?  Lori underscores the pivotal role of sales managers in influencing and supporting their teams.  She highlights the significance of supportive beliefs and motivations, emphasizing the need for managers to treat their team members with respect and recognize individual differences. Retaining Sales Talent and Workplace Culture Lori provides insights into the current dynamics of the job market, emphasizing the importance of workplace culture, strong leadership, and a clear vision to retain sales talent.  She discusses industry-specific challenges and the shifting dynamics in employee retention, particularly within the tech industry, where volatility and rapid job movement are common. Strategies for Prospective Sales Professionals Lori advises individuals to seek referrals and gather insights from current or former employees about potential employers.  She underscores the value of conducting in-depth research into the company's mission, vision, and employee support initiatives to make informed career decisions. Lori Richardson's insights and expertise in sales strategy make this episode a must-listen for anyone in the sales industry. From identifying the right talent to the crucial role of leadership in fostering a thriving sales team, these discussions offer invaluable lessons for individual contributors and sales leaders. Tune in to the full episode to delve deeper into Lori's wealth of knowledge and gain actionable strategies for hiring the right talent! "If you have a sense of failure and messages in your head that are not supporting you to go forward, there's a lot of things that can keep you from being successful." - Lori Richardson. Resources Lori Richardson on LinkedIn Women Sales Pro Women Sales Pro Instagram Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales. 2.            This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse. 3.            This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

This is episode 655. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website here. Purchase Fred Diamond's best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now! Register for the Women in Sales Leadership Development programs here. Today's show featured an interview with Lori Richardson from Score More Sales and Women Sales Pros. It also featured Institute for Excellence in Sales Women in Sales Program Director Gina Stracuzzi. LORI'S ADVICE:  " Listen in your meetings and make sure that people are speaking up that might be sitting quietly. Just say, “We haven't heard from you. What are your thoughts?” Then just ask individually, “How are we doing with women in sales here? What's missing? What could I do better?” Don't assume that just because you have a number of women on your team that you're all set, because there may be things that you could do and improve on.?" GINA'S ADVICE:  "Investing in the professional development of all your employees really, is critical. A lot of companies will tell you, first thing out of the gate is, “We have a lot of internal resources, they have access to all kinds of programs.” When you ask them, “Well, how many people actually avail themselves at those? Is it a safe space if it's live? Do they feel like they can talk about what's of concern to them, or their fears, or their career aspirations? Usually the answer, if people are being honest, is no. Find outside resources, such as the IES to fill those gaps."

In a candid conversation, communication expert and sideline reporter for the Seattle Seahawks and the Seattle Mariners, Jen Mueller shares her perspective on maintaining focus and supportive beliefs amidst challenging times, such as a difficult economic climate or personal setbacks. She discusses the significance of honesty in assessing failures and emphasizes the importance of competing against oneself to improve. Jen also highlights the value of small, incremental successes in boosting confidence. She provides insights from her experience with athletes, drawing parallels between the sports and professional world, underscoring the need to start fresh after every setback, utilizing team support, and focusing on strengths. Finally, Jen suggests proactive measures such as celebrating small victories to build momentum towards success. 00:00 Introduction and Welcome 00:40 Discussing Mindset in Difficult Times 01:39 The Importance of Honesty and Self-Competition 03:02 The Power of Starting Fresh and Focusing on Strengths 05:20 The Role of Teammates and Celebrating Small Wins 07:03 Conclusion and Contact Information Welcome new Premier Sponsor Skillibrium.  Find all of our episodes on iTunes or at https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ Your host for Conversations with Women in Sales is Lori Richardson.

Lori began her sales journey growing up in her grandmother's fine women's apparel store. Although she became a teacher, Lori quickly learned that teaching would not support her as a young single parent. She went back to her sales roots, intentionally looking for a sales role as technology was booming in the mid-1980's.After a stellar career in tech sales, Lori launched Score More Sales, a sales consultancy designed to help leaders of mid-sized companies hire better sellers and evaluate their existing sales teams. The company launched 20 years ago. 2022 is a big celebratory year.In 2015 Lori realized that so many of the sales managers she was training and coaching were male so she set out to determine why so few women were in sales and especially as sales executives in leadership. That realization launched Women Sales Pros, which consists of a group of top women sales experts as well as a consulting and coaching arm to assist company leaders in creating more diverse sales teams.SHOW SUMMARYIn this episode of Selling From The Heart, Darrell Amy and Larry Levine are joined by special guest Lori Richardson, founder of Score More Sales and trailblazer in the sales industry. They discuss the importance of authenticity, building trust, and the mission to bring sincerity and substance to the sales profession. Lori shares insights from her dynamic career and offers valuable advice for sales professionals looking to excel in 2024. The conversation covers topics such as mindset, morning rituals, competency development, and the significance of meaningful conversations in sales.KEY TAKEAWAYSCompetency Mastery: Lori emphasizes the importance of mastering competencies, especially the will to sell. Being coachable, having a positive outlook, and taking responsibility are crucial elements for success in sales.Morning Rituals for Success: The hosts discuss the significance of starting the day with a positive mindset. Lori shares her morning ritual, including affirmations and spending time outdoors, highlighting the impact it can have on one's day.Leadership Aspirations: For sales professionals aspiring to leadership roles, Lori encourages being proactive. Don't wait to be tapped on the shoulder; express your desire for growth and seek guidance on what competencies are needed for the next level.Conversations Beyond Sales: Lori stresses the value of diverse conversations beyond sales-centric topics. From charity auctioneering to personal interests, building relationships with a human touch can open doors and enhance your professional network.Women in Sales: The conversation extends to Lori's passion project, her book "She Sells," addressing the underrepresentation of women in B2B sales leadership. Lori provides advice for women aspiring to leadership roles and emphasizes the need for proactive career planning.QUOTES"Selling from the heart is integrity, honesty, and good selling—bringing sincerity and substance to the sales profession.""Competency mastery is about having the will to sell. Trainable skills are essential, but the desire, commitment, positive outlook, and taking responsibility are key.""Don't wait until somebody taps you on the shoulder. Be proactive about your career growth and find out what competencies are required for the next level.""Humanize your conversations. Conversations beyond sales-centric topics can open doors and enhance your professional network.""For women aspiring to leadership, express your desire for growth. Understand competencies needed and work on areas of improvement. Be proactive in shaping your career."Learn more about Lori Richardson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales/Learn more about Darrell and Larry: Darrell's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellamy/Larry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrylevine1992/Website: https://www.sellingfromtheheart.net/Please visit BarnesandNobles to order your copy of the rerelease of the Selling from the Heart book. SUBSCRIBE to our YOUTUBE CHANNEL! https://www.youtube.com/c/sellingfromtheheartPlease visit WHY INSTITUTE:https://whyinstitute.com/Please go to WORK BETTER NOW:https://www.workbetternow.com/Click for your Daily Dose of Inspiration:https://www.sellingfromtheheart.net/dailyCheck out the 2023 Authentic Selling Challenge:https://authenticsellingchallenge.com/Get your Insiders Group FREE PASS here:https://www.sellingfromtheheart.net/free-pass

I hadn't planned an episode about "She Sells" but jumped at the chance when a wonderful interviewer, Caroline Jones, offered to ask me about it. This session is dedicated to those who helped me with their stories and stats which are included in the book. It is exciting, too, that it just won "FIRST PLACE" in Top Sales Magazine's Sales Book of the Year. Wow.  00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:26 Discussing the Impact of 'She Sells' 03:06 The Importance of Male Allies in Sales 05:20 The Journey to Writing 'She Sells' 07:11 Addressing Gender Disparity in Sales 07:50 The Impact of the Pandemic on Women in Sales 15:21 The Importance of Diverse Representation in Sales 18:59 Overcoming Biases in the Hiring Process 26:13 Career Growth Opportunities for Individual Contributors 28:51 Promoting Diversity and Inclusivity in Sales 33:28 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Thanks to Caroline - check out her podcast, "Rep Matters"  Find "She Sells" on Amazon - Kindle or paperback. Writing a review really matters - please consider it for either the book OR the podcast!  Join the Women Sales Pros newsletter where we share interviews and discuss upcoming events from all of the women in sales communities.  Need some help finding more women for your sales team or retaining them? Check out Women Sales Pros or reach out to Lori directly through website or LinkedIn.  Visit us on Instagram or X @womensalespros 

Kristie's parents were both in real estate sales and Kristie grew up hearing her parents  talk at the dinner table about commissions, sales, and more. After getting a degree in Journalism from University of Kansas, she ended up as a waitress and then worked for the legendary Kansas City department store called The Jones Co (later became Macy's)  Kristie worked as a sales leader for companies like Network Solutions, Gainsight, and Netskope. Listen how the universe conspired for her to start her own sales consultancy.  This year, 2024, Kristie's new book, "Selling Your Way In" will launch.  Get updates about the book here.  Follow Kristie Jones on LinkedIn here.     Podcasts brought to you by Women Sales Pros. Reach out to help sponsor our efforts! Women Sales Pros has updates on our LinkedIn page, and on our website.  Reach out to Lori Richardson through her LinkedIn profile.  Know of a female sales rep or leader we should interview? Reach out to Lori. Thanks for listening, and the ultimate gift is for you to share on LinkedIn AND/OR post a review on iTunes plus a blurb as to what you liked about it. Thanks in advance. 

In this episode of Uncapped, hosts Zoya Segelbacher and Caroline Jones welcome Lori Richardson, a renowned Revenue Growth Strategist from Score More Sales. Lori shares her extensive experience in B2B sales, emphasizing the importance of visualization and confidence in the sales process. Her insights offer valuable guidance for navigating the complexities of sales and the significance of asking the right questions to foster success.The conversation delves into the challenges and opportunities for women in sales. Lori, a vocal advocate for gender equity in the sales industry, discusses her initiatives to promote inclusivity. She highlights the need for pay equity, supportive leadership, and a conducive work environment. Her experience as a sales coach at Harvard Business School's Entrepreneurial Sales course further enriches the discussion with practical advice and strategies.Lori also touches on the impact of economic fluctuations on sales and the importance of maintaining a positive outlook. She encourages sales professionals to focus on solving customer problems and staying resilient amidst external challenges. This episode not only provides a wealth of knowledge for sales professionals but also inspires listeners with Lori's dedication to empowering women in the field.

We had a big year at Women Sales Pros and now are going through the review of all of our wonderful podcast guests in 2023. I would like to thank all of our guests for their focus and contribution to topics we discussed such as: Getting into sales in the first place as a woman or another "only"  Growing in your sales career Becoming a sales leader - what is required?  Dealing with a "male majority" environment and if you are a leader, how you can improve it.  Various industries, like avation, SaaS, and manufacturing.  Fundamentals for sellers.  And other topics.    We also discussed how you can give us a "5 Star" rating and you can post comments on iTunes which greatly helps our visibility. I'll personally give you a shout out if you and two other people go to iTunes, listen to an episode, and rate it - if all 3 rate it, I'll talk you up on the next episode.    Donate to the Sales Education Foundation's Giamanco Memorial Scholarship for Women in sales programs here: https://salesfoundation.org/barbara-giamanco-memorial-scholarship-fund/index.php   Follow us @WomenSalesPros on Instagram, X, LinkedIn and Facebook.  Send us names of amazing women we should interview - or male counterparts. They must be in B2B selling or managing currently.    Thank you to our listeners, we'd be nothing without you!!  

In this enlightening episode, Lori Richardson, a titan in tech sales, delves into the unlimited potential of a sales career and the ethical backbone that propels success. She spotlights the strides made for women in sales, advocating for a future where gender parity is the norm, not the exception. Lori offers actionable advice on personal branding, mentorship, and inclusivity—key ingredients for a thriving modern sales environment.

When Wistia decided to sponsor a booth at INBOUND 2023 - HubSpot's annual conference for marketers - we knew we were going to turn up the volume, but we didn't know how many decibels of awesome we could fit in one convention center. Turns out, it was a lot!On this special episode of Talking Too Loud, hear how Chris and Sylvie navigated their way through a ton of incredible speakers, deep dive sessions, swag giveaways, and food truck lines. And of course, hear about their biggest INBOUND highlight — recording mini Talking Too Loud episodes with twenty-plus guests who offered some of their loudest takes on SaaS, B2B, content marketing and more.ALSO on this episode... TTL guest, Daniel Murray, founder of The Marketing Millennials podcast, is talking too loud about the U.S. Open and F1; Eric Siu, founder of the digital marketing agency Single Grain is talking too loud about sleep tape, and Lori Richardson, founder of Womens Sales Pros is talking too loud about Boston!Chris Savage is talking too loud about Roam, a virtual office platform.Sylvie is talking too loud about the naming of Beastie Boys Square.And we're all talking too loud about INBOUND 2023 (duh!).Links to learn more about:Dan's LinkedInEric's LinkedInLori's LinkedInFollow us:twitter.com/wistiaSubscribe:wistia.com/series/talking-too-loudLove what you heard? Leave us a review!We want to hear from you!Write in and let us know what you think about the show, who you'd want us to interview on future episodes, and any feedback you have for our team.

Welcome back to the Win Rate Podcast. Today Andy welcomes two amazing guests, Matt Benelli, sales coach and Co-Founder of CoachEm, and Lori Richardson, Sales Advisor, Founder and President of Women Sales Pros and author of She Sells. The roundtable starts today by discussing how pushing larger investments to frontline managers would create a wave of positive change across sales organizations. They give some personal stories of starting out as young salespeople and finding their footing with clients. They explain why their genuine curiosity gave them an advantage and how SDR's can learn from their approach.The group also talks through the short-comings of companies win rate tracking, how some CRM results need a more objective eye and context, why companies focus on scaling but end up not knowing how to sell their product, why upper management pressure can bring a breakdown of good sales practices, and how progressing successfully in your sales career means being conscious of the experience buyers are having with you. Connect with Lori and Matt on LinkedInHighlights[00:07:49] Inexperienced frontline managers struggle with their roles.[00:11:04] Importance of tracking critical metrics.[00:16:24] B2B industry experiences low win rates; [00:25:00] Improving win rates and aligning incentives for sales.[00:27:54] Choose carefully who you sell to.[00:36:37] Balancing revenue and understanding buyer decisions.[00:42:31] Youthful appearance helped build meaningful relationships.[00:47:16] System design influences win rates; strategic focus needed.[00:51:16] "Intentional actions shape your career and success."[00:57:37] First impressions matter when connecting with buyers in sales.

Hiring high-performing teams is no easy feat for CEOs, but when it comes to sales teams, the stakes are exponentially higher. Achieving your organization's business objectives hinges on building and scaling a successful sales force that drives predictable revenue growth.But what do you do when sales are stagnant and results fall short of expectations? It's time to examine how we, as CEOs, have supported the growth of our sales teams.In a value-packed conversation with Lori Richardson, a renowned sales strategy expert and founder of Score More Sales, we dive into the crucial factors that contribute to building peak performing sales teams.Lori emphasized the utmost importance of hiring the right people, empowering effective sales leaders, and providing ongoing coaching and support.Discover how you can revolutionize your sales teams and supercharge your business success with these insights from a true sales guru.Chapters04:30 Challenges with traditional sales training and accountability08:37 Importance of hiring the right salespeople and coaching them09:45 Discussion on the need for training on hiring and assessing candidates11:27 Importance of setting up a customized assessment for each sales role13:29 Critique of using personality assessments for hiring salespeople17:09 Importance of setting clear criteria and avoiding excessive requirements24:09 Discussion on the concept of "culture add" in hiring29:58 Importance of expanding networks and connections for diversity hiring32:08 Tips for making job postings more appealing to diverse candidates35:30 Importance of sticking to the hiring process and not deviating40:00 Importance of assessing existing sales teams and leaders45:24 Importance of developing a strong sales team for company valuationAbout GuestLori Richardson is the CEO, Speaker, and Founder of Score More Sales, a consultancy she established in 2002 to assist companies in boosting their revenues through strategic sales endeavors. Her expertise stems from over two decades of experience in B2B sales and leadership roles. With a commendable career in tech sales under her belt, Lori envisioned Score More Sales to be a beacon for leaders of mid-sized businesses, guiding them in hiring competent sellers and appraising their incumbent sales teams. As of 2022, the company marked its 20th year, symbolizing two decades of dedicated service in the realm of sales consultancy. Apart from her role as the head of Score More Sales, Lori has made significant contributions to the sales domain as an author. She penned "She Sells," a book that serves as a manual for company and sales leaders to effectively discover, enlist, and retain sales talent.Social Links You can learn more about and connect with Lori Richardson in the links below.Connect with Lori on LinkedIn:(99+) Lori Richardson | LinkedInCheck out Score More Sales website:ScoreMoreSales - More of What Works, NowYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedIn:(99+) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice's website:Alice Heiman - Alice Heiman

After 15 years in B2B sales, Lori Richardson founded Score More Sales to help companies grow revenues through strategy. Noticing a massive lack of women, she decided to lead the effort to change the industry. She created Women Sales Pros, a community that showcases experts and offers inclusive sales team consulting. Lori's new book is “She Sells – Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales” and she hosts the award-winning podcast, “Conversations with Women in Sales” Lori is a 3rd year Salesforce Top Sales Influencer and a Sales Coach at Harvard Business School. Book, "She Sells" - https://amzn.to/3wnEF9n Where to connect with Lori: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@loririchardsonsales Websites: https://womensalespros.com https://www.scoremoresales.com https://shesellssummit.com Lori is @scoremoresales and @womensalespros on Twitter and Instagram --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/feisworld/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/feisworld/support

When you think about careers for women in sales, we typically talk about revenue responsibility roles plus sales leadership. In the past 5-7 years we started to see sales enablement roles as well as RevOps. .Personally I get a little confused between enablement and ops, so I brought on a team of RevOps leaders at Xactly to help us understand what their roles are and how they both got into them. Meet Bayley Fesler, Director, Revenue Ops, and Annie Jones, Revenue Ops Business Partner. Together these women break things down for us and dispel myths about forecasting - it isn't hard anymore, for one thing!  Bayley Fesler, Director, Revenue Ops, Xactly Corp Annie Jones, Revenue Ops Business Partner, Xactly Corp Their latest article about AI and Sales   Podcast is hosted by Lori Richardson, President of Women Sales Pros, a community helping to get more women into sales and sales leadership. Lori is also author of "She Sells: Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales" available here on Amazon.  Learn about and donate to the Barbara Giamanco Memorial Scholarship for women in university sales programs here. 

Welcome to the first ever “The 20% Podcast Live,” the same show that you love, but this time recorded during a LinkedIn Live conversation. This week, I was joined by Alexine Mudawar, the CEO of Women in Sales, as well as Lori Richardson, who is the President of Score More Sales, and is an OG in the Women in Sales movement.  In this conversation, we discussed: Lori's Journey From Teaching To Sales Alexine's Early Experience in Restaurants The Transition from IC to CEO The Evolution of Women in Sales Men's Role in The Women in Sales Movement Much more! Please enjoy this special The 20% Podcast Live episode with Alexine Mudawar and Lori Richardson ____________________________________________________________________________ I am now in the early stages of writing my first book! In this book, I will be telling my story of getting into sales and the lessons I have learned so far, and intertwine stories, tips, and advice from the Top Sales Professionals In The World! As a first time author, I want to share these interviews with you all, and take you on this book writing journey with me!  Like the show? Subscribe to the email: https://mailchi.mp/a71e58dacffb/welcome-to-the-20-podcast-community I want your feedback! Reach out to 20percentpodcastquestions@gmail.com, or find me on LinkedIn.

Lori Richardson built her entire business around referrals. She believes that referrals are magical. You can work with one person and get multiple sales opportunities from that person. It's so much easier to develop a relationship this way versus focusing on one-off sales. Lori shares the strategies she's learned over the years in this episode of Sales Reinvented! Outline of This Episode [0:55] What are referrals? How do they work?  [1:44] Common mistakes salespeople make asking for referrals [4:15] How to leverage social media to generate referrals [5:56] Using referral-based selling as a sales strategy [7:41] How to measure the success of a referral program  [9:44] How to ask for referrals without being pushy [11:34] Best practices for requesting referrals [13:00] Why you need to have three lists [15:04] Lori's top 3 referral selling dos and don'ts [17:04] Why relationships matter in sales Connect with Lori Richardson  Connect on LinkedIn Follow on Twitter Connect With Paul Watts  LinkedIn Twitter  Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

In this exciting and inspiring episode of The Sales Leadership Show, host Phil Gerbyshak invites Lori Richardson, the powerhouse author of "She Sells" and founder of Score More Sales, to discuss the urgent need for fostering diversity and inclusion in the B2B sales world. As a trailblazer for women and underrepresented sales professionals, Lori shares her insights on how organizations can stay ahead of the curve or risk getting left behind.Dive into this captivating conversation as Lori and Phil explore the current landscape of sales organizations, discussing the significance of amplifying the voices and opportunities for women and underrepresented groups in the industry. Listen as Lori shares her personal journey, from her humble beginnings to her tremendous success, that led her to write the empowering book, "She Sells."Discover Lori's top strategies for sales leaders to create a culture of inclusivity, focusing on mentorship, allyship, and equal opportunities for growth and development. Learn why it's more important than ever for organizations to commit to fostering diverse and inclusive teams and how this can directly impact a company's bottom line.Phil and Lori also discuss the role of emotional intelligence in sales leadership, and how empathetic communication can foster better relationships and drive performance within teams. Gain actionable insights from Lori's vast experience and expertise to help your organization unlock the true potential of a diverse and inclusive salesforce.Don't miss this eye-opening episode of The Sales Leadership Show, as Lori Richardson challenges B2B sales organizations to wake up, take action, and be a part of the change that's long overdue. Whether you lead, manage, or influence a sales team, this engaging and informative conversation is the wake-up call you need to help your organization stay ahead of the curve in fostering diversity and inclusion. ★ Support this podcast ★ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit happyaf.substack.com/subscribe

Sales success is built on understanding others.If you don't know your buyers, you're going to struggle to make the sale. If you can't put yourself in the shoes of your colleagues in marketing, it's going to be impossible to align. And if you can't create a culture of inclusivity on your sales team, you miss out on a range of diverse perspectives that would strengthen your business.In this episode, we speak with Lori Richardson, CEO and Founder of Score More Sales, about her career-long advocacy for inclusivity in sales and what she has learned about building a more empathetic and understanding sales team.We discuss:Why understanding your buyer is the key to differentiating yourself and beating the competitionHow sales and marketing can better understand one another and work towards shared goalsWhat sales leaders need to understand about fostering a culture of inclusivityYou can order Lori's book “She Sells: Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales” here! Be sure to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform!

In this week's Scale Your Sales Podcast episode, my guest is Lori Richardson.   Lori Richardson is a long-time sales strategist and founder of Score More Sales, a leader in B2B sales and sales leadership.   Lori leads Women Sales Pros, a collective of women sales influencers. She is also the host of She Sells summit and the award-winning podcast Conversations with Women in Sales.   Lori is the top sales influencer and author of the book “ She Sells: Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales”.   In this episode, we talk about her book “She Sells,” our ongoing campaign on retaining women in sales, culture, and mindset. Lori shares her views on International Women's day, and we discuss sales strategy and much more.   Welcome to Scale Your Sales Podcast, Lori Richardson.   We discuss: 03:30 - Hidden endemic in sales   06:20 - The She Sells book   10:03 - The evolution of culture   15:30 - Reasons why Women Sales Pros    19:34 - Common denominator of the rich people   20:49 -  How to make your life decisions   22:44 - International Women's Day 2023   24:35 - Scorecard Evaluation   29:40 - Lori's proven and tested strategy to scale sales   https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales/   Janice B Gordon is the award-winning Customer Growth Expert and Scale Your Sales Framework founder. She is by LinkedIn Sales 15 Innovating Sales Influencers to Follow 2021, the Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience Nov 2020 and 150 Women B2B Thought Leaders You Should Follow in 2021. Janice helps companies worldwide to reimagine revenue growth through customer experience and sales.   Book Janice to speak virtually at your next event https://janicebgordon.com       LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janice-b-      Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaniceBGordon     Scale Your Sales Podcast: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast     More on the blog https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/blog      Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janicebgordon     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScaleYourSal    

Who can close more deals—men or women? Statistically, women close more business than men do. But even if women were just as successful  as men…why don't we see a sales force that's at least 50% female? Our guest Lori Richardson, author of She Sells, was one of the first and only women in sales in the tech space. Women listen better, empathize more, and take the time to understand—which makes them great salespeople. Isn't it time we had more women on boards, in CEO positions, and especially in sales leadership?    Our gift to you, the newest Email Prospecting ebook...so many amazing insights! Download it here. 

This is a quick teaser about what is ahead for 2023 on the podcast, Conversations with Women in Sales, as well as with the "women in sales" community. Lori is solo on this one to share some information and perhaps a little inspiration at the end. 

ARE YOU SPORTY ENOUGH FOR SALES?Lori Richardson is back, and she discusses how athletes bring a unique mindset to sales, one that is focused on competition, winning, and improvement. In this episode, Jordan talks to Lori about the intersection of sports and sales. Richardson explains that while many companies assume that athletes make the best salespeople, this is not necessarily the case. What top athletes and top sellers have in common is the mindset piece. They both have the ability to bounce back from a tough week and move forward with supportive beliefs. All these and more, in this latest episode of Peak Performance Selling. PEAK PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS:LORI: THE ATHLETIC MINDSET IN SALES“What top athletes and top sellers have in common is the mindset piece. You know, the idea that if you had a game on Friday night, and you lost, you can't come in to Saturday's game thinking you're gonna lose again, you come into Saturday, fresh, ready to go. Same thing with sales, you know, you had a tough week, last week, great, it's gone, it's over, walk in the door, it's all new.”LORI: LEADERSHIP IS NOT ABOUT YOU, IT'S ABOUT THEM“It's really important that you know, what type of a leader you are, and if it is just for the job, and to help someone do that, then do that really, really well. But learn what servant leadership is so that it's not all about you, it's about them.” You can connect with Lori and check out his work in the links below:Lori Richardson | Score More Sales | ScoreMoreSales.com If you're listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.Jordan Benjamin | MyCoreOs.com | Podcast | Email | Twitter

ARE YOU HIRING WOMEN FOR THE SAKE OF DIVERSITY?In this episode, Lori Richardson discusses what organizations are getting wrong about bringing more women into the sales force. She talks about the importance of making women feel included and welcomed, and how this is key to retaining them in the sales force.Stay tuned as Lori and Jordan also talk about the importance of listening and learning, goal setting in sales, personal accountability, and the She Sells Summit. Find out more in this latest episode of Peak Performance Selling. PEAK PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS:LORI: DIVERSITY IN THE ORGANIZATION“Building inclusive sales teams, it's inclusive in so many ways. It's its age now, its ability wise, there are so many different ways we can add powerful members to our team who have different backgrounds, and we do, and make it a better team and make it reflect who our buyers are, and what our buyers look like and what they think is important. And that's an important point in choosing who to do business with anymore. It's becoming one of those things that people are seriously evaluating.”LORI: TOP PERFORMERS WRITE AND TRACK GOALS“The top salespeople write down goals, they have a process to track them, and a system to incorporate it so that it doesn't mean that if you suddenly write goals, you're going to be a top salesperson. But those are some of the traits that the top sellers and most elite salespeople exhibit.” You can connect with Lori and check out his work in the links below:Lori Richardson | Score More Sales | ScoreMoreSales.com If you're listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.Jordan Benjamin | MyCoreOs.com | Podcast | Email | Twitter

YOU HAVE TO BE PREPARED TO COACH, EAGER TO MANAGE, AND  WILLING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITYIn this episode, Lori Richardson discusses the different qualities of good coaches and sales managers. She explains that the best coaches spend up to 50% of their time coaching and motivating their teams. She also talks about the importance of setting clear goals and objectives and creating a positive and supportive environment. PEAK PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS:LORI: BE WILLING TO LEAD, BE READY TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY“Desire is like one of the top things, you have to be willing to be the leader to manage no matter what, and be committed to it, and to take responsibility, and so you set an example for your reps, so then they take responsibility because that's another really important thing in sales.”JORDAN: IMPORTANCE OF A GROWTH MINDSET“Having a growth mindset and being in sales is just such a great combination because we're dealing with people or human beings in an ever-changing environment.” You can connect with Lori and check out his work in the links below:Lori Richardson | Score More Sales | ScoreMoreSales.com If you're listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.Jordan Benjamin | MyCoreOs.com | Podcast | Email | Twitter

We had so many wonderful episodes this past year. Lori Richardson, podcast host, will share the top  listened to episodes and some of her favorite topics and guests. Plus she puts out a call at the end for everyone to do a hard look at their past year and review, then set some stretch goals and find an accountability partner or team. Lori mentions free tools to download for helping you evaluate 2022 and to kickstart 2023. You can reach out to her if you don't know how to reach the ones she's referring to. lori AT womensalespros DOT com.  IF YOU LIKE THE PODCAST, we ask that you go to iTunes, log in, download an episode or two and then give us a FIVE STAR rating - and then give us a review. It will go a long way and it matters if you have 100 reviews or if you have 20. Thank you in advance. 

IT'S TIME FOR SOME GIRL POWER!In today's episode, Lori Richardson talks about her work helping companies with sales transformation through data and best practices. She also discusses her passion for teaching HR and sales leaders how to hire top sales talent. Finally, she shares her thoughts on the career of selling, and how it can be a lucrative and flexible profession, especially for women. PEAK PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS:LORI: DATA, DATA EVERYWHERE“What's so nice today is that we have so much data, we have so many different ways we can collect data.”LORI: ESTABLISH A COMMON COMMUNICATION“One of the biggest things anyone can do that's listening is to work on common terminology among their team, and if they simply started to do things like that, that would be a really great step.” You can connect with Lori and check out his work in the links below:Lori Richardson | Score More Sales | ScoreMoreSales.com If you're listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.Jordan Benjamin | MyCoreOs.com | Podcast | Email | Twitter

Today's guest is a champion for women in sales. She has spent her career helping Fortune 500, midsize, and SaaS-based companies grow repeatable revenue, hire better, and improve sales culture to one that is inclusive and healthy. She helps fix sales team issues as a master connector. She is the founder of three brands created to improve B2B sales culture - Score More Sales, Women Sales Pros, and the She Sells Summit. She is the author of “She Sells: Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales” and host of the Conversations with Women in Sales podcast. Please join me in welcoming Lori Richardson. In this episode we discuss: her thoughts on leadership: “Leadership is paving the trail. It's knowing who you are and what you stand for even when you're uncomfortable with the title.” Lori's initial goals of wanting to be a teacher and her very early entrepreneurial endeavors like having a lemonade stand and selling girl scout cookies. her experience teaching two-year-olds and having to pivot to technology sales in order to support her family. the skills she learned from watching her grandmother sell clothes to people at a young age and how that coupled with her sales experience in selling cookies. the experience of joining a company as the first woman in field sales and being passed over multiple times for promotions. turning her former employer into her first client after she was forced out due to downsizing. her first company ‘Smile and Dial Revenue Generation Services” and why she changed the name to ‘Score More Sales.' how she widened the scope of her mission and reach with the murder of George Floyd and the pandemic. the importance and her passion for people not only talking about inclusion and equity but taking action to be more inclusive and equitable. how Lori stays in touch with her network. Listen, subscribe and read show notes at www.OnTheSchmooze.com

This is episode 558. This show is sponsored by Cox Business. Learn more about opportunities at Cox here. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Tips for sales career success. LORI'S TIP: "Whether you're a seller or a manager or a sales executive, the biggest thing right now that is important is mindset. We need to understand that in good times and down times, there's always selling going on. Why not your products and your services? Why not your company? Why not you? Focus on mindset and just dive into it like it's the best topic you've ever researched and become a researcher on mindset. If you did just that one thing, revenues would go up."

Research proves women outperform men in B2B sales. So, where are the women? My guest today is someone I have so much respect for in the sales community and she's on a mission to empower more women to get into sales and sales leadership. After 15 years in B2B selling and sales leadership, when not running sales consultancy Score More Sales, Lori heads Women Sales Pros, a community showcasing top women in sales. She created The She Sells Summit to bring more than a dozen women in sales groups together for bi-annual virtual events, and she hosts the award-winning Conversations with Women in Sales podcast. A top sales thought leader and sought after national speaker, Lori is also the author of the book, “She Sells - Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales”.  She clearly belongs here in the She Sells community because we have that She Sells in common. Enjoy this conversation!   Show Notes: [3:02] - Lori shares her background and her journey into sales. [5:00] - From an early age, Lori saw her grandmother stand up to the opinion of men. [6:18] - Lori was lucky that in her first tech sales job, there were other women on the sales team and the environment was great. The next company however was different. [9:10] - In this company, Lori didn't back down and showed her talent. [10:29] - In the end, it's okay if someone doesn't buy from you, but they need to know what you offer. [12:32] - Lori explains why and how she shifted into B2B sales. [14:44] - We've lost 8-10% of the women in sales which is a surprising statistic. [16:24] - There is still very much of a “bro” culture in sales that makes a lot of women feel uncomfortable. [17:47] - We need to have more women in sales and leadership but we also need a culture and environment that empowers everyone. [19:15] - The solution is to have more women in executive leadership. [21:04] - Lori shares the story of a male leader who consistently asks for feedback from the women on his team. [22:29] - Look for things that are different, not just the same old thing. [23:56] - Women are more likely to apply for a position somewhere only if they meet all the requirements. Men apply for jobs anyway. [26:02] - Everything goes back to building relationships. [28:08] - Lori explains supportive and unsupportive beliefs. [29:40] - We say mean things to ourselves in our own head that we would never say to someone else. [31:36] - These thoughts carry more judgment than other negative thinking. Does your belief support your goal? [32:30] - She Sells - Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales is a book coming out very soon. Lori describes the book and who it is for.   Connect with Lori: Website  |  Twitter  |  LinkedIn  |  Podcast   Links and Resources: Instagram  |  LinkedIn  |  YouTube She Sells with Elyse Archer Home Page

Lori Richardson is the Founder and CEO of Score More Sales, a sales strategy firm helping mid-sized technology, distribution, and service companies grow front-line revenues in quick and focused ways. She is also the President of Women Sales Pros, a community of women supporting women in B2B sales and sales leadership. Lori is a sales influencer according to LinkedIn, Salesforce, and other organizations. She is the author of "She Sells - Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales". Lori also hosts the award-winning podcast "Conversations with Women in Sales" and is the creator of the She Sells Summit. Join us as we discuss the state of women in professional sales today, as well as what sales leaders and hiring managers can do to encourage more women to apply for roles. Highlights Who David Fauser is How to create an environment that is psychologically safe so people can feel comfortable working there, but also feels challenged How Lori started in professional sales The state of women in professional sales today What the experience is of teaching MBA students Why women are the future of B2B sales What resources to use to understand the art of women in professional sales Lori's book writing process The challenges in professional sales Which part of professional sales confuses Mark What the difference is between a trained salesperson versus somebody who's just learning night and day Episode Resources Connect with Mark Cox https://www.inthefunnel.com/ https://ca.linkedin.com/in/markandrewcox https://www.facebook.com/inthefunnel markcox@inthefunnel.com Connect with Lori Richardson https://womensalespros.com/ https://shesellssummit.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales 

Guest: Lori Richardson, Founder & CEO of Score More Sales, President of Women Sales Pros Guest Bio: Lori Richardson is a sales strategist helping leaders at midsized companies hire better sellers and evaluate the true potential of their existing sales team. In 2915 Lori started Women Sales Pros - a community to inspire more women into sales and sales leadership. Lori is the author of She Sells and is the host of the award-winning podcast, Conversations with Women in Sales.   Guest Links: https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ ScoreMoreSales - More of What Works, Now Women Sales Pros to Hire and Retain More Women in B2B Business   Books: SHE SELLS: Attract, Promote About Salesology®: Conversations with Sales Leaders Download your free gift, The Salesology® Vault. The vault is packed full of free gifts from sales leaders, sales experts, marketing gurus and revenue generation experts.  Download your free gift, 81 Tools to Grow Your Sales & Your Business Faster, More Easily & More Profitably. Save hours of work tracking down the right prospecting and sales resources and/or digital tools that every business owner and salesperson needs. Watch the demo of the Salesology® Prospecting Method, A Simple, 3-Step Method That, On Average, Increases Qualified Appointments & Sales By 73%. If you are a business owner or sales manager with an under-performing sales team, let's talk. Click here to schedule a time. Please, subscribe to Salesology®: Conversations with Sales Leaders so that you don't miss a single episode, and while you're at it, won't you take a moment to write a short review and rate our show? It would be greatly appreciated! To learn more about our previous guests, listen to past episodes, and get to know your host, go to https://podcast.gosalesology.com/ and connect on LinkedIn and follow us on Facebook and Twitter and checkout our website at http://www.gosalesology.com

Sales influencer, keynote speaker, strategist, and author Lori Richardson runs the sales strategy firm Score More Sales, which helps company leaders in SaaS, tech, telecom, manufacturing, distribution, financial services and professional services solve sales issues and grow revenue. Lori founded Score More Sales in 2002 to help companies grow revenues through strategic sales efforts, using lessons learned from 20 years in B2B sales and leadership roles. Lori is the author of “She Sells,” written to help company executives and sales leaders find, recruit, retain, and promote more women into sales and leadership roles. She hosts the award-winning podcast, “Conversations with Women in Sales,” and is an expert worldwide on creating inclusive sales teams. Lori also is President of Women Sales Pros and the creator of the She Sells Summit.   Show Notes https://www.scoremoresales.com/ https://twitter.com/scoremoresales https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales/ https://womensalespros.com/ https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/sales-secret-book/

This is episode 543. Tips for sales career success. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Purchase the new best-seller Insight for Sales Game Changers now! THILAGA's TIP FOR WOMEN IN SALES: Listen to more podcasts related to women in sales. There are a lot of women in sales forum available, including Sales Game Changers from the Institute for Excellence in Sales (this one), and Girls Who Sell, and my podcast, Sell Like Her. There are a lot of women in sales podcast. Lori Richardson's, I have to mention, Conversations with Women in Sales. If you listen all this, you start getting the confidence by listening other women stories who have been succeeded in sales. That gives you confidence and courage. Also with this kind of podcast, you get a lot of knowledge related to sales skills as well. I think that's something, if you immediately implement, that give you a boost to enter or grow in sales.    

On this episode of the RRH, we've got the wo-man, the myth, the legend Lori Richardson. And together we unravel fact from fiction on the gender gap in tech sales and tech sales leadership. And what to do about it.  Topics Discussed:  Problem statement (5:18) Is the gender gap in tech sales really a “women's problem”? Really?! (10:10) What does *real* male allyship look like, sound like, and act like? (14:00) What can male individual contributors do to to drive progress en route to leadership roles? (17:50)   Resources Mentioned:  https://www.saleshacker.com/mental-health-sales-advantage/ (The Greatest Advantage You'll Ever Know: Mental Health) (3:57) https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Your-Problem-Toughest-Problems/dp/1633697223 (What's Your Problem) To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve (7:54) https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/0807047414 (White Fragility) Why It's So Hard for White People To Talk About Race (12:11) For more Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scoremoresales/ (Lori Richardson on LinkedIn) https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ (Women Sales Pros) https://shesellssummit.com/ (She Sells Summit) For more Amy:  Connect with Amy on https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyhrehovcik/ (LinkedIn) Connect with Amy on https://twitter.com/amy_hrehovcik (Twitter) http://revenuereal.com (Join the Conversation)

It's 2022 — why is there still a gender gap in sales? Studies definitively show diverse sales teams generate more revenue. So... what's the hold up? My guest today is Lori Richardson, the Founder of Score More Sales and a passionate champion for #WomenInSales. She's an author, in-demand speaker, and one of the most popular sales coaches at Harvard Business School. Lori also serves on the advisory board of the Sales Education Foundation, where she seeks to destroy old misconceptions about our industry. Sales is a helping profession. This is backed up by the fact that during the pandemic, many women had to leave the field to stay closer to home or become full-time caregivers. Remote work has increased the accessibility of sales roles, but Lori still encounters all-male teams all the time. But women are the majority of undergraduates now. Many companies haven't yet realized that female sales pros bring a lot to the table, such as empathy, coachability, and a deep motivation to succeed. Lori believes diversity builds strength, which leads to higher revenues. Customers want to buy from brands that reflect their beliefs and values — and companies lagging behind the times will be on their way out. Check out the full episode

In this episode of the Sales Secrets podcast, Brandon talks to revenue growth strategist Lori Richardson. Lori gives out her top sales secret, which is understanding that sales is a craft that can be mastered over time. If you keep at it every day, and with enough determination, passion, commitment, and effort, anybody can achieve the level of success that they desire. SUBSCRIBE TO SALES SECRETS PODCASTITUNES ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/s...​SPOTIFY ► https://open.spotify.com/show/1BKYsQo...​YOUTUBE ► https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVUh...​THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY SEAMLESS.AI - THE WORLD'S BEST SALES LEADSWEBSITE ► https://www.seamless.ai/LINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/seamlessai/JOIN FOR FREE TODAY ► https://login.seamless.ai/invite/podcastSHOW DESCRIPTIONBrandon Bornancin is a serial salesperson, entrepreneur, and founder of Seamless.AI. Twice a week, Brandon interviews the world's top sales experts like Jill Konrath, Aaron Ross, John Barrows, Trish Bertuzzi, Mark Hunter, Anthony Iannarino, and many more -- to uncover actionable strategies, playbooks, tips, and insights you can use to generate more revenue and close more business. If you want to learn the most powerful sales secrets from the top sales experts in the world, Sales Secrets From The Top 1% is the place to find them.SALES SECRET FROM THE TOP 1%WEBSITE ► https://www.secretsalesbook.com/LINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/sales-secret-book/ABOUT BRANDONBrandon Bornancin is a serial salesperson (over $100M in sales deals), multi-million dollar sales tech entrepreneur, motivational sales speaker, international sales DJ (DJ NoQ5), and sales author who is obsessed with helping you maximize your sales success.Mr. Bornancin is currently the CEO & Founder at Seamless.AI delivering the world's best sales leads. Over 10,000+ companies use Seamless.ai to generate millions in sales at companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Slack, Dell, Oracle & many others.Mr. Bornancin is also the author of "Sales Secrets From The Top 1%" where the world's best sales experts share their secrets to sales success and author of “The Ultimate Guide To Overcoming Sales Objections.”FOLLOW BRANDONLINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbornancin/INSTAGRAM ► https://www.instagram.com/brandonbornancinofficial/FACEBOOK ► https://www.facebook.com/SeamlessAITWITTER ► https://twitter.com/BBornancin

About AshleighAshleigh Early is a passionate advocate for sales people and through her consulting, coaching, and The Other Side of Sales, she is devoted to making B2B sales culture more inclusive so anyone can thrive. Over the past ten years Ashleigh has led, built, re-built, and consulted for 2 unicorns, 3 acquisitions, 1 abject failure and every step in between.  She is also the Head of Sales at the Duckbill Group! You can find Ashleigh on Twitter @AshleighatWork and more about the Other Side of Sales at Othersideofsales.comLinks: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashleighatwork LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleighearly TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. 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That's min.io/download, and be sure to tell them that I sent you.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today does something that I, sort of, dabbled around the fringes of once upon a time, but then realized I wasn't particularly good at it and got the hell out of it and went screaming into clouds instead. Ashleigh Early is the Head of Sales here at The Duckbill Group. Ashleigh, thank you for joining me.Ashleigh: Thanks for coming on and running, screaming from my chosen profession [laugh]. You're definitely not the only one.Corey: Well, let's be clear here; there are two ways that can go because sure, I used to dabble around in sales when I was, basically, trying to figure how to not starve to death. But I also used to run things; it's basically a smart team. I was managing people and realized I was bad at that, too. So, really, that's, sort of, an open-ended direction. We can go either side and…But, let's go with sales. That seems like a more interesting way for this to play out. So, you've been here for—what is it now—it feels like ages, but my awareness for the passing of time in the middle of a global panini is relatively not great.Ashleigh: Yeah. I think we're at day—what is it—1,053 of March 2020? So, time is irrelevant; it's a construct; I don't know. But, technically, by the Gregorian Calendar, I think I'm at six months.Corey: It's very odd to me, at least the way that I contextualized doing this. Back when I started what became The Duckbill Group, I was an independent consultant. It was, more or less, working people I knew through my network who had a very specific, very expensive problem: The AWS bill is too high. And I figured, this is genius. It is the easiest possible sale in the world and one of the only scenarios where I can provably demonstrate ROI to a point where, “Bring me in; you will inherently save money.”And all of that is true, but one of things I learned very quickly was that, even with the easiest sale of, “Hi. I'd like to sell you this bag of money,” there is no such thing as an easy enterprise sale. There is nuance to it. There is a lot of difficulty to it. And I was left with the, I guess, driving question—after my first few months of playing this game—of, “How on earth does anyone make money in this space?”The reason I persisted was, basically, a bunch of people did favors for me, but they didn't owe me at all. It was, “Oh, great. I'll give them the price quote.” And they're, like, “Oh, yeah.” So cool, they turned around and quoted that to their boss at triple the rate because, “Don't slit your own throat on this.” They were right. And not for nothing, it turns out when you're selling advice, charging more for it makes it likelier to succeed as a project.But, I had no idea what I was doing. And, like most engineers on Twitter, I look at something I don't understand deeply myself, and figure, “Oh. Well, it's not engineering, therefore, it's easy.” Yeah, it turns out that running a business is humbling across a whole bunch of different axes.Ashleigh: I wouldn't even say, it's not running a business; it's working with humans. Working with humans is humbling. If you're working with a machine or even something as simple as, like, you know, you're making a product. It's follow a recipe; it's okay. Follow the instructions. I do A, then B, then C, then D, unless you don't enjoy using the instructions because you don't enjoy using instructions. But you still follow a set general process; you build a thing that comes out correctly.The moment that process is, talk to this person, and then Person A, then Person B, then Person C, then Person D, then Back to Person A, then Person D, and then finally to Person E, everything goes to heck in a handbasket. That's what really makes it interesting. And for those of us who are of a certain disposition, we find that fascinating and enthralling. If you're of another disposition, that's hell on earth [laugh]. So, it's a very—yeah, it's a very interesting thing.Corey: Back when I was independent, and people tried to sell me things—and yeah, sometimes it worked. It was always interesting going through various intake funnels and the rest. And, like, “Well, what role do you hold in the organization? Do you influence the decision? Do you make the decision? How many people need to be involved in the rest?”And I was looking around going, “How many people do you think fit in my home office here? Let's be serious.” I mean, there are times I escalated to the Chihuahua because she's unpleasant and annoying and basically, sometimes so are people. But that's a separate topic for later. But it became a very different story back as the organizational distance between the people that needed to sign off on a sale increased.Ashleigh: Mm-hm. Absolutely. And you might have felt me squirm when you described those questions because one of my biggest pet peeves is when people take sales terminology and directly use that with clients. Just like if you're an engineer and you're describing what you do, you're not going to go home and explain to your dad in technical jargon what exactly; you're going to tell him broad strokes. And if they're interested, go deeper and deeper; technical, more technical.I hate when salespeople use sales jargon, like, “What's your role in the organization? Are you the decision-maker?” Don't—mmm. There are better ways to deal with that. So, that's just a sign of poor training. It's not the sales rep's fault; it's his company's fault—their company's fault. But that's a different thing.It's fascinating to me, kind of, watching this—what you said spoke of two things there. One is poor training, and two, of a lack of awareness of the situation and a lack of just doing a little bit of pre-work. Like, you do five seconds of research on Corey Quinn, you can realize that the company is ten to 15 people tops. So, it makes sense to ask a question around, “Hey, do you need anyone else to sign off before we can move forward with this project?”That tells me if I need to get someone for technical, for budget, for whatever, but asking if you're a decision-maker, or if you're influencing, or if you're doing initial research, like, that's using sales terminology, not actually getting to the root of the problem and immediately making it very clear, you didn't do any actual research in advance, which is not—in modern selling—not okay.Corey: My business partner, Mike, has a CEO job title, and he'll get a whole bunch of cold outreach constantly all day, every day. I conducted a two-week experiment where in front of my Chief Cloud Economist job title, I put ‘CTO/' just to see what would happen, and sure enough, I started getting outreach left, right, up, down, and sideways. Not just for things that a CTO figure might theoretically wind up needing to buy, but also, job opportunities for a skill set that I haven't dusted off in a decade.So, okay. Once people can have something that hits their filters when you're searching for very specific titles, then you wind up getting a lot more outreach. But if you create a job title that no one sensible would ever pick for themselves, suddenly a lot of that tends to go by the wayside. It shined a light on how frustratingly dreary a lot of the sales prospecting work really can be from—Ashleigh: Oh, yeah.Corey: —just from the side of someone who gets it. Now, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I did work in sales once upon a time. Not great at it, but one of the first white-collar-style jobs that I had was telemarketing, of all things. And I was spectacular at it because I was fortunate enough to be working on a co-branded affinity credit card that was great, and I had the opportunity to position it as a benefit of an existing membership or something else people already had. I was consistently top-ten out of 400 people on a shift, and it was great.But it was also something that was very time-limited, and if you're having an off day, everything winds up crumbling. And, eventually, I drifted off and started doing different things. But I've never forgotten those days. And that's why it just grinds my gears both to see crappy sales stuff happening, and two, watching people on Twitter—particularly—taking various sales-prospect outreach for a drag. And it's—Ashleigh: Oh, God. Yeah.Corey: —you know, not everyone is swimming in the ocean of privilege that some of the rest of us are. And understand that you're just making yourself look like a jerk when you're talking to someone who is relatively early-career and didn't happen to google you deeply enough before sending you an email that you find insulting. That bugs me a fair bit.Ashleigh: And I think part of that is just a lack of humanity and understanding. Like, there's—I mean, I get it; I'm the first person to be jumping on Twitter and [unintelligible 00:08:41] when something goes down, or something's not working, and saying, you know—I'm the first one to get angry and start complaining. Don't get me wrong. However, what I think a lot of people—it's really easy to dehumanize something you don't see very often, or you're not involved in directly. And I find it real interesting you mentioned you worked in, you know, doing telemarketing.I lasted literally two weeks in telemarketing. I full-on rage-quit. It was a college job. I worked in my college donations center. I lasted two weeks, and I fully walked out on a shift. I was, like, “Screw this; I'm never doing anything like that ever again. I hate this.”But what I hated about it was I hated the lack of connection. I was, like, I'm not just going to read some scripts and get yelled at for having too much banter. Like, I'm getting money; what do you care? I'm getting more money than other people. Maybe they're not making as many calls, but I'm getting just as much, so why do you care how I do this?But what really gets me is you have to remember—and I think a lot of people don't understand how, kind of, most large, modern sales organizations work. And just really quickly giving you a very, very generic explanation, the way a lot of organizations work is they employ something called SDRs or Sales Development Reps. That title can be permeated in a million different ways. There's ADRs, MDRs, BDRs, whatever. But basically, it's their job to do nothing but scour the internet using, sometimes, actual, like, scripts.Sometimes they use LinkedIn; sometimes they have—they purchase databases. So, for example, like, you might change your title on LinkedIn, but it's not changing in the database. Just trust me Corey, they have you flagged as a CTO. Sorry. What [crosstalk 00:10:16].Corey: My personal favorite is when I get cold outreach asking me on the phone call about whether we have any needs for whatever it is they happen to be selling at—and then they name a company that I left in 2012. I don't know how often that database has been sold and resold and sold onwards, yet again. And it's just, I work in tech. What do you think the odds are that I'm still in the same job I was ten years ago? And I get that it happens, but at some point, it just becomes almost laughable.Ashleigh: Yeah. If you work in a company—that when in doubt—I tell every sales, kind of, every company team that I work with—do not use those vendors. Ninety percent of them are not very good; they're using old databases; they don't update. You're better off paying for a database that is subscription-based because then, literally, you've got an SLA on data quality, and you can flag and get things fixed. The number one sales-data provider, I happen to know for a fact, I actually earned, I think, almost $10,000 in donations to a charity in—what was this—this was 2015 because I went through and did a scrub of are RCRM versus I think, LinkedIn or something else, and I flagged everything that wasn't accurate and sent it back to them.And they happened to have a promotion where for every—where you could do a flag that wasn't accurate because they were no longer at the company. They would donate a buck to charity, and I think I sent them, like, 10,000 or something. [unintelligible 00:11:36] I was like, “None of these are accurate.” And they're, like, you know? And they sent me this great email, like, “Thank you for telling us; we really appreciate it.”I didn't even know they were doing this promotion. They thought I'd be saving up for it. And I was, like, “No, I just happened to run this analysis and thought you'd want to know.” So, subscriptions—Corey: You know, it turns out computers are really fast at things.Ashleigh: Yeah, and I was very proud I figured out how to run a script. I was, like, “Yay. Look at me; I wrote a macro.” This was very exciting for—the first—God, the first five or so years of my sales career, I've consistently called myself a dumb salesperson because I was working in really super-technical products. I worked for Arista Networks, FireEye, Bromium, you know, PernixData. I was working in some pretty reasonably hard tech, and I'd always, kind of, introduced myself, I definitely talked about my technical aptitude because I have a degree in political science and opera. These are not technical fields, and yet here I am every day, talking about, you know, tech [crosstalk 00:12:25].Corey: Well, if the election doesn't pan out the way you want, why don't you sing about it? Why not? You can tie all these things together.Ashleigh: You can. And, honestly, there have several points—I've done a whole other shows on, like, how those two, seemingly, completely disparate things have actually been some of the greatest gifts to my career. And most notably, I think, is the fact that I have my degree in political science as a Bachelor of Science, which means I have a BS in BS, which is incredibly relevant to my career in a lot of different ways.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. 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Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Ashleigh: Yeah, so wrapping up, kind of, how modern-skills organizations work, most companies' employees can be called BDRs, and they're typically people who have less than five years of sales experience. They, rightly or wrongly, tend to be people in their early-20s who have very little training. Most people get SDRs on phones within a week, which means—Corey: These are the people that are doing the cold outreach?Ashleigh: —they've gotten maybe five or six hours of product training. Hmm? Sorry.Corey: These are the people who are doing the cold outreach?Ashleigh: These are the people who are doing the cold outreach. So, their whole job is just to get appointments for account execs. Account execs make it—again; tons of different names, but these are the closers. They'll run you through the sales cycle. They typically have between five and thirty years of experience.But they're the ones depending on how big your company is. [unintelligible 00:13:35] the bigger your company, typically the more experience your sales rep's going to have in terms of managing most separate deal cycles. But what ends up happening is you end up with this SDR organization—this is where I've spent most of my career is helping people build healthy sales-development organizations. In terms of this churn-and-burn culture where you've got people coming in and basically flaming out because they go on Twitter or—heaven forbid—Reddit and get sales advice from these loud-mouthed, terrible people, who are telling them to do things that didn't work ten years ago, but they then go try it; they send it out, and then their prospects suddenly blasting them on Twitter.It's not that rep's fault that they got no training in the first place, they got no support, they just had to figure it out because that's the culture. It's the company's fault. And a lot of times, people don't—there was a big push against this last year, I think, within the sales community against other sales leaders doing it, but now, it's starting to spread out. Like, I have no problem dragging someone for a really terrible email. Anonymize the company; anonymize the email. And, if you want to give feedback, give it to them directly. And you can also say, “I'm going to post this, but it's not coming back to you.” And tell them, like—Corey: Whenever I get outreach from—Ashleigh: “Get out of that terrible company.”Corey: Yeah. Whenever I get outreach from AWS for a sales motion or for recruiting or whatnot. I always anonymize the heck out of the rep. It's funny to me because it's, “Don't you know who I am?” It is humorous, on some level. And it's clear that is a numbers game, and they're trying to do a bunch of different things, but a cursory google of my name would show it. It's just amusing.I want to be clear that whenever I do that, I don't think the rep has done anything wrong. They're doing exactly what they should. I just find it very funny that, “Wait, me? Work at an AWS? The bookstore?” It seems like it would be a—yeah. Yeah, the juxtaposition is just hilarious to me. They've done nothing wrong, and that's okay. It's a hard racket.I remember—at least they have the benefit over my first enterprise sales job where I was selling tape drives into the AS/400 market, competing against IBM on price. That was in the days of “No one ever gets fired for buying IBMs.” So, yeah. The place you want to save money on is definitely the backup system that's going to save all of your systems. I made one sale in my time there—and apparently set a company record because it wasn't specifically aimed at the AS/400—and I did the math on that and realized, “Huh, I'd have to do two of these a month in order to beat the draw against commission structure that they had.”So, I said, “To hell with this,” and I quit. The CEO was very much a sales pro, and, “Well, you need to figure out whether you're a salesperson or not.” Even back then, I had an attitude problem, but it was, “Yeah, I think that—oh, I know that I am. It's just a question is am I going to be a salesperson here?” And the answer is, “No.” It [laugh]—Ashleigh: Yeah.Corey: It's a two-way street.Ashleigh: It is. And I say this all the time to people who—I work with a lot of salespeople now who are, like, “I don't think sales is for me. I don't know, I need [unintelligible 00:16:24]. The past three companies didn't work.” The answer isn't, “Is sales for you?”The answer is, “Are you selling the right thing at the right place?” And one of the things we've learned from the ‘Great Recession' and the ‘Great Reshuffling' in everything is there's no reason to stay at a terrible company, and there's no reason to stay at a company where you're not really passionate and understand what you're selling. I joked about, you know, I talked down about myself for the first bit of my career. Doesn't mean I didn't—like, I might not understand exactly how heuristics work, but I understand what heuristics are. Just don't ask me to design any of them.You know, like, you have to understand and you have to be really excited about it. And that's what modern sales is. And so, yes, you're going to get a ton of the outreach because that's how people—it still works. That's why we all still get Nigerian prince emails. Somebody, somewhere, still clicks those things, sadly. And that gets me really angry.Corey: It's a pure numbers game.Ashleigh: Exactly. Ninety percent if enterprise B2B sales is not that anymore. Even the companies that are using BDRs—which is most of them—are now moving to what's called ‘account-based selling'. We're using hyper-personalized messaging. You're probably noticing videos are popping up more.I'm a huge fan of video. I think it's a great way to force personalization. It's, like, “Hi. Corey, I see you. I'm talking to you. I've done my research. I know what you're doing at The Duckbill Group and here's how I think we can help. If that's not the case, no worries. Let me know; I'll leave you alone.” That's what selling should be.Corey: I have yet to receive one of those, but I'm sure it'll happen now that I've mentioned that and put that out into the universe.Ashleigh: Probably.Corey: What always drove me nuts—and maybe this is unfair—but when I'm trying to use a product, probably something SaaS-based—and I see this a lot—where, first, if you aren't letting me self-serve and get off with the free tier and just start testing something, well, that's already a ding against you because usually I'm figuring this out at 2 o'clock in the morning when I can't sleep, and I want to work on something. I don't want to wait for a sales cycle, and I have to slow things down. Cool. But at some point, for sophisticated customers, you absolutely need to have a sales conversation. But, okay, great. Usually, I encounter this more with lead magnets or other things designed to get my contact info.But what drives me up a wall, when they start demanding information that is very clearly trying to classify me in their sales funnel, on some level. I'll give you my name, my company, and my work email address—although I would think that from my work email address, you could probably figure out where I work and the rest—but then there are other questions. How big is your company? What is your functional role within the company? And where are you geographically?Well, that's an interesting question. Why does that matter in 2022? Well, very often leads get circulated out to people based upon geography. And I get it, but it also frustrates me, just because I don't want to have to deal with classifying and sorting myself out for what is going to be a very brief conversation [laugh] with a salesperson. Because if the product works, great, I'm going to buy. If it doesn't work, I'm going to get frustrated and not want to hear from you forever.Which gets to my big question for you—and please don't take the question as anything other than the joking spirit in which it's intended—but why are so many salespeople profoundly annoying?Ashleigh: I would—uh, hmm.Corey: Sales processes is probably the better way to frame it because—Ashleigh: I was going to say, “Yeah, it's not the people; it's the process.” So—Corey: —it's not the individual's fault, as we've talked about it.Ashleigh: —yeah, I was going to say, I was, like, “Okay, I think it's less the people; more of the processes.” And processes that will make [crosstalk 00:19:37]—Corey: Yeah. It expresses itself as the same person showing up again and again. But that is not—Ashleigh: Totally.Corey: —their fault. That is the process by which they are being measured at as a part of their job. And it's unfair to blame them for that. But the expression is, “This person's annoying the hell out of me, what gives?”Ashleigh: “Oh, my gosh. Why does she keep [unintelligible 00:19:51] my inbox? Leave me alone. Just let me freaking test it.” I said, “I needed two weeks. Just let me have the two weeks to freaking test the thing. I will get back to you.” [unintelligible 00:19:58] yeah, no, I know.And even since moving into leadership several years ago, same thing. I'm like, “Okay, no.” I've gotten to the point where I've had several conversations with salespeople. I'm like, “I know the game. I know what you're trying to do. I respect it. Leave me alone. I promise I will get back to you, just lea”—I have literally said this to people. And the weird thing is most salespeople respect that. We really respect the transparency on that.Now, the trick is what you're talking about with lead capture and stuff like this, again, it comes down to company's design and it comes down to companies who value the buyer experience and customer journey, and companies who don't. And this, I think, is actually more driven by—in my humble opinion—our slightly over-reliance on venture capital, which is all about for a gathering of as much data as possible, figuring out how to monetize it, and move from there. In their mind, personal experience and emotion doesn't really factor into that equation very much, so you end up with these buyer journeys that are less about the buyer and more about getting them from click to purchase as efficiently as possible in terms of company resources, which includes salespeople time. So, as to why you have to fill out all those things, that just to me reeks of a company that maybe doesn't really understand the client experience and probably is going to have a pretty, mmm, support program as well, which means the product had better be really freaking good for me to buy it.Corey: To be clear, at The Duckbill Group, we do not have a two-in-the-morning click here and get you onboarded. Turns out that we have yet to really see the value in building a shopping cart system, where you can buy, “One consulting please,” and call it good. We're not quite at the level of productizing our offering yet and having conversations is a necessary part of what we do. But that also aligns with our customer expectation where there is not a general expectation in this industry that you can buy a full-on bespoke consulting engagement without talking to a human being. That, honestly, if someone trying to sell someone such a thing, I would be terrified.Ashleigh: Yeah, run screaming. Good Lord. No, exactly. And that's one of the reasons I love working with this team and I love this problem is because this isn't a quick, you know, download, install, and save, you know, save ten percent on your AWS bill by installing Duckbill Group. It ain't that simple. If it were that simple, like, AWS wouldn't have the market cap it does.So, that's one of the things I love. I love really meaty problems that don't have clean answers, and specifically have answers that look slightly different for everybody. I love those sort of problems. I've done the highly prioritized stuff: Click here, buy, get it on the free tier, and then it's all about up-sale, cross-sale as needed. Been there, done that; that's fun, and that's a whole different bucket of challenges, but what we're dealing with every single day on the consulting's of The Duckbill Group is far more nuanced and far more exciting because we're also seeing some truly incredible architecture designs. Like, companies who are really on the bleeding edge of what they're doing. And it's just really fun—Corey: Cost and architecture are the same thing in the Cloud.Ashleigh: —[crosstalk 00:22:59] that little—Corey: It's a blast to see it.Ashleigh: It's so much fun. It's, it's, it's… the world's best jigsaw puzzle because it covers, like, every single continent and all these different nuances, and you got to think about a ‘ephemerality,' which is my new favorite word. So…Corey: It's fun because you are building a sales team here, which opens up a few interesting avenues for me. For one, I don't have to manage and yell at individual salespeople in the same way. For example, we talk about it being a process and not a person thing. We're launching some outbound sales work and basically, having the person to talk to about that process—namely you—means that I don't need to be hovering over people's shoulders the way I felt that I once did, as far as what are we sending people? These passive-aggressive drip campaigns of, “Clearly, you don't mind lighting money on fire. If that changes, please let me know.”It's email eight in a sequence. It's no. This stuff has an implicit ‘Love, Mike and Corey' at the bottom of everything that comes out of this company, and it represents us on some respect. And let's be clear, we have a savvy, sophisticated, and more-attractive-than-the-average audience listening to all of these shows. And they'll eat me alive if we start doing stuff like that—Ashleigh: Oh, yeah.Corey: —not to mention that I find it not particularly respectful of their time and who they are. It doesn't work, so we have to be very conscious of that. The fact that I never had to explain that concept in any depth to you made bringing you in one of the easiest decisions we've ever made.Ashleigh: Well, I think it helped—I think in one of my interviews I went off on the ‘alligator email,' which is this infamous email we've all gotten, which is basically, like, you know, “Hi. I haven't heard from you yet, so I want to know which one of these three scenarios has happened to you. One, you're not interested in my product but didn't have the balls to email me and say that you're not interested. Two, you're no longer in this position, in which case, you're not going to read this email anyway. Or three, you're being chased by an alligator, and I should call animal control because you need help.” This email was—Corey: He, he, he, hilarious.Ashleigh: Ugh. And there's variations of it. And I've seen variations of it that are very well done and are on brand and work with the company. I've seen variations that could be legitimately, I think, great humor. And that's great.Humor in emails and humor in sales is fantastic. I have to shout out my friend, Jon Selig up in Canada, who actually, literally, does workshops on how sales teams can integrate humor into their prospecting. It's freaking brilliant. But—Corey: Near and dear to my heart.Ashleigh: —if you're not actually trained in that stuff, don't do it. Don't do the alligator email. But I think I went off on that during one of our interviews just because I was just sick of seeing these things. And what kills me, again, it comes back to the beginning, is people who have no training, no experience coming in—I mean, it really kills me, too, because there's a real concerted effort in the sales community to get more diverse people into sales to, kind of, kill the sales bro just by washing them out, basically. And so, we're recruiting hard with veterans, with black and other racial minority groups, LGBTQ communities, all sorts of things, and indigenous peoples.And so, we're bringing people that also are maybe a little bit more mature, a little bit older, have families they're supporting, and we're throwing them in a role with no support and very little training. And then they wash out, and we wonder why. It's, like, well, maybe because you didn't—it's, like, when I explain this to other people who aren't in sales, like, “Really, imagine coming in to being hired for a coding job, being told you're going to be trained on, you know, Ruby on Rails or C# or whatever it is we're currently using”—my reference is probably super outdated—but then, being given a book, and that's it. And told, “Learn it. And by the way, your first project is due in a month.” That's what we're doing in sales—Corey: For a lot of folks, that's how we learned in the engineering spaces, but let's be clear, the people who do well in that, generally have tailwinds of privilege at their back. They don't have headwinds of, “You suck at this.” It was, you're-born-on-third-you-didn't-hit-a-triple school-of-thought. It's—Ashleigh: Yeah.Corey: —the idea of building an onboarding pipeline, of making this stuff more accessible to people earlier on is incredibly important. One of my, I guess, awakening moments as we were building this company was it turns out that if you manage salespeople as if they were engineers, it doesn't go super well. Whereas, if you manage engineers like they're salespeople, they quit—rage quit—cry, and call you out as being an abusive manager.One of the best descriptions I ever heard from an advisor was that salespeople are sharks. But that's not intended to be unkind. It is simply a facet of their nature. They enjoy the hunt; they enjoy chasing things down, and they like playing games. Whereas, as soon as you start playing games with your engineers on how much money they're going to make this week, that turns out to be a very negative thing. It's a different mindset. It's about motivating people as whatever befits what it is that they want to be doing.Ashleigh: It is. And the other thing is it's a cultural conditioning. So, it's really interesting to say, you know, “People,” you know, “Playing games.” We do enjoy—there's definitely some enjoyment of the competition; there's the thrill of the hunt, absolutely, but at the same time, you want your salespeople to quit? Screw with their money.You screw with their money; we will bail so fast it'll make your head spin. So, it's like, people think, “Oh, we love this.” No, it's really more—think of it as we are gamblers.Corey: Yeah. To be clear when I say, “Playing games with money,” I'm talking about the idea of, “Sell to a company in this profile this quarter, and we'll throw a $5,000 bonus your way,” or something like that. It is if the business wants to see something, great, make it worth the sales team's while to pursue it, or don't be surprised when no one really cares that much about those things—Ashleigh: Exactly.Corey: It's all upside. It is not about, “He, he. And if you don't sell to this weird thing that I can't really describe effectively to you, we're going to cut your bet—” Yeah, that goes over like a lead balloon. As it should. My belief is that compensation should always go up, not down.Ashleigh: Yeah. No, it should. Aside from that, here's a fun stat—I believe this came out of Forrester, it might've been out of [Topel 00:28:54]; I apologize, I don't remember exactly who said this, but a recent study found that less than 68 percent of sales reps make their quota every month. So, imagine that where if you're—we have this thing called OTE, which is On Target Earnings. So, if you have this number you're supposed to take home every month, only 68 percent of sales reps actually do that every month.So, that means we live with this number as our target, but we're living and budgeting anywhere from 30 to 50 percent below that. And then hoping and doing the work that goes in there. That's what we've been conditioned to accept, and that's why you end up with sales reps that use terms like ‘shark' and are aggressive and are in your face and can get—[unintelligible 00:29:30]—Corey: I didn't realize it was pejorative.Ashleigh: I know. No. But here's the thing too, but somebody called it ‘commission breath,' which I love. It's, like, you can smell commission breath coming off us when we're desperate. You totally can. It's because of this antiquated way of building commissions.And this is something that I—this was really obvious to me, and apparently, I was a little bit ahead of the curve. When I started designing comp plans, everyone told me, “You want to design a comp plan? Tie it to what you want them to do very specifically.” So, if you want them to move a pen, design a comp plan that they get a buck when they put the pen from the heel of your hand to the tips of your fingers. Then they get a buck. And then they can do that repeatedly. That's literally how I was taught design comp plans.In my head, that meant that I need to design it in such a way that it's doable for my team because I don't want my team worrying about how they're going to put food on the table while they're talking to a client because they're going get commission breath and it'll piss off the client. That's not a good client experience; that's not going to lead to good performance. Apparently—Corey: Yeah. My concern as a business owner has nothing to do with salespeople making too much money. In fact, I am never happier than I am than paying out commissions. The concern, then, therefore has to become the, “Okay, great. How do I keep the salespeople from being inadvertently incentivized to sell something for $10 that costs me $12 to fulfill?”It's a question of what behaviors do you incentivize that align what they're motivated by with what the company needs. And very often getting that wrong—which happens from time to time—is not viewed as a learning experience that it should be. But instead, “They're just out to screw us.” And I've seen so many company owners get so annoyed whenever their salespeople outperform. But what did you expect? That is the positive outcome. As opposed to what? The underperforming sales rep that can't close a deal? Please.Ashleigh: Well, no. And let's think about this too, especially if it's tied to commission and you're paying out commission. It's, like, okay, commission is always some, sort of, percentage—depending on a lot of things—but some sort of percent of what they're bringing in. If you design a comp plan that has you paying out more in commission than the sales that were earned to bring it in, that's on you; you screwed up. And you need to either be honest and say, “I screwed up; I can't pay this,” and know that you're going to lose some sales reps, but you won't lose as many as if you just refuse to pay it.But, honestly, and I'm not even kidding, I know people. I've worked at a company that I happen to know did this. That literally fired people because they didn't have the money to pay out the commission. And because they fired them before the commission was due to be paid out, then that person no longer had a legal claim to it. That's common. So, the commission goes both ways.Corey: To be clear, we've never done that, but I also would say that if we had, that's a screaming red flag for our consultancy, given the nature of what it is that we do here. It turns out that when we're building out comp plans, we model out various scenarios. Like, what is the worst way that this could wind up unfolding? And, okay, some of our early drafts it's, yeah, it turns out that we would not be able to pay salaries because we wound up giving all of that in commission to people with uncapped upside. Okay, great.But we're also not going to cap people's commissions because that winds up being a freaking problem, so how do we wind up motivating in a way that continues to grow and continues to incentivize the behaviors we want? And it turns out it's super complicated which why we brought you in. It's easier.Ashleigh: Yeah, it's a pain. But the other side of this too, I think, is there is another force at play here, which is finance. A lot of traditional finance modeling is built around that 50 to 70 percent of people hit commission. So, if all of the sudden, you design a comp plan such of a way that a hundred percent of the team is hitting commission, finance loses their shit. So, you have to make sure that when you're designing these things, one of the things I learned, I learned the hard way—this is how I learned that not everyone does it this way—I built my first comp plan; my team's hitting it.My team's overperforming, not a ton, but we're doing really well. All of the sudden, I'm getting called to Finance and getting raked over the coals. And they're like, “What did you do?” I'm like, “What do you mean what did I do? I designed a comp plan; we're hitting goal. Why are you mad?” “Well, we only had this much budgeted for commission.”And I was, like, “That's not my fault.” “Well, that's what historic performance was.” “Okay, well that's not what we're going to do going forward. We're going to do this.” And they're like, “Oh, well, you need to notify us if you're going to change it like that.” And I was, like, “Wait a minute. You modeled so that my team would not hit OTE?” “Yes.” “That's how you've always done this?” “Yes.” “Okay. Well, that's not what we're going to do going forward, and if that's a problem, I'll go find a door.” Because, no.Especially when we're talking about people who are living in extremely expensive areas. I spent most of my career living and working in San Francisco, managing teams of people who made less than six figures. And that's rough when you're paying two grand in rent every month. And 60 percent of your pay is commission. Like, no. You need to know that money's coming.So, I talk about modern sales a lot because that's what I'm trying to use because there's Glengarry Glen Ross, kind of, Wolf of Wall Street school, which is not how anyone behaves anymore, and if you're in an environment that's like that or treats your salespeople like that? Please leave. And then you've got modern sales, which is all about, “Okay, let's figure out how we can set up our salespeople to be the best people they can be to give our clients the best experience they can.” That's where you get top performance out of, and that's where you never run into the terrible emails with the alligators, and the, “Clearly you like lighting piles of money on fire.” That's where you don't get emails to Corey Quinn asking him if he's interested in coming to work for AWS, the book company.It's by incentivizing the people and creating good humans where they can really thrive as salespeople and as people in general. The rest comes with time. But, it's this whole, new way of looking at things. And it's big, and it's scary, and it costs more upfront, but you get more on the back end every single time.Corey: Not that you care about this an awful lot, but you have your own podcast that talks about this, The Other Side of Sales. What inspired you to decide, not just to build sales teams through a different lens, but also to, “You know what? I'm going to go out and talk into microphones through the internet from time to time.” Which, let's be clear, it takes a little bit of a certain warped perspective. I say this myself, having done this far too often.Ashleigh: Yeah. No, it's a fun little origin story. So, I'm a huge Star Trek geek; obsessive. And I was listening to a Star Trek podcast run by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to run a Star Trek podcast, called The Greatest Generation. Definitely not safe for work, but a really good podcast if you're into Star Trek at all.And they always do, kind of, letters at the end of the shows. And one of the letters at the end of the show one day was, “Hey, I was really inspired by you guys and I started my own podcast on this random thing that I am super excited about.” And I'm literally driving in the car with my husband, and I'm, like, “Huh. I don't know why I'm not listening to sales podcasts. I listen to enough of these other random ones.” Jumped online, pulled up a list of sales podcasts, and I think I went through three or four articles of, like, every sales podcast that was big. And this was, like, January of 2019.Corey: “By Broseph McBrowerson, but Everyone Calls Him ‘Browie.'” Yeah.Ashleigh: Literally, there was, Conversations with Women in Sales with the late, great—with the amazing Lori Richardson, who's now with it, but she took over for a mentor of mine who passed in 2020, sadly. But there was that, and then there was one other that was hosted by a husband-and-wife team. And that was it out of, like, 30 podcasts. And [laugh] so it was this moment of, like, epiphany of, like, “I can start my own podcast,” and, “Oh, I probably need to,” because, literally, no one looks or sounds like someone who I would actually want to hang out with ever, or do business with, in a lot of cases. And that's really changed. I'm so grateful.But really, what it came down to was I didn't feel there was a podcast for me. There wasn't a podcast I could listen to about sales that could help me, that I felt like I identified with. So, I was, like, “All right, fine. I'll start my own.” I called up a friend, and she was, literally, going through the same thing at the same time, so we said, “Screw it. We'll do our own.”We went full Bender from Futurama. We're like, “Just screw it; we'll have our own podcast… with liquor… and heels… and honest conversations that happens to us every day,” and random stuff. It's a lot of fun. And we've gone through a few iterations and it's been a long journey. We're about to hit our hundredth episode, which is really exciting.But yeah, we're—The Other Side of Sales is on a mission to make B2B sales culture truly inclusive so everyone can thrive, so, our conversations are all interviews with amazing sales pros who are trying to do amazing things and who are 90—I think are over 90 percent—are from a minority background, which is really exciting to, kind of, try and shift that conversation from Broseph McBrowerson. Our original tagline was the ‘anti-sales bro' podcast, but we thought that was a little too antagonistic. So…Corey: Yeah, being a little too antagonistic is, generally, my failure mode, so I hear you on that. I really want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to speak with me. Because—well, not that I should thank you. It's one of those, I should really turn around and say, “Wait a minute. Why aren't you selling things? Why are you still talking to me?” But no—Ashleigh: No, I'm waiting for you to say, “Back to work.”Corey: Do appreciate your—exactly. I think that's a different podcast. Thank you so much for your time. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Ashleigh: Well, definitely please go check out duckbillgroup.com. We would love to talk to with you about anything to do with your AWS bill. Got a ton of resources on there around how to get that managed and sorted.If you're interested in connecting with me you can always hit me up at—I'm on Twitter @ashleighatwork, which is another deep-cut Star Trek reference, or you can hit me up at LinkedIn. Just search Ashleigh Early. My name is spelled a little weird because I'm a little weird. It's A-S-H-L-E-I-G-H, and then Early, like ‘early in the morning.'Corey: And links to all of that will wind up in the [show notes 00:39:11]. Thanks so much for your time. It's appreciated.Ashleigh: This has been fun; we'll do it again soon.AndIf your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

When I think about women in sales (and I do, a lot), I think about Lori Richardson. Back in 2002, Lori started Score More Sales, a sales consultancy that helps others reach their full growth potential through hiring strategies and existing sales team evaluations. She's also the president of Women's Sales Pros, a community that helps companies attract, promote and retain great women in sales and inspire them to obtain leadership positions. In this episode, Lori shares her journey and how she's balanced her big goals with the rest of her life.This episode was edited and produced by Earfluence.

When I think about women in sales (and I do, a lot), I think about Lori Richardson. Back in 2002, Lori started Score More Sales, a sales consultancy that helps others reach their full growth potential through hiring strategies and existing sales team evaluations. She's also the president of Women's Sales Pros, a community that helps companies attract, promote and retain great women in sales and inspire them to obtain leadership positions. In this episode, Lori shares her journey and how she's balanced her big goals with the rest of her life.This episode was edited and produced by Earfluence.

Lori recounts her experience of once getting thrown out of the Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle while pursuing a sales prospect. Pouyan and Corp tease out the incredible stories of the glory days of sales before the internet age.Follow the Pouyan & Corphttps://twitter.com/psalehi​https://www.linkedin.com/company/scratchpad-aehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyansalehi/https://www.linkedin.com/company/corporatebro/https://www.instagram.com/corporate.bro/​https://www.Scratchpad.com​https://www.CorporateBro.com​Follow our Guestshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/poyaosgouei/https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-sales-pros/https://womensalespros.com/https://womensalespros.com/podcast/Follow the pod:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd-bW8qJKScmqx6W5dq8PLi3fjoNCDOkShttps://beyondquota.buzzsprout.com​https://open.spotify.com/show/3Cwt5ZOySRJ63oMLbnG9A8#sales​ #tech​ #saas

Lori is a passionate Sales Influencer and she explain to us Why we need more women in sales, we chat about her new book She Sells and how she came to be so passionate about this sales. Founder of Score More Sales