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Highlights

• Growing up in a sales environment and going from international political economist to sales professional to business owner (01:09)
• Learning to lead teams and build a business from living and learning in Japan (04:09)
• How to turn a business around from loss-making to consistent and long-term profit-making (07:25)
• The importance of building your sales strategy around data (11:19)
• Knowing your worth and when it’s time to leave a job that doesn’t align with your worth (14:22)
• Major differences between sales and marketing (17:58)
• Getting a direct ROI on your marketing efforts and how it affects your sales (21:09)
• Why you cannot grow your sales without a strategy and the necessary processes to support it (25:15)
• Getting recognition for her unique way of approaching sales (30:47)

In this episode of the Transformed Sales Podcast, I had a chat with Liz Heiman, a national sales expert and the Founder and CEO of Regarding Sales. Her firm focuses on building B2B operating systems that drive extraordinary growth. She uses strategy and process to create a roadmap for success that focuses clients on getting the results that they need. She is an experienced international political economist well-schooled in digging through data to interpret results. With her unique background, combined with her focus on strategy and process, Liz delivers clients concrete solutions for difficult sales problems.

Do you believe sales is predictable and manageable? Liz says it is. From a brief look across the sales landscape, it’s clear that the importance of a data-driven sales strategy is not understood. Liz believes that it’s a huge mistake for anyone to think that their sales team can just start calling leads and make sales. A plan is needed to be most effective. And she will lend her expertise in this eye-opening episode so you can learn how to go about that and so much more. Don’t miss out! 

Quotes

“Activity without strategy and process is chaos” - Liz Heiman

“If you don't want chaos, then you have to have a strategy and processes to support it. And many sales organizations do not have that” - Liz Heiman

“Sales is about individual engagement with people and helping them solve their individual problems. Marketing is about helping people identify me as a potential solution to their problem” - Liz Heiman

Learn More About Liz in the Links Below:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizheiman/
• Website - https://www.regardingsales.com/

Connect with Wesleyne Greer:

• Wesleyne’s Website - https://transformedsales.com/
• Wesleyne on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleynegreer/
• Wesleyne on Facebook - https://web.facebook.com/wesleynegreer
• Wesleyne on Twitter - https://twitter.com/wesleynegreer
• Email Her at wesleyne@transformedsales.com

Welcome to another episode of the transform

sales podcast where we talk all about the science of selling

stamp today. I am so excited to have Liz Hyman with me. How are

you, Liz?

I'm great. How are you?

I am doing amazing. Let me tell you guys a

little bit about Liz. She's the National Sales expert and the

founder and CEO of regarding sales. Her firm focuses on

building b2b operating systems that drive extraordinary growth.

She uses strategy and process to create a roadmap for success

that focuses clients on getting the results that they need. Liz

is an experienced international political economist well

schooled in digging through data to interpret results. With her

unique background combined with her focus on strategy and

process. Liz delivers clients concrete solutions for difficult

sales problems. She is the youngest of five siblings and

lived in California as well as Japan until finally settling on

the Big Island with her daughter Solis. How does a political

economist turn into sales and then start their own business?

Tell us about your journey?

Wow. It's been an interesting journey. Yeah. So I

grew up in the world of sales, as you know, as lean my dad is

Steve Hyman of Miller Heiman, fame, he started the company,

Miller Heiman, some of you may recognize the book strategic

selling or conceptual selling. And so I kind of got into sales.

Naturally, it wasn't my choice. So I went to school, my I was

going to study Peace Studies. And I did I said if he studies

and then I decided, well, you know what most complex are about

economics in the long run. So let's study economics. And so I

studied international political economy. And my dissertation

research was on the role of public opinion in US Japanese

trade negotiations. So you know, you would think it would be

related. But actually, I learned a lot about public opinion and

about how words change belief systems. And you know, like, one

of my favorite stories Sorry, I'm gonna just do this really

quickly is, while I was working on my dissertation, and I was

living in Japan, they had a drought and the Japanese believe

with all their hearts and souls and minds that that Japanese

rice is the best rice in the world. And with that belief, if

you have to import rice, what do you do? Well, the ministers of

trade decided to do was create mixed rice. So they brought in

rice and they mixed it all together. It was long grain

rice, short grain rice, brown rice, basmati rice, and then try

cook that mess up is terrible. So confirming the belief that

the Japanese rice is the best rice in the world. And when I

brought my friends in Japan, Calrose rice, which is what I

eat here, and what we grow in California, they were like this

is really good. Like they're kidding. Actually action of what

you pay for rice. So I learned a lot about how words framed the

way people think. And because I was looking at public opinion,

and watching how the information was coming out to them, and then

how they were interpreting it and how public opinion changed.

It really, it was really interesting. And so it impacts

what I do now a lot. I went back to work for Miller Heiman. So I

started working there very young, I went back to work for

them in 1998, as the director of Asia Pacific, and I can tell you

all about that if you want. And then when they sold the company,

it became clear at some point that really probably wasn't

great for me to still be hanging around is one of the original

islands. And so I started my own business. And then I worked with

my sister, who's also a sales consultant, Alice Hyman for a

while, and then I restarted my own business. And so that's how

I got where I am now.

So you literally been all the way around the

world and back. And I really liked the fact that a part of

what you did when you were in school was to understand the

Japanese culture living in Japan. And then when you stepped

into the corporate realm, you became the director of the APAC

region, Asia Pacific region. So how did that your time in Japan

to help you lead teams and build a business in the Asia Pacific

region?

I think the most important thing I learned as an

exchange student because I was an exchange student college and

then I did my graduate work as a ministry of education. Japanese

Ministry of Education researcher came to say, here's what I

learned is that people approach the world differently, which

means they approach problems differently. So one day, I

needed business cards, and I went and I like my dad called

for Miller, Heiman said, I'm going to teach a program and I

need you to translate, go get some business cards, I'll be

there in three days or a week or whatever it was, and I went to

get business cards and they're like, Okay, well have them in

two weeks. And I'm like, if I pay you more, can I have them

sooner? And they're like, no or in their life and us you're

like, yes. How much you willing to pay? I will tell you, right.

And so I begin this process of learning about how people see

problems differently. And one of the reasons I really believe in

a diverse workforce is because the cultural box we grow up in,

and I don't mean this in a negative way, when we talk about

being outside the box, we're talking about being outside that

cultural box, not just outside any box, right? So that means

that the moment I put people of cultural diversity of any

diversity into the room together, we're naturally when

we say outside the box, we're talking about two different

boxes. And so you have this amazing thing that happens when

you start to put people together of diversity. And because they

see the world differently, and I would not have known this, had I

not lived in Japan. And I'd be like, Okay, this makes no sense

to me, right? Whatever it was, you know, there were a million

things, every one of this makes no sense to me, because I was

looking at it from the perspective of an American on a

Japanese culture. And sometimes I was amazed. And sometimes I

was appalled. But so then when I became the director of Asia

Pacific, I understood a couple of things. One is I understood

how Japanese people buy things, because I bought things with

them and spent time with them and learned with them. So I

began to understand how Japanese culture works, how they buy, how

they think, also, my research helped me understand that. So

then you can make some assumptions about how is that

going to be in the rest of Asia, and there are differences in

their similarities. But so I use all of that knowledge to help me

to grow the Asia Pacific region. And when I started at Miller,

Heiman, they were losing $200,000 a year. And when I

left, two years later, we just we hadn't quite hit a million,

but we were about to hit a million so and on track for

5,000,005 years. So it was just taking everything. And when you

start with the place that there isn't just one way to do it,

there isn't just one answer to the problem, that if I look at

it from a different perspective, I might come up with a different

answer really changes the way you problem solve.

Hmm. So I'm curious, you know, in this world

that we're living in these days, it's such a global place. And

when we think about leaders taking over positions, a lot of

times they're taking over failing territories, or regions,

or you know, places like you mentioned, what are some of the

tips that you can give them to really start writing the ship?

Like, what are some of those things that you would tell them

will help kind of get from a loss to really having a big

game?

I think the first thing is to understand your

data. And I'm amazed how many times I go into a company. And

I'll ask them for things. Okay, tell me, tell me who sold what

to whom tell me how much of what widget, have you sold? Tell me,

like, I'll just start asking questions. Let's look at all

your clients, I want to do a whitespace mapping, let's pull

out a list of all of your clients and figure out what they

bought. And I start playing with the data. And I really do play

with data differently than a lot of people do. Ask, just start

playing with it and go Well, what if this? Well, what if

this? Well, what's the difference between this and

this? And I'll start creating? I think in spreadsheets? It's a

really weird way to think but I do think in spreadsheets, I

think it comes up from my training. So you go into the

data, and you find out what's really going on? Which

distributors are selling and which ones aren't? What are your

distributor selling? Are the things that your distributor

selling profitable? Who are your different salespeople? What do

they sell? What did they focus on? Where are they successful?

What kinds of companies are they successful? And what kinds of

companies are buying from you? What kinds aren't buying, like,

just start playing with the data, don't have any

expectations, just start putting out tables and comparing things

and looking for things? And you will find the answers that you

need? Because you'll say okay, this is where we're selling the

most, whatever that is, and then we have to stop and go, is that

the most profitable place we could be selling? Is that what

we should be selling? And if the answer is yes, then how do I

increase that? Do I sell more of that to more different people?

Do I sell more of that to my existing clients who one of the

things that I learned the minute I get in is if you have existing

clients, you're leaving millions and millions of dollars on the

table every single day? So what's going on with my key

accounts? What's going on with the accounts? That should be key

accounts, but I haven't done anything to grow them? And then

what other things can I be selling to my existing clients?

Right? So I've got them in the door. So that's how you start,

you just start playing with the data until you can figure out

what's a logical path. And what we don't do is what most people

do, which is they say, okay, corporate gave us a number $5

million, you get 10 of it, you tenement you get 10 of it go,

that is not strategic, and it's not helpful. So you have to

really decide where do I want this business to grow? Which

kinds of accounts do I want them to go after? Which kinds of

accounts do I want them to grow? You have to really be thoughtful

and strategic. And one of the reasons companies get in so much

trouble is low hanging fruit, right? Oh, we'll just go for the

low hanging fruit or the mentality, I can sell anything,

you know, I can deliver anything. So you sell it, I'll

deliver it. Well, none of that is the basis for making business

decisions. That's a basis for figuring out how to get the

highest Commission, which I value in my salespeople. But now

I want to direct them in a way that helps the business grow,

and therefore will help them have higher commissions in the

future. So it's about looking at all of the pieces together. Does

that make any sense at all?

So it makes absolute sense. It's really you

have to start at a granular level, right? So a lot of people

don't like starting at that granular level, sometimes they

started a 50 million foot view, but you start at the granular

level, because you're right, data doesn't lie. Right. So

where are we selling? What are we selling? Who is selling,

right? Like, let's just start with some data. And then once we

start with the data, we figure out, okay, we're doing really

well here, why are we not replicating this success in this

area? Or why are we like you said, we're leaving so much

money on the table? Because all of our customers only have one

of our products? Or one of our services? Why are we not doing

upsells? Then you go into the strategy, and I think so many

people like to do it backwards. They're like, Oh, this is what

we need. Okay, we need to have 20% year over year growth. But

Where's that coming from? And how are we gonna make it? Yeah,

and so

we'll just pop it down. Without any data. It's

really interesting. One client I was working with many years ago,

I was like, Okay, well, where do you want to grow? And they're

like, automotive? You know, we do great in automotive. And I'm

like, Okay, well, let's look at it. So I pull out my favorite

spreadsheet, which is company sales, wrap products, how much

they bought of each, you know, size of the company, number of

employees, whatever it is that you need to figure out what your

growth potential is. And I went, Okay, you have seven automotive

company, they buy one product, will they buy the other

products? Why don't you go figure out if they'll buy the

other products before you decide if you're gonna focus on money,

because if they're only gonna buy one product, your potential

for growth is really small. They had no idea because they've

never looked at the data that

way. Yeah. And then it's like, okay, so we know

our product works best in this vertical. Why? Just like, how do

you know that? Because like I said, in automotive, yeah,

there's a huge win. But the sales cycle is so long, like,

and can the company afford to float this long sales cycle to

only get one product sold? Or does it make sense for us to

switch industries? So we can kind of say, okay, we can get

faster wins, maybe it's a smaller ticket item, but it's

faster and more widgets, right?

Or maybe it's got a higher profit margin, or maybe I

have to start with this product to get in the door. And then I

saw my higher profit margin products, but not to this

industry, or Yeah, you know, there's all kinds of things that

could be true. So you have to start asking the question. And

one of the things that I've learned over the years is

sometimes those key accounts, the most important accounts are

the least profitable. And the other thing I find is that

there'll be if you take the clients, and you put them in

order of highest sales to lowest sales, and you look at the

bottom 20%, they're not worth your time, because all together,

they make up a fraction of your highest account, and you're

like, how much time does it take to service these 50 accounts?

What if I turned those 50 into, I got rid of them and got three

at a better size? Right? I could replace them with three

companies that don't even buy a lot. So it's looking at all of

the information to figure out where are we putting our effort?

And how much sales time does it take to sell those 50 accounts

that are spending? I mean, seriously $300 a year in some

cases, and like and your top clients spends $300,000 a year?

So how can you justify that? Well, I made a lot of them, do

you really need a lot of if they're buying online, and you

don't have to do anything, you get 1000s of them? And who

cares? Hallelujah, that's great revenue. But if your salespeople

have to work on it, how do you justify the salespersons time?

Yeah, and he count people and onboarding in a $300 or

$500 $1,000 sale. And this is the kind of stuff you really got

to think about. The reason I'm about data is I spent three

hours combing through a customer's data, a client's data

yesterday, and I'm so totally in the data mindset, right?

You're like, your mind is all about the data.

So you went from your father's company, you said, Hey, I think

it's probably time for me to leave when you have to make that

decision, although the company had been sold, and it was

acquired by another company. Talk to us about that transition

that you went through, knowing that you'd worked in this

company for like, literally grew up in the company, you had to

leave. What did you go through? How did you know it was time?

That's the first question. And the second question is what was

the process you use to move forward?

So there are a couple of things. Remember that

my focus was on Japan. So that was part of one of the things

that drove me but when I was at Nordheim, and there were a

number of things that made me say This is probably time for me

to leave. But the moment came when I said, okay, my contract

was that when the company had a million dollars, I started get

10% of revenue instead of the salary I was getting, which was

relatively low comparatively. And he looked at me and said,

We're not going to honor that contract. Oh, so if you want to

stay in this day at the salary that you're getting with no

commissions? And I said, No, thank you. I guess you don't

want me to be here anymore. And he left. Wow. So that was, you

know, it was really obvious. And I think we should all do that. I

think that there comes a point where you said, this is what I'm

worth. And if somebody doesn't see the value, then go figure

out if somebody else sees the value. So the reason I went to

work for myself was I really wanted to do stuff relating to

Japan. And I don't know why I didn't try to go get an Asia

Pacific job. It just seemed natural to me, that it was time

to start thinking about, and I started a company at that time

called regarding Japan. And my concept was, as an atlas company

with two parts. And your laugh at this one part was going to be

consulting because I knew tons of people who could do

consulting on business between the US and Japan. And my idea

was, okay, well, we'll grow it, you know, it'll be you, Japan,

and then we'll add Korean scholars and experts, and then

you know, whatever. The other part of it would be in this

remember is in 2002. The other part is, and we were still

using, I think, at that point, we were probably still using

dogpile instead of Google and Google was, you know, not our

number one choice of things to do. And I thought, Okay, here's

what I'm going to do. The other part of the business is going to

be like a directory. This is how I thought of it. So if you're in

Chicago, and you're a sushi chef, you put your name on here

for five or $10 a year. And then anybody who wants to know why

anything about Japan, then they just go into their database,

right? And I went to my dad, my brilliant dad, and I said, Dad,

this is what I wanted to do. And he looked at me and said, That's

not my business. And I look back now and go, Yeah, that was a

business was actually a business. So but in any case, I

started doing regarding sales. And then I still ended up doing

coaching, teaching programs for Miller Heiman. And over time, I

found that my clients were not in the regarding sales area,

they were just business and sales. I mean, regarding Japan

stuff, they were in just business and sales. And then

when I moved to Hawaii, and I thought, Oh, this will be great.

But I'm on the Big Island of Hawaii, and all of the business

between Japan and Hawaii was happening in a wahoo. And so

pretty soon, I just started doing sales and marketing

consulting. And I was doing a lot of marketing consulting on a

small islands. And then when I came back, after 14 years in

Hawaii, I came back and just started getting back into the

world of into the world really, and more into the world of

sales. Hmm.

So sales and marketing, let's do some

Mythbusters. Here, a lot of people think oh, sales and

marketing are the same thing. If you're a good salesperson, you

can be a good marketing person, if you're a good marketing

person, you can be a good salesperson. So tell us from

your opinion, what's the biggest difference there.

So first of all, the difference between sales and

marketing is that as a salesperson, I'm about

individual engagement with people and helping them solve

their individual problems. My job in marketing is to help

people identify me as a potential solution to a problem,

even a problem they didn't know they had, maybe maybe I'd

helping them identify that there's a problem or that

there's a problem that can be solved, they may not know that

they may know they have a problem, but they don't think it

can be solved, they may not even know that that it's a problem or

a possibility for the future. That's the primary difference.

Now, some of that has come back together. Because in a world

where people buy online marketing is moving the needle

until they make the purchasing decision. But any decision that

is made that requires an individual to engage with the

customer in order for that decision to be made. That's

really where sales steps in. So so if you are completely 100%,

digitally driven business where all of the buying happens

online, you don't have a sales department, your marketing

department is your sales department in that case, because

all sales happen that way. But the moment you start having and

I really focus on business to business complex sales, so the

moment you start having business to business engagements, you

have a sales department. So as that engagement gets more

complex, meaning you have multiple people involved in

buying decision, it's a big dollar amount. It's going to

impact multiple departments, it could take six to nine months,

12 months I've a client that five years is their sales cycle

because they sell to the Department of Transportation. So

from the time that they decide to do a project could could be

five years until it actually happens. So that's kind of the

difference between sales and marketing. And I really moved

when I was in Hawaii, it made sense on my little island in the

middle of the Pacific to be focused more on marketing

because most of it is business to consumer and In the stuff

that's business to business is business to small business

because there are no big businesses there. Except like

selling coffee. Coffee is a huge industry in my little island

bento. But that was business to business complex because they

were selling to resellers or to restaurants or anyway. But when

I came back to the bigger world where marketing has become so

complex, there's not even such a thing, as somebody who's a

marketing expert who can do the digital, the content,

advertising, SEO, the web, like knowing all of those things has

become so big, that if you are selling to enterprise, or you

have a huge business to consumer company, one person can't know

everything they need to know. So I started focusing on sales

only, although I do a lot of messaging and positioning with

my customers, with my clients. But the point is that in a

business to business complex sale, the same kinds of things

have to happen all the time. So we keep, I can help them build

all of that. But when you get in the marketing side, you need

multiple experts to make that happen.

I'm with you. I actually, when I started my

business, I started it and I was an outsourced sales and

marketing manager for small businesses. And I soon realized

that, oh, I really don't like marketing. That for me, because

as you said, sales is the one to one, it's the How can I convince

this person to move from one step to the next step? Whereas

marketing, it's like, Hey, I'm a person in this world, come

identify me. And so like you I'm very metrics driven and the

marketing metrics, I call them kind of warm and fuzzy, right?

It's like you can't really get a direct ROI on exactly what

you're doing and how that impacts the sales.

Well, we can actually, okay, actually can if

we do it, right. So this is one of the things that I do help

companies do, what happens is that the ROI is not a short term

ROI. So in marketing, we tend to focus on conversions, meaning

somebody downloaded, somebody pressed a button, somebody

agreed to a meeting, whatever it was that that's there's

conversions, and that's fine. But there's a difference between

conversions and a marketing qualified lead, and a sales

qualified lead, right. So marketing, qualified lead meets

certain set of criteria, sales, qualified lead has to be valid

enough for a salesperson to say I have a super busy day with a

whole bunch of clients who need my time and attention. And I'm

actually this is worth me paying attention to right. And then

then sales goes on to qualify further, right. So this is

qualified to deliver to sales. Now sales qualifies out those

that are not, it's not the right timeline, it's not whatever

would it's not the right product fit, they don't have the budget,

whatever. So there's a disqualifying process has to

happen. So in the midst of all of that is the tracking. And

what happens is our tracking is very poor. Yeah. So you have to

set up your CRM such that I know the first touch happened here,

you have to be able to have multiple tags associated with a

customer under source. So maybe the first time we talked to them

was at a at a trade show. And maybe they didn't talk to us for

three years. And then we sent out something and now there's

actually two, two lead sources, because we wouldn't have had the

second conversation if we hadn't met them at the trade show. And

so what we think is, oh, well, we didn't make enough money on

that trade show. Well, maybe we did, it just took three years to

do it. Hmm. So that's what we need to know. And we need to

know the lifetime value of the client. So I'm that convert a

lot more through other marketing methods that don't last as long

that don't buy as much, but the ones that I needed to trade show

that are really ideal customers, it may take longer for them to

buy, but they may buy 1020 30 times as much and stay with us

longer. So what we have to look at the short term, but we also

have to look at the long term, the lifetime value of a customer

to really know what works and what doesn't work. And it's very

complicated. And

so you are, I would say or what you do, or

did, I would consider you a strategic marketing advisor,

right? Because it's, you're giving people those metrics that

matter. One of the things that I find with a lot of the marketing

firms that are out there is they're just focused on pay per

click, or they're just focused on LinkedIn. They're only

focused in their little silo. And it's like, well, how does it

play into the big picture of what we need? And like you said,

understanding those conversion points. So okay, we went to a

trade. So we got 100 leads, those leads are in the system,

and you're like, Oh, we're not going back to that trade show

next year, because nobody converted, right? But it's the

continuous touch. They're opening our newsletters. They're

doing something they're clicking on links. They're not raising

their hand yet, but they're doing those passive things to

let you know that I'm still here.

Yeah. And when need to be really clear about this is

the customer journey thing, right? What is our customer's

journey? And who are the people that become part of the customer

journey that actually have the ability to start the sales

process?

Hmm, yeah, that's good. So tell us about

your current venture, because we're now we're back in the

States. So we've gone around the world, and we're back in the

States, tell us about your current company.

So my company is called regarding sales. And I

focus on strategy and process. So what I believe is that

activity without strategy or process is chaos. So if you

don't want chaos, then you have to have a strategy and processes

to support it. And many sales organizations do not have that.

And so when you talk to the CEO, or the founder about sales, they

will say things like, my Sales Team Drives me crazy. Sometimes

they'll say things like, they all need to be fired, and we

need to hire all new ones. Or they'll say things like, it's

totally unpredictable. I cannot run my business based upon the

information that I get. It's unpredictable, they're

unmanageable, it's chaos. And I hear this over and over and over

again. And even if you don't say the words out loud, if you're a

CEO, or founder, chances are you're feeling some of it. And I

know that because when I'll say it, people will go. Yes. Totally

chaotic. So how do we fix that? Well, one is we need to have

processes. One, we need a strategy. If salespeople are

just arbitrarily selling, so what so you're selling, but you

have a vision and values and a mission, your vision for where

you want to be in the future? Are the things that you're

selling. Now taking you where you want to go, where you

believe your growth path is? Are these the clients that will grow

with you and stay with you? Are these the clients that as you

develop your product, it's going to fit them? Or are you trying

to develop a product to fit everybody, because your

salespeople are selling to everybody, and everybody has

different needs? So is your sales organization directed in

such a way that they can be successful, and you can be

successful? So you've got to start with strategy, you got to

start with things like your value, vision and mission,

vision, values and mission. Thank you. I always do that

backwards. In case you didn't notice that, from what everybody

else says. And then you need to know who your ideal customer is,

or who your ideal customers are, who am I selling to what

industries, but what about the people in those industries or

companies in those industries? Make them really ideal? And then

you need to how am I positioned in the marketplace? Right? visa

vie my customers problem visa vie the competition? How am I

positioned? How do I talk about me as a company, and what I

deliver and who I deliver it to? And then like, if you think

about tennis shoes, how is Nike position versus Adidas? Versus

ASICs? Right? They all have totally different positioning in

the marketplace, they spend billions of dollars trying to

make sure everybody knows how they're positioned in the

marketplace. Just do it right. And then we have to understand

value proposition. If it's a business to business complex

sale, we have multiple buyers, that we need a different value

proposition, we need to understand what is their

relationship to the problem? And how do I talk to them about it?

So that's the beginning of building strategy and messaging.

And then we have to think about process. What is my sales

process? How does it fit into my CRM? How do I manage it? Was my

sales strategy? What are those numbers that we came up with?

And how am I really going to hit them? What industries makes

sense? Which people make sense, which products makes sense, all

of that stuff? Those are the kinds of things if I have key

accounts, what is my process for developing strategy for each of

those key accounts. So all of those kinds of things that are

repeatable and predictable, and enable a company to have some

idea of what's going to actually happen in sales. Instead of just

drop you know, I was a pictures, you drop the the opportunities

in the top, it says black box and you pray stuff comes out the

bottom says a prayer is not a strategy, it's a good start. But

it's not going to get you where you need to go, all the positive

energy in the world isn't going to turn those into close deals

if you don't have a good process for doing it. So that's what I

do.

I love it. Because you know, we started and

you were talking about the data, the tactical bits, and then now

you're talking about the strategy. And so really, what

you do and you help your customers do is you're like

bridging this whole black box, because you got to have the

strategy, you got to have the tactical because that's how we

ensure we build a thriving sales organization. So just having

those tactical bits of the bits and pieces doesn't help if we

don't understand who the individual buyers within our

selling situation are what value propositions we need to give

them how we speak to them what the messaging I mean, like all

of these things, and so like when a CEO or sales leaders like

oh, these salespeople said, my question is always like, Oh,

really? So tell me what have you done? Like, what's your

contribution to this? Right, like, what What have you done?

And they're like, Well, I'm the visionary, I created the company

or I sold for 20 years. And I'm like, Yeah, but we have to

change. It's not the same as it was 20 years ago.

Right. And I see that a lot. So I have two

distinctly different customers I focus on one is startups with

investors who are demanding results, and starves don't have

deliver it. But the others companies have been around 20 or

30 years, and they're going on. Yeah, this isn't working

anymore. But they're like, Well, okay, it's been 20 years, let's

rethink it. And so, you know, and it's hard because you really

have to start over and reposition yourself and rethink,

does my process make sense? And all those things, you really

have to start from the beginning and rethink it. And it's hard?

Yeah. So when you think of as your diverse

career and all of the things that you've accomplished, what

is one thing that you are most excited about having

accomplished within your career professionally, or personally?

Well, of course, the thing I'm always most excited

about is my beautiful daughter. But I think what's exciting to

me is putting together these programs that are very

systematic, very structured, very organized, and deliver very

clear results. And being able to say to other people in the sales

arena, this is what I do. And having my friends like you who

are consultants who do similar stuff, go I get that and then

say, oh, process call is strategy call this, like, that's

what I'm really proud of is that people now recognize that, that

I do this really unique thing that most other people just

don't do. And they just they can't think about it the way I

think about it, because they don't have my diverse

experience, right? They didn't get a graduate degree and

economic and international political economy, right.

They're not methodologist by training, so part of my graduate

degrees methodology. So I'm a methodologist. By training, I

learned all of these things from a different perspective than

most people who do the work that I do. So inevitably, I approach

it differently. And this is that thing about diversity, right? So

it's my diversity of background rather than coming, I do come

out of a sales world couldn't help it. But I also come out of

this educational background that most people who are sales

experts, or senior sales leaders don't have, that just don't have

that piece of the puzzle that I

got. That's awesome. It just goes to show

you I love telling brand new people that are getting into

sales that college teaches you how to think, right? And you use

those tools in various different ways. When you were in college,

did you ever think that you would be doing sales strategy?

When I was in college, I definitely didn't think that I

was going to be teaching people how to sell, you know, as a

chemist. So really taking what we've learned and how we do it,

and we put the pieces of the puzzle together,

right? And you approach it as a chemist and I

approach it as an economist, right? So do we bring different

things to the table when we're doing it? And I will tell you,

when I was in school, the last thing in the world I was ever

going to be was a salesperson because like that's what I grew

up in. And I was going to do international trade relations,

right. I never dreamed I'd be here even though it was right in

front of me as possibility. It wasn't what I was thinking. Hmm,

I love it. I have enjoyed our time together

live. This has been an amazing, amazing conversation. Thank you

so so much, what is the one best way people can get in contact

with you? LinkedIn? Liz

Hyman. Okay, that's the easiest way. And if you I

have all kinds of content, if you want it to just go to

LinkedIn and ask me how to find it, ask me questions, happy to

do it. But tell me, they need to tell me where you met me because

I get all kinds of crazy connection requests. And

sometimes I ignore them. Because they're crazy. So say I saw you,

you know, when are you talking to Wesleyne? And I'm like, Okay,

I'm with Yes. In your connection requests. Always

remember we talked about having a nice personalized connection

request and make sure you say hey, I listened to your

conversation with Wesleyne. And I really want to connect with

you because she'll be like, of course, a friend of Wesleyne is

a friend of mine, of course. Happy to connect. Thank you so

so much for your time, your talent, your expertise today.

You have given us more than enough today. Thank you. Glad to

be here. And that was another episode of the transform sales

podcast, remember and all that you do in every way that you can

be sure to transform your sales each and every day. Until next