David Kreiger created a company for outsourcing Sales Development Representatives—inside sales representatives who focus solely on sales prospecting—before SDR was even a term. His company, SalesRoads, has been around for 16 years and is a sales outsourcing and appointment setting firm that simplifies revenue operations and makes growth easy. 

Join Jim and David as they hash out the nitty gritty of creating a culture best suited for high-performing sales teams. 

3 Key Takeaways

• Create Buyer Personas: Customize sales approaches based on buyer personas. Differentiating between various customer types and assigning the right SDRs to engage with them effectively ensures more productive engagement and communication, leading to higher success rates.
• Don’t Cut Corners on Sales Hires: If you’re going to create a high-performing sales team, don’t hire cheap sales professionals. (And if you’re thinking of hiring free interns to run your sales, please stop reading now and click elsewhere.) High-performing sales teams are built with experienced professionals who know how to close deals and exceed targets. 
• Set Clear Expectations and Accountability: Set clear expectations for sales teams, define what success looks like and create a culture of accountability by implementing quotas and KPIs for guiding sales efforts and ensuring consistency.

Resources

David Kreiger on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkreiger/ 

SalesRoads: https://salesroads.com/ 

SalesRoads on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/salesroads/people/ 

SalesRoads article about how to build an inside sales development team: https://salesroads.com/leadership/inside-sales-team/ 

About Our Guest 

David Kreiger is the founder of SalesRoads, a sales outsourcing and appointment setting firm with over 16 years of experience. David holds an MBA in Marketing & Management from The Wharton School and a BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. David is also a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine, where he shares insights on B2B sales and business leadership. In his spare time, he serves as a Venture Lab Mentor at The Wharton School and is an active member of the EO entrepreneur association.

About The Dirt Podcast 

The Dirt is about getting real with businesses about the true state of their companies and going clear down to the dirt in solving their core needs as a business. Dive deep with your host Jim Barnish as we uncover The Dirt with some of the world's leading brands.

If you love what you are getting out of our show please subscribe.

For more information on how we dig into the dirt check out our other episodes here: https://www.orchid.black/podcast

About Our Company

Orchid Black is a new kind of growth services firm. We partner with tech-forward companies to build smarter, better, game-changing businesses. 

Website: https://www.orchid.black 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orchidblack/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OrchidBlack 

All contents of this show are rights of Orchid Black©️ and are not to be used unless authorized by written consent.

David Kreiger 0:02

Early on, I think like most entrepreneurial companies, I was definitely a jack of all trades. And then I had my first like manager hire that was also a jack of all trades. And we just did everything sales we did. sales ops, we committed to the clients we trained like we just did, right. And that's just not a sustainable way to grow. And what I actually did was I when I realized that I hired a coach, which I really would encourage all owners to invest it, who has done it before, they don't necessarily need to be your in your industry, I don't think can be. But I think more somebody who really understands how to build organizational structure, how to create accountability.

Jim Barnish 0:49

Welcome back to another episode of The Dirt where we dive deep into the triumphs and challenges of growing your business. I'm your host, Jim barnish, and our guest today is an expert in helping businesses to create more sales meetings, and increase pipeline, a gap in so many growth stage businesses that I meet his name David Krieger, his business sales road. And my favorite part about artists Gushan today is when we go deep into how to assemble a high performing sales team. But before we dig in, a big shout out to our sponsor, orchid black, whether you need to create more recurring revenue, or just drive growth and profitability in some other manner. The team at orchid black is your answer. And if you haven't done so already, please subscribe to our podcast on your preferred platform. Without further ado, welcome to the dirt. All right, David, let's dig right in Who is David and what is sales Rhodes.

David Kreiger 1:49

Jim Barnish 3:30

That's awesome, man. So I mean, you guys, how big are you right now.

David Kreiger 3:36

So we're a little over 75 people's

Jim Barnish 3:41

David Kreiger 4:20

Jim Barnish 6:02

And you guys are doing that from a customer perspective, in a like in a pretty, pretty wide arena. Right? You've got some high growth startups, which has, you know, its own kind of startup culture, oftentimes. And you and you've got enterprise fortune 500 businesses that you could cater to also do the same folks on your team. You know, are they are they are they bifurcated? Meaning that you have some that are focused on enterprise and some that are on, you know, some of the high growth startups? Or are they able to, you know, be kind of jack of all trades and take care of both types of customers out? How does that work out? Because that's a pretty wide but meaningful customer set?

David Kreiger 6:40

Yeah, I think it's a great, great question. So first, the STRS that we have on the team, we really focus them as dedicated SDR. So part of our model is that we're really part of our clients organization. So that SDR is living and breathing their organization, the managers are, we're part of their inside sales team, part of their strategy conversations. And so they're not jumping from program to program, or doing round robin things. They're, they're they are that, that that client. But also, as part of your question is, I think one of the important things both for selecting STRS but also within the context of agencies is really understanding who the STRS are really good at selling to who are the personas, they're better at you know, some people are really good at selling to sea level first of all, they're okay with like, not talking to people for a long period of time, getting it, you know, maybe the middle a little bit better email, you know, things like that. And then there's people who are just really good, you know, a calling, we have a, you know, SAS platform, or we're calling subcontractors, right, so it's a very different buyer persona, then you know, CTO right and so we tried to, to pair the STRS with the right types of buyer personas that they feel comfortable selling into that they understand better, and we find that that's usually a recipe for success.

Jim Barnish 7:57

So you typically coming in as as full time SDR is on their teams are STRS having to, you know, work for two or three companies at a time. How does how does all that work when it when it comes time for execution?

David Kreiger 8:09

Yeah, so we, so our clients hire us as full time STRS. So can be anywhere from one to 15 STRS, depending on the program. And so then, you know, the STRS that are working on our team are working on those programs. Now we do have an interesting model, we do have some folks who are part time they might be retirees, we really part of part of our our value prop is we do hire STRS, who are a little bit later in their their sales career. So they've done this type of work before they've been A's. They've been outside salespeople, but they liked the prospecting side of things. So we will sometimes hire part time STRS but they're still dedicated to a program might have two part time folks on one program.

Jim Barnish 8:54

So you're not the cheap option. That's good. Not the cheap. But you guys are really effective option. Yeah, no, I the reason I say that is, I see a lot of cheap options out there. Right. And part of me, you know, wanting to have you on the podcast is to talk about how the cheap option isn't always the best option. Right? Sometimes it's, it's, you always get what you pay for it. Let's start there. But I think a lot of businesses see an SDR as this low level resource that reports to the AE. And that ultimately is there to you know, do all the bottom feeding work. And that's just so untrue. I mean, they are a partner to account executives, they are their mission critical for a sales organization when done right. And they are one of the most important resources in the organization because without what they do gain selling anything. So, you know, it's it's kind of, you know, it's something that I'm pretty passionate about because you know, we do a lot of work with creating predictive revenue, bringing folks like you and to do what You do is, as is so important towards growth and towards value creation. So I'm just curious what, what landed you on that value because I would say out of all out of 20 firms like yours, 19 of them focus on the cheap options. They you know, hiring interns or hiring, you know, entry level folks that they drive their methodology worth. And I don't think that method works, I think it can work in certain discrete situations, but from a broader sense of what works and what doesn't your method. And your way of hiring experience reps is what really drives value. So how did you land on that? Did you experiment a little bit on the on the cheap side and land there? Or did you know that this was the path from day one?

Yeah, it's just my mentality, I feel like if I'm ever going to do something, I'm going to do it right. And so I never want to cut corners. And so we've always been a high not not only recruiting experienced folks, but a high touch agency, because I think to do this, well, you can't. From my perspective, you can't just throw things at the wall, and you can't just like throw some STRS together, throw some scripts together. And just hope it hope it works. It is a it's a process. And it's a detailed process where you've got to build a good strategy, a good initial strategy that you think is going to work and spend some time on that, then you got to test it, I mean, the way we do it, we build a demand generation playbook. So we're building almost like a mini consulting program, before we even start, then what we do is before our STRS, give them phone, our our coaches, our talent development managers, whoever's managing that sales on that program are going to make some test calls and gonna get sense of what's working, we actually have what we call strategic optimization specialists, who's the one type who we have a few of them, but will, they'll go from program to program, but not because they're going to be there for long periods of time, but just to test messaging, right? We're, you know, and we know if they can't book appointments from it, the messaging, right? And so, you know, we test things even before we go, then we do in depth training, then the STRS work, you know, do a lot of roleplay, then we start calling, right, so that's a lot of work even before we start calling, you're sending some emails, and then you got to iterate, right, because hopefully, with all that work, you're gonna get, you're gonna, you're gonna expedite success, but you're still going to need to iterate success, right? So we will iterate as we go along. And so I just, I haven't seen a way around doing it in that way. And we've seen time and time again, when we are up against other centers, that might be less expensive, it turns out to be more expensive, because at the end of the day, you're judged on the sales that you're going to bring in. And so, you know, that's the way I like to approach things.

Now, it's well said, I mean, building a robust sales pipeline is a challenge for so many businesses. Can you share? I mean, obviously not asking you to give away your your methodology or anything, but But What's your general approach to pipeline management and how you ensure a steady flow of prospects?

Yes, there's a number of different steps. So even going back to some of the things I said that I left out, but I think are important for for this conversation. You know, prospects selection is really important, first, figuring out the right ICP, and sometimes, especially with early stage companies, it's tough, it's tough to know, they haven't necessarily figured out Product Market Fit yet. And they'll have, you know, have a sort of test of different things and whatnot. But even within once you have a sense of the product market, you got to figure out who's the right companies aren't? There's a lot of a process around that. So I think making sure that you know, the right types of companies to call into with the right type of messaging. So what do they really care about? Not what do you care of custom figures awesome about your product, right? So and we all fall into that trap a lot. And so building approaches around that, and then, you know, having a balance of calls and emails and you can put in LinkedIn to some to some degree, I think it's another animal and there is effective uses of it. I've seen more not effective uses of it sometimes with the way people do it. But But, but also just really not forgetting the phone. And I think what we've seen with some of the technologies that have come in place over the past five to 10 years without reaching SalesLoft in these cadences is that it's given STRS an excuse not to call, they feel like they're being productive by creating cadences and letting go and listen. It's tough. It's tough to be rejected. It's tough to cold call, right? It's, it's tough, but it's still in my opinion is the best channel because you get to have a real conversation and to make email effective and it's you they're gonna do a lot of research and make it really customized or do a lot of volume. So you can you can leverage that but but I think that really making sure you don't forget the phone, but having a balance with some of those other things helps to Build a predictable pipeline.

You know, with this growing trend towards automation in sales that you mentioned, how do you balance the benefits of automation and technology with the personal touch, personal touch of a human in your service delivery?

It's tough, right? But you know, I think at the end of the day, you got to look at the metrics. And if you have a large enough, Tam, you can do some, some, some large email prospecting, you got to make sure you've got a large enough team, because you don't want to burn them, right, and you are going to have to settle on anything else to do it. And you got to make sure you're set up to do it. So they don't understand and, and, and whatnot. But I think you got to look at the metrics, and you got to try different things, you know, maybe there's certain certain high value prospects that you really want to customize some of your email messaging, do some videos, things like that, you know, there's just no one size fits all here. So I think you got to look at it from a strategic standpoint and say, Who are my most? What's my ideal customers? Do I have a set of a small group? And I really want to go after them in a customized way, and then maybe volume for for the middle folks? And maybe some other strategy, you know, for the rest, right? So I think you just got to define it by by market by company.

How do you guys leverage technology at sales rose? Do you come in with your own, you know, custom built and and IP that you deploy into every client? Or is it customized and configured based on based on client? How does that, you know, how does that how does that work in line with your methodology.

So we have our basic tech stack, which we've tried to keep fairly simple, one of the things I think careful of is not having tech stack bloat. So we have actually a fairly simple tech stack. Because I think that sometimes that also can get in the way of productivity in Iran, ironic way. And so we'll keep that fairly standard, we will do some email automation, depending on how big containment is what tam is, and whether we think that's a good, good strategy, or whether we want to go a little bit more one to one on the emailing and calling and so the technology IP, I wouldn't call it because it's not like we developed it, we have our methodology through what we put put together, but it's not like we've coded our own our own things. And also the list polling process and how we pull a list where we maybe scrape websites, what different databases we pull from, we have a whole bunch of them, we don't just use one to build a list we, we aggregate from a lot of different sources. So all that is is customized. But as far as the tools we use, it's not like we're changing tools all the time for every single program.

Got it? Yeah, no, that that makes sense. I mean, you know, the, the follow up I've got there is given the increasingly remote nature of work. And, you know, I know that you live in Boca, but right now you're in Colorado, your team's a little bit decentralized. You know, how, how is sales rose needed to adapt its approach around, you know, b2b appointment setting and sales, development, so on and so forth. You know, since remote work has just taken off,

so per our own internal capabilities, we didn't have to adapt much just because we've always been remote our team, we build a core capability around our team being remote recruiting remotely, training remotely, managing remotely building a culture, which I think is one of the things that I think is is missing, some of the people are feeling like you have to go back into the office to have the culture I think part of that is that they just haven't figured out how to create a remote culture. And it's hard, especially if you have hybrid, because it creates two different types of, you know, silos of people, right? So we're just 100% remote always have been and we've created a culture on that where people call some people that sales reps who they've never met physically, some of their best practices, right? So and I'm proud of that, that they during during COVID, there was one SDR I think they were like in Arkansas and one was in Virginia, and one had a Walmart that had toilet paper. Another one was out of toilet paper for those days and the one with 12% The person toilet paper. So anyway, those are the types of relationships that people develop and we encourage it sales reps to create that that type of culture remotely and an internally so that's the internal side of things. So we didn't have to adapt much that was that was part of our core capabilities. From an external standpoint. You know, I think cell phones have become a lot more important and trying to find lists where we can we can get people on their cell phones. You know, we do try to be respectful in a way so we still do scrub DNC on cell. So if somebody really doesn't want you even though you don't necessarily need to do and be in a certain states where you should. We try to be respectful with it, but But those types of things are, are important because you got to try to catch people where they are. The good thing is the direct numbers usually are forwarding to their home or whatnot at this point. But it's really list less quality is the main thing that that we found it was interesting early in the pandemic, maybe because we really better list sources than everybody else, we saw an increase in connection. I don't know if people were at home, and they felt less busy and less meetings and things like that. I think it's reverted now back very much back to the mean. But but that was an interesting little bump we saw,

ya know that that is interesting. And you guys have been building a pretty excellent team there at sales roads, you know, when you when you look at team building and effective org chart, I know you mentioned some things earlier on measurement accountability from an execution perspective. But when you strategically look at building the organizational structure and assembling an end and good team, you know, how, how did how did that adapt? As you or as as sales, road service has grown to 75 plus people? How do you imagine a lot of a lot of movement there? Like how have you responded to shifts in growth?

Things are really important question, something that was a big, big change for us. So early on, I think like most entrepreneurial companies, I was definitely a jack of all trades. And then I had my first like, manager hire, that was also a jack of all trades. And we just did everything sales, we did. sales ops, we come in to the clients we trained like we just did, right. And that's just not a sustainable way to grow. And what I actually did was I, when I realized it, I hired a coach, which I really would encourage all owners to invest in, who has done it before, they don't necessarily need to be here in their industry, I don't think can be. But I think more somebody really understands how to build organizational structure, how to create accountability, how to create good dashboards, so you can manage your team and the organization. And one of the tricks that she taught me for this specifically, was, think about your company, and what the Ideal Org Chart should be. And don't think about any of the people on your team. Because a lot of times is you're thinking about our chart, no, I've got you know, okay, well, then Bill needs to be here. And I Jill, and she should be here because she kind of has that skill set. And you sort of fit people where you think that they may be fit best. But really what you should design is, don't think about your team, think about what is the most ideal or chart now. And then maybe, so maybe you're at 1 million, you know, what we shouldn't be at 3,000,005 10, you know, in revenue, and then work backwards and say, Okay, I got you, you know, I need to have ahead of a program management or my clients. Here are the accountabilities for it, here's the skill set. If I were to hire Jill now when she fit, right, and hopefully it's yes. And if it's maybe then you can still put her in that role. But no, it's amazing, right, and see whether she can rise to the occasion, and really fit that. But sometimes that we as you grow as an organization, the people you have, aren't the right people. So either you may be and we've had to do this, you know, demote people down, if they're, they're open to it, sometimes people forget to motivate. They want to move on, but we knew we had honest conversations with people and they said, This is just not the right fit. We can put you here. And then you got to find it find the right right people in the right seats. Right. I think that's got to come from Jim Collins. Right? They have a good degree, right, you know, you know, thinking about your rights, right people in the right seats, right. So think about the seats first and then what are those right people?

So when, as you guys have have needed to evolve, as you mentioned, right, your services based business and and people are always your most significant asset but in services business double down on that, right? How do you how do you ensure that you're, as you're evolving in that organizational structure, you're retaining the right talent and moving on from talent that's not the best fit for where your business has grown to

do Yeah. So I think it comes back to first understanding what people's accountabilities are. So in each of those roles in that are, what is their one to three accountabilities and made sure you know, that if they're quantifiable and hopefully they are not always but you know, they can be tracked on the dashboard and you can see whether people are meeting their capabilities or not, and then you can get a sense over time. whether people are actually, and it takes a little bit of time, I'll tell you, once you start thinking about accountability dashboards, it's an evolving process. It's hard to do. First dashboard I created for my people, my departments was crap, right? And we had to say, this is numbers really not teaching us stuff. But But over time, you figure out some of the some of the right accountabilities, and then you understand whether they're, they're meeting them or not. And then if they're not meeting them, you know, you got to coach them first. Right? It's good, especially if their heart is in the right place and their culture fit, you got to see whether they can rise to the occasion. So I have one on ones as I think most people should be with do with their direct reports. That's not just going over the day to day, but also going over the metrics and coaching as part of that. And then I also went quarterly with each of my direct reports. So we go over from a quarterly standpoint, what's worked, what hasn't worked, you know, I also asked them to me what's worked, what hasn't worked, right, but but then once you create that type of cadence, where you have accountabilities, you have weekly meetings, you have quarterly, these, you start getting a sense and giving honest feedback, whether someone is the right fit or not. And they also start realizing the right fit or not. So when you have to have that difficult conversation, it's not a surprise,

ya know, and as, as entrepreneurs, we, you know, we, we face turbulence on a daily basis. And I know, we've talked a lot about how you've grown to 75 people, you know, there's been a lot of things that you've been blessed with, with a great team and a great culture. And, and this, this sounds like, you know, yellow brick road as we talk about it, but it's not, you know, it's, it's, there's ups and there's downs, and, you know, how have you kept a level mind through all of the ups and downs of sales roads, and if, as part of that, if you don't mind, just, you know, maybe sharing a little dirt on some of the downs in in, and, uh, you know, how you're able to overcome some of those downtimes?

Yeah, so, I didn't start with all this gray hair. You know, I have my dad old wounds, that's for sure. If showing right, right, right there. So yeah, I mean, entrepreneurship is the most amazing thing, and it's absolutely the most horrendous thing at the same time. So, and you gotta be No, I don't think anyone's completely prepared until you step into the fire. But, but you got to know that and one of the key things that I've always thought about, on both sides of that is nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. So when I'm flying high, and having an amazing quarter, an amazing year, right? You know, it's not always going to just continue up like that, but you're gonna hit challenges, right? And you're gonna hit unforeseen types of things. And on the flip side, when things are really challenging, you gotta keep a level head and say, Listen, you know, things are not as bad as it seemed. And now that I've gone through it for 16 years, I can remind myself, you know, I can think back on some of those things and say, Listen, in an industry where so many companies have started up and gone out of business, not made it done, you know, stupid things, we have always through ups and downs continued on, and provided a really good service for our clients and a great place for our employees. And so I think reminding myself of that, that, that I've always made it through is really is really important. And how can I actually treat and I, I do a journal a day, I can't remember the name of the thing. It's like over five years, you can write like five lines, and you can see what you did three years ago. And it's interesting, because if you really gives you perspective, you remember what you were doing three years ago, maybe you were freaking out about it. Like, remember that? Wow, that's right, that was tough. Yep. And so I think that having that perspective is really is really helpful. And then so you asked for an example so early on, we landed a really amazing client. We started out with two seats, we grew it to like, you know, this was like a year or two into the business, you know, like 20 seats or something like that. And, you know, that was great, but also it was, I think 70% of our revenue at the time and like 90% of our profit I knew this is the problem but the problem was I didn't have an org chart I didn't know I was doing everything by by right we were doing everything and and it was a problem but but so and then eventually as it is in our business you know there are times and where it makes sense for a client to bring certain things in house right and so we It wasn't you know anything wrong or whatnot you just say grown to a certain size where they realized you know, we want to bring this in house and they were great about it I think it was like six months notice right or something you know, and we worked with them we wanted to you know, and on the on the right note to help them help them with it. But I was almost starting from scratch, right? We had I had a team that was depending on me. There was also a little freaked out I see clients going, going away. And so one thing I said to them, which I still feel is true today, when I had like all hands meeting with, with with everyone and I said, you know, this client is important in and I'm sad to see them go as we all are. But they're not as important as each and every one of you. Because we can find other clients, right. And but what we built here from a culture standpoint, you know, a talent, they have an amazing team standpoint, I believe that's much harder to build, again, than one car. In everyone, we first of all, kept everybody on the team through that that transition, everybody also stayed with us, which is another thing I thought maybe people would get scared. And I felt that was really, I was proud of that. And we sold our way through it, right, we found other clients, not ones that was bigger. And and at the end of the day, it worked out better because we're diversified. Right? And we have more clients to have. So we worked through that. That's one example. There's many challenges, but that's one that was was particularly pointed.

Yeah, no, that's a really good example of one that you and the team kind of banded together through a really tough thing didn't lose anybody and, and got the team together, and we're able to push through, are there are there any moments that were just so challenging emotionally for you to move forward? And, and, and, you know, maybe even you thought for a moment, or maybe for a day, or maybe for a week about shutting down the business or, or having to get rid of people like Were you ever hit a hit a low point at like that low?

I think COVID was tough. The first part of COVID, I think through COVID, a game that ended up being being being an interesting, good time where people weren't going to trade show, so they needed to invest in self development. But I think we all remember March and the world stopped. And I think that's probably the closest I've come to that, you know, like, what, what is going to happen right here, you know, how are we going to work through through this? You know, I think I had one client call me up. And, you know, it was, you know, that act of God clause, it's in every contract, and none of us thought it was in us like a clinic, as you know. So I think that was maybe the, the moment. But I think I, you know, I think I think having that perspective, still with still, even in that circumstance, you know, nothing is as bad or as good as it seems. And that seemed that helps to keep a level mind. And I knew everybody was, you know, on my team, you know, that they were scared, and you know, that they were, we had a good culture, and we have each other's backs, like I, you know, mentioned about toilet paper, this was a setting to rally people to each other. And we had a community there. And so, you know, that might have been the closest I think still keeping that, that, that, that that level head as much as possible. And also, having a team around you, that's, that's supportive, and everybody's got each other's back was was critical during that period of time.

Ya know, it's team team banding team banding together. That's a good examples of that. And, you know what? I guess yeah. Just to flip, flip the script a little bit around, you know, what you're excited for in the future? You know, what, what is it about? What you guys are building? You know, what is it about the general, you know, I guess, let's just start generally, right, like, what, what has you excited about the future?

So, like, I think a lot of people, I am really fascinated, and I think excited about AI. And I think it's just, it's just something that has been, I just enjoyed thinking about playing with seeing what is relevant now, what might be relevant in the future, because it is really such an unknown, right? And that's kind of what makes it fun. And so that has, and I am bullish on the future for it. I mean, a few things. I think some people are scared, oh, it's gonna take over the world. Again, nothing's as good or as bad as it seems. That applies to to AI as is, well. Listen, maybe there's a small chance that with all this stuff, but for the most part, we've seen it with all these other types of technologies, you know, most likely not right. But I do think it has some amazing things that it can do for you both humanity. But also I think going back to sales and business leaders, you know, I just I am just blown away by what it can do on from a product selectivity standpoint for myself, and what I think it will allow us to do moving forward because I don't think AI is going to replace salespeople. or sales motions, but it definitely is going to augment them and make them more effective. And will also allow you to be more effective in in less time. And so either yes, we can have some reductions in staff, or what we've also seen from technology is usually the pie gets bigger. There's more opportunities for everybody, right. And so there might be more opportunities for everybody, you know, what we'll see. But I think it's fascinating to think about to play with it just from my own in what I'm trying to find as a balance with my organization is, I want to be careful, because especially with so many I tools of just throwing a lot of things at my team, because it can get confusing when not. So I'm sort of being the curator now that I have my own child, I can kind of be like the visionary, sort of, like my hair, my gray hair bigger, but like thinking about that type of stuff, and what can we apply to list building? Which is the things that like, we're really focused on list building, how can we use it for building better messaging, iterating messaging, and then we'll think about how we can put it in the hands of the STRS eventually, but I think it's just an amazing tool to make us all more productive. And I think that's a good thing.

From a from a sales perspective, how can how can other businesses, what are some small things that they can do to take advantage of AI or, or any of any of the other trends that are connected to it of you know, where things are headed?

Yeah, so here's, I guess, a few few things. So I think,

from a let's talk about sales, first, and so one of the things I think it is really good at is, let's say you're a sales leader that is maybe going after a new vertical, or maybe you just you're a CRO is just coming to an organization, or maybe you're one of the startup founders, and you're focused on sales. A lot of times you kind of just jump into sales, but I still think it's really important, what steps that we talked about, we build a playbook, you build some type of strategic playbook is a hypothesis of how you want to go after your target market. And I think AI is fantastic to help you do it. So here's just a few steps. One is if you're using check GBT upgrade to check TG T four spend 20 bucks. Like, it's just gotta get it, you got to do it. It's disrespect for so. So upgrade there. But then the first thing I think you do, and I think there's been some talk about this, but I think it's you got to invest it in a little bit of time in telling the AI who it is. So right now AI can be a lawyer, it can be a Home Designer, it can be, you know, an accountant. If you're thinking about sales copy, right, tell it that it needs to be a sales copier, but not just a sales copier to say, you know, you're going to be a b2b sales copywriter helping me build a demand generation playbook for my company X. Here are some of the thought leaders that I would like you to draw inspiration from because of it. And eventually, I think there should be some charging for this right now. It's free. So if you have certain thought leaders, I don't know. Josh Braun, you know, Jill Conrad, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, whatever it is, all those people you listen to, and you would love their advice, tell the AI to be that because they have enough content out there that it actually can get someone close, right. So we'll tell it and eventually, they should be pitched. I think they should be compensated for this. And we'll figure all that out. But right now, they're not spending 20 bucks a month in get Gary V's advice. So tell us who you wanted to draw inspiration from in the way you went? So first, you got to set up and tell it who it is. Because otherwise, you could be putting things in check GBT. It's kind of like, you know, think it's aware. And then what I would say is ask it, you know, give information about your company, about that things you have from from marketing, whatnot, and then ask questions to define my ideal customer profile. And then we'll come up with something pretty good. Make it a little more spicy, then brainstorm with it's not wanting to brainstorm with it will, you know, make it all more spicy, this is wrong. They'll give me three different variations. Great. Now give me my three biggest buyer personas, my most important ones brainstorm with it. Now give me some call approaches you think would resonate to these buyers? And we can get going a little longer, but you can just leverage it for that. And I think that's a good, quick win for sales leaders to use it.

Do you have a mic over there? Because you might just need to do a quick Mic drop. Yeah. All right. Awesome. So we're going to transition this and close this off with the founder five today. So five quick eight questions around you and your growth and the great things that are connected to it. So first one here is what is the top KPI or measure that you are relentlessly focused on

Yeah. So we have it sales roads. What our purpose, you know, so I think it's important to the company that define our purpose. And our purpose is defined as empowering our employees to grow our clients. And we do it in that order for a reason that we think if we empower our team in in, they feel empowered, that's going to help grow our clients. So we struggled for a while, how do we how do we know for successful is our purpose? How do I you know, how do we get to what we did, we came up with a simple thing, where it's a one to 10 ratio ranking, every quarter that we said is how empowered you feel at Salesforce, right? And we have like little things, and we look at that. And we see is our team feeling empowered, we look at it by division by STRS by managers and whatnot. And, and then we know, are we empowering people and like, last quarter, I felt like we were dipping a little bit. So we actually spent some time where I did some, some trainings with managers, we talked about what Empower means to people and we've really engaged in and we've seen our numbers go back up. So that is the number one KPI that I think if we have an empowered team, then we're going to be able to grow our clients, which is what we're being paid to do.

That's, that's a good one that's in in 75 Plus episodes. Now, we we've never had that as the answer. So I love that. I love that it's your answer, because it's such a good one. All right. Second one. Top tip for growth stage founders like yourself.

Yeah, so I said it. So I guess I really beat it. So I'm gonna repeat it. So it says not to be repetitive, but things are never as good or as bad as they see. Right? In I just, I think, you know, you could think about tactics, and you can think about the people you have. But if you don't have that level head, you're just not going to make it through or you're not going to enjoy the ride, right? And you've got to enjoy the ride. And so if you don't have the right mindset, I think that it's really tough to be a growth web founder. And so there's obviously so many other parts of it, but starts with what's up here. And then everything else can can can stem from

that. That's good. That's good. All right, next one favorite book, or podcast or some other medium that's helped you to grow as a founder.

So there's a book called multipliers that my coach actually had me read a while ago, because I thought I was a great manager that I like, you know, was awesome, and helping my team. And she said, you know, David, your team can't do anything, without you asking for questions. And you're great, because you always help them, you know, and you're there for them. But it's really not that great, because they become dependent on you. And you've got to switch your mindset, where you're really finding ways to help them to help themselves in the heat. One of the key concepts from the book is being a diminisher. And there are some people that that you can, you know, are a diminisher right, we've had those bosses that tell you your crap, you know, they say nothing you're doing is great, right, and you feel diminished. But the really interesting insight from you from that book was the accidental dimension. And that's what I was I love that type of person. I don't come down on my team and hold them accountable but something like I'm doing the Glengarry Glen Ross thing when I'm, you know, yelling at them and all that type of stuff, but, but I was because I was always allowing them to come to me or always coming to them and asking if I can help and going through things and taking things off their plate. I actually was diminishing them because they felt not empowered. They felt that I didn't think they could do it that I thought that they needed my help. And they became dependent on me. And so if that mindset shift, even though my intentions were good, I wasn't being a good manager.

That's a good that's a really, that's a really good and that's also something that that I've struggled with a lot, you know, that you say you trust the team, but do you trust the team? Right? And the you delegate tasks, but but do you do truly delegate? Right? So that's, you know, that's my coaches worked with me for a while on that one, too. It's hard. It's still hard.

I haven't sold yet, but I got better. So that's good.

Same, same. All right. Next one is a tip that counters traditional wisdom.

Yeah, so going back to sales are going back to me. You know, and I don't know if you can tell or not, but I am introvert, and I'm an introverted person, you know, if I'm in a room you know, I you know, or networking, I've got to push myself and once I get into a conversation like this, I get animated and things like that, but I'm not like the type of just you know, going up and you know, schmoozing and whatnot. I got to push myself in for a while, you know, people were like, oh, So you're introverted and whatnot. But I realized in I've been good at sales my whole life. And I started saying, Hi, why do people not think that? And why am I good? Right, you know. And I realized that there are superpowers as an introvert, and one of the key superpowers is my ability just to listen, not just listen, but but really hear people and know what they're kind of my EQ is really high like to feel what they're feeling. And by really understanding people through sales conversations, and just conversations in general, through discovery calls, I'm able to then be able to be a great salesperson, because then I can really talk to them about what their issues are, what their challenges are. And so my advice is counters traditional wisdom is that when you're hiring salespeople, be careful with the stereotypes around sales, and really think about what makes a good salesperson and allow those people to really, you know, see whether they're good listener, see what they're doing? Because sometimes, you know, the stereotype is, I won't say Ron was this great extrovert salespeople. I'm not saying that. But introverted salespeople can be amazing. They just have a different skill set that they draw.

Yeah, no. Well, well said, If I were to look at like my top 10 salespeople list, I would say at least seven or eight of them were what I would consider extroverted introvert. So naturally introverted, but enjoy the conversation. Right. So I put you in, in that category. Yeah. That's, that's, that's awesome. All right. Cool. So last one here. What is the last one last one, what is going to be the title of your autobiography when you've achieved everything that you set out to give it?

I'm going to do a weird punt on this one. But I think it sends the right message is that I would like the true success would be my kids writing the title to my autobiography, and it's something that I can be proud of.

That's cool. So what, what would that be called?

So what would I want them to call my auto auto biography? Yeah. How about this? My kids put my dad put me first.

Oh, that's, I love that. I love it. That's awesome. All right. Well, David, you've given so much to our audience today. Time for a little bit of self promotion. How? How can those listening help you out?

Yeah, so I, you know, I think just engaging with me, I'm active on LinkedIn. So you know, connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, hit me up with any thoughts you have about today or any ideas you have any questions you have. So that is always just great to engage with people meet new new people. And, and you know, so I'm David Krieger, LinkedIn. And obviously, my company is sales road, so you can check us out there. But you know, just love to hear from people and get everyone's stuff. It's

excellent. David, thank you for for joining us on the dirt and audience. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to our podcast on your preferred platform. We love bringing you insightful guests like David to help you navigate the journey of entrepreneurship in the dirt, so be sure to tune in. Thanks, David.

Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

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