Kaizen Podcast
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A podcast focused on constant improvement with sales, operations and technology leaders.
A podcast focused on constant improvement with sales, operations and technology leaders.
My guest today was Greg Dalli from Clarus Designs. Most recently he was a VP of Operations at Clarus Designs. He scaled his operations team by 100 employees in just over a year. It's rare to find someone with so much expertise in the operations space and if you ever get a chance to meet Greg and learn from him, you should definitely take it. Hope you enjoy the show.
Key Topics How did you grow an operations team at scale? What is your process? How did you tactically get into it? How did you even start in that situation? When you're bringing on operators, how do you identify that skill set that you require? How much did the unique role of the on-boarding person move the needle for you? In an organization that large and growing that quickly, how did you guys handle and prioritize the types of requests that were generated and did you generate requests as well? How do you divide your time between departments? How would you make decisions on how to go back to review all the processes you put in place? How did you gauge/define your own personal success in your role? How did you set up compensation for your team and did you have variable compensation? How do you identify on a team if a person is doing well or if they are doing poorly? How much of your time as the VP do you deflect heat from your team versus to manage down and make sure they're happy and give them what they need?
My guest today was Ben Sardella at OutboundWorks. He’s been CRO or Sales Leader at OutboundWorks, Datanyze and Kissmetrics. He’s been around in sales for a long time. He’s been advisor to me and to a bunch of other companies.
Today we dug into Mutual Action Plans, which I knew a little bit about but hadn’t really spent much time understanding. So we really dug into how to apply it into a sales team and all the basics for folks who’ve really never heard of it before. I learned a lot and I’m really excited to start applying this to my business and I hope you’ll learn a lot too.
What is a MAP (Mutual Action Plan) and what is it used for? At what point do you introduce a MAP into a deal? How did you become aware of MAPs and when did you start using them? What types of push back do you tend to hear from reps and customers? How do you determine qualification?
My guest today was JM Willke at Qualia. She has a ton of experience buying products and we got into a ton of detail on how she procures things, how she involves stakeholders, what she's looking for when she buys products and what her whole process is.
What does your decision making process for buying products look like?
How wide do you go when you're evaluating ?
Companies will always say it's easier to implement than it actually is. How are you thinking through that process as you're evaluating?
What are some pitfalls that you've learned from and had to change how you do things?
My guest today was J. Ryan Williams. He and I have known each other for a long, long time. He's been an advisor and a mentor to me both formally and informally for a long time. He's currently the founder and executive coach at Sales Collider where he helps companies build coaching programs for sales leadership teams and startup executives. We started out talking about moving from an individual contributor role up into management positions. Then all of the risks and challenges that come with that.
Key Topics: What would you say to folks who are looking to promote into a management role?
Did you ever have people with high level performance but low management potential?
You're next up, how do we get you ready?
How do you captain a ship when it's terrible?
How would you train people who have no leadership experience to be ready for that next role in a leadership position?
My guest today was John Allen, who's a former Navy Seal and currently the founder of Elite Meet. He and I spoke a lot about how to tell a story so people will listen. Initially we were planning on talking about storytelling in general, but it really moved quickly into how to use social media to drive engagement and followers by telling really compelling, interesting stories. And we got a little bit into life transitioning from special operations into the private sector. I learned a ton, had a ton of great takeaways and I hope you enjoy it.
Key Topics:
How should we be engaging with social media to drive engagement, traffic, awareness?
What's an example of where you get inspiration?
How do you find ways to bake humor into your stories?
What are the metrics that you use to gauge success or failure of your strategy?