Podcast 119: The Beginning of a Sales Career With Lauren Bailey

You may well have heard of GirlsClub, it was set up by Lauren Bailey to help coach and celebrate women in sales and their success’ in the profession.

You may well have heard of GirlsClub, it was set up by Lauren Bailey to help coach and celebrate women in sales and their success’ in the profession. This week Lauren is our guest on the podcast and together with John, they covered a bunch of topics. Women in sales being one, getting a good start in your sales career and a look into why being a hunter in sales is harder now than ever…

In this podcast, you’ll learn:

1 Actionable Way To Hire More Women In Sales

Getting Off The Ground When Starting In Your Sales Career

Why Being a Hunter In Sales Is Harder Now Than Ever

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1 Actionable Way To Hire More Women In Sales

Lauren Bailey: I get calls every single week saying “I’m trying really hard to be diverse in my hiring and I haven’t had a single woman apply” – and that’s what we own. You know what I mean? That’s where we’re trying to make the change.

John Barrows: Yeah. And I think there’s a little bit of ignorance to that in the sense that we don’t know what we don’t know. I mean, Lori Richardson, one of the things she opened up my eyes to awhile back was just even how job descriptions were written. Literally the words that get put in job descriptions automatically deter women because it’s very male driven language.

Lauren Bailey: No, literally I found out I was doing it. So I’ve started a girls club, I’m passionate, I am a chick and my job descriptions were also male focused. So the second tip I learned in that arena, is don’t put everything need to be able to do on the job. Because if there’s 10 things on the job description, a woman won’t raise your hand unless she has all 10.

Whereas the guys, I notice more times apply if they’re at 60% when the women probably would not. So reduce the number of things that you’re looking for as requirements. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t want 10 things, but if you’re advertising 10 you’re going to reduce the number of women who raise their hand.

Getting Off The Ground When Starting In Your Sales Career

Lauren Bailey: So if we’re looking things from a rep point of view, way back when, how did you decide what works for you? You tried stuff out. So, I think that the first strategy I would recommend is not what you probably think I’m going to say. And that is how do you win faster. So, remember Moneyball. With the Oakland days, Brad Pitt for the ladies out there, it was all about investing in the guys who can get on first. Not the biggest name, not the best pitcher, not that outfielder. If you can get on first base, I want you on my team because you can’t get home if you can’t get on first.

So focus on first base first, and what’s first base in sales? It’s getting conversations. So get smart about how you’re attacking your lead list or your book. Jump in and sales qualify it. And I’ll come back to that in a second because it’s not a big thing out there and I think it should be. Get better at your introductions in your voicemails.

Quit trying to sell so hard and just get people to have a conversation with you. That to me is where I’d like everybody to start. That builds confidence as well. If you think of young reps and you go with them in the first month on the phones and you’re asking, how was that call? The truth is they don’t f***ing know because it was just like it was moving so fast. And who said what? That’s why I love Gong.io and chorus.ai and ExecVision and all of the recording tools.

Why Being a Hunter In Sales Is Harder Now Than Ever

Lauren Bailey: 15 years ago we had rounded sellers, right? You were a hunter. You were a farmer. Just to make it as simple as possible. You probably had a rep title or an executive title or whatever. We didn’t have BDRs, Aes, account managers, customer success. Right now I would say most organizations have at least two segments. I think the problem with that is this, when I was back trying to hire and great sellers in the dark ages, the hunting was the hard part. The farming was the easy part. I mean, can we agree on that?

John Barrows: Oh, 100%.

Lauren Bailey: That’s why I’m like, no, cold calling isn’t dead. It’s the rise of marketing is trying to make it easier and less cold.

But it’s the hardest part of the job is the hunting and now that’s where we start most most people in their sales career. Almost everyone BDR, SDR. That entry-level tip of the spear role is literally the hardest part of sales and we have explosive growth expectations and we can thank SaaS for that. SaaS has given us a lot of fabulous things. I mean, 1 of every 10 companies makes it and they’ve got to carry the rest of the losers.

So the expectation is explosive high to the right, right. Disruptive Growth. Now when you do that, you’re in a God damn hurry to get results. So I’m going to onboard 20 BDRs, I’ve got no training because most don’t and I need them to succeed as fast as possible, which means I’m not putting time into the care and feeding and development of these human beings, right? I’m going to give them a ton of tools. I’m going to give a killer standard process. Then give them a script to follow and they’re going to burn out faster every year.

That’s a wrap. Join us next time

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