Learn Speak Teach Episode 45 with Steve Benson.

What are the best tools to use in my sales and marketing? This is a question many people ask themselves when they’re starting out or working to scale their businesses. The answer is not as simple as it may seem. It’s important to understand what type of marketing you’re doing, what your goals are, and the tools that fit your sales motion, the work you do, and the people in your team. Choosing the right tool is not a catch-all, but it is worth a good effort. In this episode, Steve Benson shares everything about outside sales, Badger Maps, CRMs, and tools you can leverage in sales and business development to take your business to the next level.

Steve is the host of The Outside Sales Talk podcast. His entire career has been outsides sales with companies like IBM, Autonomy, and Google. After becoming google enterprise’s top-performing salesperson in the world in 2009, in 2012, he founded Badger Maps to help outside salespeople be more successful. He has been selected as one of the 40 most inspiring leaders in sales lead management, and by sharing his experience, Steve’s goal is to help outside people perform at their best.

Watch The Full Episode:

During this episode, you will learn about the following:

[00:00] Episode intro and a quick bio of our guest; Steve Benson
[03:26] What inspired Steve to outside sales, and his passion for what he does
[05:22] How Steve built Badger Maps and what they offer in sales
[07:06] Tools that Steve recommends to enhance your sales and market motion
[13:25] CRMs and Steve’s advice on what to go for if you are starting out
[18:50] Some mistakes that people make in sales and business development
[22:30] How Steve started with one idea and all the others came about
[29:58] The process of how educators can join Steve’s platform to sell their courses
[31:44] How to empower experts in your team to be leaders and coaches
[35:52] The rapid fire round
[36:13] About Steve’s podcast and podcasts that he listens to
[39:06] Steve’s most profound moment so far in his career
[40:39] How to reach out and connect with Steve
[41:24] Ending the show and call to action

Key Takeaways

~ It’s worth having someone on your team focus on the sales operations, technology, and enablement. If you have 10 salespeople, the 11th person on the team should be the person you bring on to manage the operations and technology. ~ [11:41]

~ Everyone has a CRM. If your CRM is just taking notes and putting them all over your desk, that is still a customer relationship management system. ~ [14:05]

~ Choose a CRM and other technologies that really fit with what your motion is going to be as you scale. ~ [15:29]

~ On day one, a spreadsheet is fine, but once you have 3 or 4 people that are interacting with customer data, you probably want to upgrade to a CRM, and if you are a small company, Hubspot is a great recommendation. ~ [15:42]

~ As a sales manager, you know what is important, you can figure out when your team is good for different individual skillset, you can feel out who is great at what and enable them to be a leader on the team and teach everyone else how they can do it for your product specifically. ~ [33:31]

~ As the sales manager, you don’t have to be the expert in everything. Find the expertise in your team and empower them to be coaches. ~ [34:46]