“This is what I called the protect the brand where I have leadership, cross-functional and peers. And when I plan to spend time with them, not only hearing about them but also sharing some of the things I’m going to” – Mike Dudgeon in today’s Tip 375
How do you treat your sales career?
Join the conversation below and check his presentation on the Sales Success Stories podcast!
Treat Your Sales Career Like a Franchise Owner – Mike Dudgeon (Sales Success Summit Presentation)
Mike Dudgeon On Sales Success Stories Interview
Mike Dudgeon on LinkedIn
2020 Sales Success Summit
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I wanted to share a clip with you from Mike Dudgeon’s presentation at the 2018 Sales Success Summit titled: Treat Your Sales Career Like a Franchise Owner. Mike today is the Director of Key Accounts at LinkedIn, but back when I interviewed him for the very first episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast. He was the number one Global Account Executive at LinkedIn. Here’s the excerpt:
Mike Dudgeon: So one of the big things I see within the sales team and what I tried to do a lot of as a seller, again, this is your investment. You want to see it go in a good way is as sellers we tend to take a lot and not give back a lot. So maybe a good example the other day where Pete just joined us from the management team but his wife essentially called him out where she says, “Would you talk to your client the same way you’re talking to me right now?” And what that means I like you give all your good to all your clients, but when you come home you give me the bat. And so we see that a lot with our AEs where we give and we give and we give to our clients because that’s what drives the short term revenue.
But keep in mind there’s people on the other side of the equation when you come back into the office. But also as you take more resources out, you got to bring some more stuff in because that’s what keeps us sustainable. If we don’t, it’s going to start to taper off. And again, going back to transformation is we’re Jeff talked about, it’s paramount. We create this whole experience for people where we’re transforming them, that they want to give back into the organization. And I’ve had the experience where people don’t give back to the organization. I’ve seen where they do. It creates the business because everyone’s providing more value back into the business. And so over time, as an AE, I’ve created products of creative processes. I’ve created training, I’ve created events and all hopes of making it scalable to help someone else. More people are now doing that in return for me and the people on my team.
This is something I created with another team number, which out of everything I created is something I’m a bit more proud of is this was a something we are doing for relationships matter, which is one of our key values and we created a board of directors, which essentially is like; who’s on your board of directors that’s going to help you get to your goals and how are you going to help them in return? And so it was an educational sheet but also a worksheet for people to use and we had everyone from individual contributors all the way up to the executive ranks, rethinking about who’s on my board of directors. And so the ask is to make sure you’re contributing back into the business. So protect your brand, this is a lesson that I learned again was raised in Indiana on a farm and it was always talk of your actions should speak of you. You shouldn’t speak of yourself. Well, the world’s changed a little bit.
What I’ve learned is you have to do it in your most authentic self and not be someone just jumping around saying like, look what I did. But you do need to make people aware of the value you’re bringing into the organization also to your clients because no one will recognize it. See, being in the leadership position now, I talk about this a lot because you’re taking a lot of information from a lot of different places. Unless you’re sharing, people aren’t going to know. And so this is what was again I’m not like I’m a planner, but I use the planning so I have a ton of freedom. My wife will tell you like on the weekends I’m like a total, just like, all right, let’s just go to the beach. But like Monday through Friday, I want to crank. And so I have these things, a process and I just knock it out. I knock it out early in my process. And so this is what I call the protect the brand where I have leadership, cross-functional and peers. And when I plan to spend time with them, not only hearing about them, but also sharing some of the things I’m going to, because I’m looking for people to jump on board and some of the ideas and the things I’m working on, but I’m also looking to kind of, not self-promote, but make them aware that I can provide value to them when needed.
Scott Ingram: If you want more, just yesterday I actually shared the audio from his full 30-minute presentation on the Sales Success Stories podcast. We’ll have a link to that and to Mike as well as details about the upcoming 2020 Sales Success Summit over at DailySales.Tips/375
Then come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!