Transcript

[0:00] Tracking activity should not be the most important thing that's being tracked. It's conversions.
Conversions at every point of the funnel. Conversions at every part of your sales process.
And if you're tracking conversions, it's easy to identify what's broken, what's working, and so you can make adjustments and make decisions based on data.
This is the full Funnel Freedom podcast, This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects.

[0:35] I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team, and hit more targets with Full Funnel Freedom.
Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox.
Today, we will be getting ideas and insights from Colin Mitchell.
He's a four times founder, and currently the VP of sales at Leadium.
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My guest today, Colin Mitchell, is a four times founder, very passionate about sales, entrepreneurship, and podcasting. Colin is currently VP of sales at Ledium, where they are helping sellers personalize the entire sales process to build more rapport and close more deals. Colin is also the host of Sales Transformation, an amazing podcast I've been on in the past. He started with nothing, but managed to grow his first business from zero to 5 million in annual recurring revenue in just 26 months. Colin has spent 13 years in sales and serving the SaaS industry, currently managing five salespeople. Colin, welcome to Full Funnel Freedom.
Hey, Hamish, thanks so much for having me. I mean, you did such a good job on my show. I'll do my best to return the favor, but I don't want to get anybody's hopes up.

[2:09] So Colin, I've given the audience the 30,000 foot view, who you are, the journey you've been on. Take us down a few thousand feet. Tell us more about where you came from, how you got to where you are today, and where you're planning on going from here.

[2:25] Yeah, I'll take it back a little bit further, but try not to spend too much time there so we can get to some of the good stuff here. But I was raised by a single mom with three brothers, and we grew up pretty poor, check to check, government assistance, all that good stuff, kicked out of places for not paying the rent, and experienced a lot of things at a young age that no kid should have to experience. And in the moment, a lot of that stuff was tough and I hated it and it sucked, but I ultimately believe that, you know, that are, those are the things that, you know, sort of molded me into who I am today. And, you know, definitely a big part of what molded me into be able to do some of the things that I've been able to do. So, I was a young sort of troubled young adult and my first like job was moving furniture, which, you know, isn't half bad when it's like, hey, I can stay outside, get some sunshine and, you know, lift stuff and stay in.

[3:21] Shape and all that. But the writing was on the wall there. It's like, hey, I'm going to be living a check to check lifestyle and probably never be able to buy a home, maybe be able to have a family, maybe not financially, all those things. And so when I got my first sales job, I knew that it was my only way out. People there were making a good bit of money and had things that I wanted. And so I didn't have a lot of skill. I didn't go to college. Frankly, barely made it through high school. So when I got there, I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do other than just work hard. That's it. So I worked hard. I was the first one in the office, last one to leave every day.

[3:59] And came in on the weekends and rise to the tops fairly quickly, learned some things there, went on to take a VP of sales position after that, and learned a lot of new skills in business acumen and managing people and such. And then that's when my wife and I started our first business together and we scaled that from zero to 5 million in 26 months.

[4:21] That's incredible. What was the journey like going from, and especially when you're working with your life partner, your wife, what is that like going from, hey, honey, let's start a company to, hey, look, we've hit 5 million ARR in a little over two years. What does that process look like?
Not as messy as you would think. Some people think like, oh my gosh, work with my.

[4:47] Partner. That sounds insane. But we had worked together previously. So she had a recruiting background and wasn't too happy with where she was at. So when I was in that VP of sales position, she actually came over there and joined the team and really learned what it is that we were doing. And then we said, Hey, I think we can kind of do this on our own. And we did. And we kept our expenses low. We lived together in a small one-bedroom apartment. Our Our office was our living room, right?
We just moved our table and it was like, slapped two big desks there and just grinded it out.
And then, you know, we hired our first person and then we hired our second person.
It was like, now we need an office. And then we outgrew that office and hired more people.
And because she had a recruiting background that definitely helped us, you know, quite a bit.
Because I think that a lot of, one thing that a lot of like first-time founders struggle with is recruiting and hiring, training and ramping people.
That's like extremely difficult, as I'm sure you know, cause you see it every day, right?
And so the fact that she had that skill, I think helped us a lot.
We were able to make some really good key hires, some with industry experience, some with not, without industry experience, which was really able to catapult that growth.
We didn't do anything fancy, so we didn't spend money on advertising or marketing or anything like that. It was just a outbound sales machine that we built.

[6:11] We kept things simple. Like we invested in good technology for our salespeople and we recruited good people and we had a good training and ramping program.
But we just focused on a couple of key niches that we played really well in and we had a process that worked.

[6:27] Brilliant. Brilliant. And yeah, I'm also a huge fan of process. Now, Colin, you are a prolific poster on LinkedIn and that could sound like an insult, but all your stuff is very insightful and really is about advancing the quality of selling and of sales leadership. You put something up recently around activities versus conversion. And I'm not going to say any more to that because I don't want to spoil the story. So share with us a bit more about that post, what prompted you to put it out there and then we can keep going from there.
You know, I recently joined a company called Ledium and myself and the founders, they're working on something. We have a special project that we're working at the moment. So there's a lot of this stuff that's just like really top of mind for me. And I'm talking to sales leaders all the time. And it's just interesting that if you ask a sales leader, hey, what does it cost to get a meeting? A lot of them shrug their shoulders. They have no idea.
They know they need more meetings, but they don't know why. They don't know what it costs.

[7:40] To get a meeting. They don't know if they're outbound as an acquisition channel is even ROI positive in a lot of cases. And so, this is the thing that I'm... These types of conversations and things that I'm thinking about every day. And I think a lot of it comes down to.

[7:58] Is they are tracking activity as a success metric. And we all know that, yes, activity is necessary.
But I actually got cold prospected recently by a large... I mean, large SaaS company that we probably all know. And it baffled me how terrible the outreach was. Because this is a company that you would just think like, you would think they have their stuff together, right?
And I gave him a little bit of feedback because frankly, I felt bad. And I'm like, hey. And his reply was that this is just a template that I'm borrowing from a colleague to test it out.
Right.
And like, he thought that was, that was okay. Right. And it's like, and I'm like, and so I replied back to him in a very polite way, not trying to be arrogant or pick on him or anything, really just trying to help him. And I said, the fact that you thought that template, it, was good enough to test and send out.

[9:03] That's a problem. And his response was, well, I got you to reply, didn't I?
And that got me thinking of like, there's large sales organizations out there, that think just getting somebody to reply is a win, right?
You see a lot of people posting about this stuff about, hey, I'm getting these open rates and I'm getting these reply rates. And it's like, so what?
Yeah. Open rates don't pay the bills.
Yeah. Reply rates, we all know that those reply rates that you're touting around and LinkedIn and wearing like a badge of honor, we know that most of those aren't positive. Come on.
Right? How many of those said, take me off your list, unsubscribe or go away?
Yeah. So the thing is, is tracking activity should not be the most important thing that's being It's conversions. Conversions at every point of the funnel.
Conversions at every part of your sales process. And if you're tracking conversions, it's easy to identify what's broken, what's working, and so you can make adjustments and make decisions based on data.
I was literally getting physically sick to my stomach as you were telling me that story.
I was wondering if you're going to throw up.
I really felt like it. I could feel your stomach.

[10:28] Grumbling. That was just gross. And my stuff is human to human, right? Like we've talked about this in your podcast is we're selling to human beings, be a human being, have a human to human relationship.
And everything that you told me about that story was not about, you're a number, you are an open rate, a reply rate or whatever. And so we'll quickly move on before I literally throw up on video. And your comment about the conversion rates, love that because that's something that we talk to the sales leaders we work with is those are coaching opportunities.
So if your conversion from proactive activity to conversation, conversation to meeting, meeting to demo, demo to close, all of those gaps are coaching opportunities that could be improved. But to your point, if you don't have the data and you're not tracking the conversions, who cares? You're just spinning your wheels. And that might sound great because you get to go, boss, I'm looking busy." But it's not actually moving the business forward. So when you're coaching your sellers, because sometimes you get a seller who's got some quote unquote experience and they're like, boss, got these great sequences, got these great templates. What are some of the things that you share with them about how to actually take activity into conversions?
What's the mindset shift that you try to help them get through?

[11:47] So I think it starts with a lot of people miss some key elements and we're talking to I mean, full funnel freedom really like explains it right in and by not doing this right, ultimately have a bunch of stuff in your funnel that shouldn't be there in the first place, right?
Which then leads to poor forecasting, missed quota attainment, like it can go on and on and on.
And so, there's some key things, right, that need to be considered. And it starts with a good strategy, right? A lot of people skip this step. What's a good strategy? Well, setting proper goals and expectations, right? Defining what success is or isn't.
And then from there, you have a bit of a hypothesis. Like, hey, we think these people care about solving this problem. And we think that we can get conversations started with them on these channels, right? And then from there, where a lot of people miss some key elements into sourcing data.

[12:45] A lot of people start at the stop at the basics, title, industry, revenue, size, email, phone number, socials, good, hit them in the sequence, let's go.
Like the technology that's available today to actually do this well, it baffles me when people don't use it, right?
For certain triggers, right? What makes me think is now is a good reason, right? Maybe there's job openings with information there. Maybe there's funding rounds, you know, new role, all of these things that you can identify if now is a good time for me to reach out because. Absolutely.

[13:21] And I mean, the ability to see what sort of technologies people are using. So I think that people are so quick to just get into activity that they miss some of these crucial steps like developing a strategy, sourcing good data, crafting messaging, and then from there having this proper technology set up, executing well, and then having analytics so that you can actually make decisions based on data to refine and tune your process.
Oh, and that sounds like work.

[13:55] But it's more work if you just play the sales is a numbers game.
Reach out to these people, somebody will say yes, right? And so, if you do it right, you can have these different segment points of people with different messaging that's more targeted based on the information that you were able to already gather on them.
Then you can reach out in a much more informed way, show that you actually care, that you actually took the time to understand these things and send a message that feels like, wow, this was written for me. Yeah, yeah. No, I completely on side with you on that because it's the – if you plan to fail, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. The cliche for a reason is what I'm hearing you share and for leaders who are listening to this, I imagine there's some of you are thinking like, oh yeah, yeah, I got a couple of people who just sit down at the desk and just start hammering the phones or probably hammering the emails God sent to messenger. Well, awesome, One of those 10,000 messages will get a reply that probably says, take me off your list.
But you got to look busy.
So as you are looking at growing and scaling your team at Ledium, What are some of those key?

[15:10] Conversions that you're tracking, that you've already mentioned some of them, but what are some of those other ones that you really find accelerate the success of keeping your funnel full? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of them, right? So the interesting thing is we have to do this for ourselves at Ladium, right?
Because we have a sales process and playbook and we're trying to close business.
But then we're also doing this for clients based on the work that we do, right?
So if we just talk more like general, hey, if I'm a sales organization, I've been tracking activity and I feel like Hamish and Colin are talking to me, I need to get it together here.

[15:42] There's some basic things that you need to be tracking, right? Lead to opportunity conversion rate. I would say that is number one. How many leads are actually becoming opportunities? And then from there, it's like, okay, how many of those opportunities are we winning? So, opportunity to win rate. And then from there, a lot of people are playing the land and expand game now because it's like, Hey, budgets are tight. Let's just get a little toe in the door and then we can upsell, cross-sell or expand however we need to. And so that's something that I think more people are starting to understand that they need to track is that upsell, cross-sell and conversion rate. How many people are getting in and then we're able to attribute more revenue once we get that first paper signed. And then something that I think often gets missed is sales cycle length. Sales cycle length is an important one because.

[16:37] A lot of times people think, I just need more meetings. And more meetings isn't always the answer. It's the right meetings, right? So you might have deals that take six, nine months to close. And then you may have deals that close in two to four weeks. And so sometimes paying attention, everybody wants the big deals. Everybody wants to dig big deals and they think that that's the right answer. But sometimes it's actually, how do I just get more at bats, with the deals that I know that close faster? So being able to really track those sales cycle length metrics and conversions are really important. And then of course, everybody should be paying attention to the customer lifetime value, because then you can identify, Hey, these deals that we're closing, what is the actual value of that customer, the lifetime value, right?
And so where you're seeing larger values of customers, those are going to be the people that you want to double down on, right? So that's also one I think that often gets missed.
I know you'll love this one. I think that often, where are people dropping off, right?
Funnel drop-off rate, right? Is it after the first meeting? Is it after the second meeting?
Is it after the demo?
Is that like whatever your sales funnel looks like, where is their drop-off and why?
So that we can fix that.
I think that's.

[18:07] That covers most of them. Anything else that you would add? That is a great list. Yeah, the funnel leakage is really critical, right? Where are the leaks happening in our funnel and the days of stage because a lot of sellers, in my experience, don't get that. They don't understand that stage one is one to two weeks and stage two is two to three weeks. And then stage three is going back to one to two weeks because now we're basically at at the finish line. So it's actually shrinking as we move through the funnel. But when they don't get that, yeah, they've got all these things sitting in their funnel. This funnel looks like a stomach in an antacid commercial. And they're like, I don't know what's going on. The one other thing that I want to reinforce that you shared is the land and expand. Going back to when I first got into sales, I've always maintained I would rather have three 10s than one 30.

[18:56] Because I can probably grow two of those 10s into 20s and the other one's probably going to be a 15.
So, and I can close those three 10s way faster than I can if I close that 130.
Do I want the 30? Sure. Am I going to pursue it?

[19:09] Of course. However, I'm going to spend more time, like you said, getting those at bats, singles, doubles, singles, doubles, home run, and then take those singles and turn them into stolen bases and then eventually coming across the plate.
So for everyone listening, that land and expand strategy that Colin just highlighted is really, really critical because sellers love to chase logos.
They want to say that we're working with these giant companies, except they're letting all these other amazing opportunities that could grow into bigger deals pass them by because they're too focused on that new logo. Colin, you have been a founder multiple times. You've also been a sales leader at scaling up companies. So I'm curious from a founder's perspective, when you are looking to bring on your first sales leader into the organization, what are some of those key considerations and some of the questions you might want to ask candidates who apply for that role.
So you end up with someone who actually is going to perform as opposed to someone who his best sales job is in the interview. This is a tough one for a lot of founders because they think that they can, you know, wave a magic wand and a sales leader will appear to solve all their sales problems, right? Maybe you're a product person, maybe you're a marketing person, maybe you hate doing sales and you're like, I can't wait to get out of this seat, right?

[20:29] Sorry, not the answer. Number one, and I'm not sure how you feel about this, Hamish, but hiring a sales leader too early is a terrible decision for a lot of reasons.
Now, some might be like, well, I'm a founder and I'm a technical person and I hate selling.
Well then get a co-founder that can sell. Get a co-founder that can sell because I don't care who you hire or how much equity you give them.
They are never going to care as much as you. Even if you're not great at sales, and you're a founder, you would expect like, hey, I'm doing sales, I'm doing marketing, I'm doing HR, bookkeeping, accounting, all these things, and only giving 30 or 40% of my time to sales. And here's my metrics.
And then you're going to bring somebody else, they're going to give 100% of their time, they should do better than me. Not always the case. Not always the case. Because they don't have the same experience, they don't have the same title, they don't have the same everything that's like led you up to where you are in your journey as the founder of that company to close deals faster and close more deals. So even your 30% might be equal to their 100%.

[21:42] The other side of the coin here is maybe your sales process is a total mess or you don't even have one and you're just totally winging it, which is common for a lot of founders.
Figure that out first, right? And I'm talking at least figure out like, hey, do people care about solving this problem that we solve? You know, do we have, have we identified a customer profile where we're getting good traction? Do we have some messaging that's actually starting to resonate with folks, right? Do we have a bit of a process, even if it's basic?
Because if you bring in a sales leader to come figure all that stuff out, out, you might not be setting them up for success.
Right? So my thought is always figure it out first, like with a founder-led sales approach.

[22:28] If you absolutely just can't get on board with selling as a founder, get a co-founder that can sell. And then even then, I still don't think you're ready for a sales leader because what are sales leaders really supposed to do? They're supposed to lead people. Well, you have no people for them to lead. So what are you doing? I amen to that. I wrote an article several years ago, we'll put it in the show notes called four reasons why it's a terrible idea for an entrepreneur to hire a salesperson. Now it was very tongue in cheek. If you read the comments, some people really missed the tongue in cheek point. But one of those key things was as a, founder, we're always the chief sales officer. It does not matter how large we grow the business, we are ultimately the chief sales officer. And yeah, everybody wants to talk to the owner, the founder. Of course, we're great salespeople because we are the founder. And to your point, which I haven't heard articulated before, a sales leader is a leader first, not a seller first.
So if you're bringing on a sales leader, you've got to have people for them to lead, or they're just another salesperson with a fancy title. Fair?
Yeah, absolutely. Well said. You know, I think that.

[23:36] You got to put the work in, you got to roll your sleeves up if you want to set somebody up for success. Because just thinking I'm going to be hands off with sales, forget it. Don't bother, just take it behind the bar now. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you on that. So now let's flip the script because you have also been a sales leader, at organizations that are scaling. So there was a sales leader who was looking to join a organization that wants to scale, what are some of the green, yellow, red flags that you would look for in evaluating an opportunity like that? Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of things to consider, but I'll just kind of touch on a couple of the ones that I think are important. And especially if you're going from like a founder to now sales leader, which might like feel like, hmm, kind of going backwards here. But not necessarily. Like I've, you know, founded four companies, had three exits and it's like I've done that.
And there's a lot of things that are nice about not having to worry about a lot of the founder entrepreneurial stuff. It doesn't mean that I'm not still like an entrepreneur at heart and I have all of that experience and skill set as a seller now. I think that if you're, you know, whether you're a seller or a sales leader or founder looking for your next, you know, sales leadership role, I think there's some key things that you want to look for.

[24:57] One is really the maturity of the company or the market, right? So, making sure that you're selling something that people actually care about buying right now, especially in today's environment, because there is a lot of nice-to-haves, and nice-to-haves are really hard to sell right now.

[25:15] And so, that's one thing, is really understanding the market, the maturity of the company, and also doing your due diligence, right? Because this is your time, this is your life, this is your wallet, your future, all of these things that you're going to put into a job.
There's a lot that you put on the line as a sales leader. There's sacrifices that you'll have to make. And so, and I hate to say it, but founders, a lot of times they have the dream, right? And they think like they can sell the dream and they sell sales leaders just like as they're selling to investors, which let's be real, the dream and then reality are vastly different a lot of times. So don't be fooled by what you get sold on as the dream and be realistic, right?
And fact check some stuff, right? Because if they tell you, hey, we're closing this many deals and we got these logos and we've got this much money in the bank and whatever the case is, all of the things that you know are sort of sold as part of the dream, fact check some of that stuff.
There's nothing wrong with that. If you are going to put your, you know, hard work, sweat, and blood into a company, there needs to be some transparency. And if somebody's not willing to be transparent. That is a huge red flag. Yeah.

[26:34] Yeah. Any sort of, oh, I can't tell you that, or, oh, that's proprietary, or can you sign an NDA, that right away for me is at very least yellow, probably orange or red flag for potentially, joining an organization. Thank you for all of those insights on both the founder side and the sales leader side, Colin. As we are transitioning towards our time together, I got a few questions left for you. The first one being, you've had obviously an amazing career, you've had three exits but you've also got a lot of scar tissue and some bumps and bruises. You don't have to share what those are with us but if you could go back and coach younger Colin, you can go back as far as you like and say, hey, younger Colin, you're going to end up here, it's going to be great but you're also going to have a bunch of scar tissue and bumps and bruises. What would you coach younger Colin to say or do differently? So you get to the same place with a little less scar tissue, fewer bumps and bruises?
I'm gonna give you not the answer you're looking for because I like the scar tissue, bumps and bruises.

[27:37] It's just part of, I believe that that stuff is important and it's just part of the path to success.
If you try to shortcut some of that stuff or avoid some of that stuff, those are experiences.
Like the things that don't go well, the hard lessons, those are the most valuable.
Though it might cause you some gray hairs or some stress or, you know, financial, you know, whatever the case is, those tough lessons, those are the ones that make you stronger and get you to whatever you define as success. It's such a great answer, Colin. I had, when I was at my wedding, the night before my wedding, we're sitting around having a couple of drinks. And my best man at one point looked at me and said, you know, I've been to tons of weddings. And usually the groom the night before is freaking out. Like, oh, have I made the right choice? And is she the right one for me, et cetera, et cetera. He's like, you're totally chill. And I said, yeah, all the choices I've ever made in my life have led me to this moment, which is exactly where I want to be.
Why would I regret anything that I've done because this is exactly where I want to be?".

[28:41] So absolutely resonate with what you just shared with us. What are you – what have you or what are you reading, listening to, watching that is supporting your own professional and personal development that the audience might want to check out as well to support their own growth and development? Yeah. So I'm more of an audio book guy.
Cool. I'm actually reading again Andy Paul's book right here. So Sell Without Selling Out.
Love it.
And be on the lookout because Andy's coming out with a new book. Cool.

[29:13] And I'm a bit of a podcast junkie. So I've got tons of podcasts, a lot of sales podcasts in my playlist. Definitely, if you're listening to this show, it takes a lot to put on a good quality show. So make sure you write a review for Full Funnel Freedom. Make sure you share it with your friends, subscribe, all those good things. Because it does take a lot of work to put out consistently put out good content for people to listen and enjoy. But I've got a ton of different sales podcasts, 30 Minutes to President of Clubs is a good one. There's a bunch, but I'd say that's probably the one I just listened to today. So that's why it's top of mind.
And then as far as content, the reason I put out so much content is because that's how I learned.
I didn't have a lot of great mentors early on. I didn't have these amazing sales leaders that showed me the way. I had to turn to a lot of mentors from afar, which was reading books and podcasts and blogs and following on social and connecting and doing things like that.
And that's how I learned a lot of stuff. So that's why I put out so much content with the podcast and the newsletter and socials and all that good stuff.

[30:21] Very cool. Thank you for sharing that with us. We'll put links to those in the show notes and of course, we're absolutely looking to sales transformation, which is certainly in my playlist and right back at you, please go listen to sales transformation, leave a review and a rating and subscribe because it is excellent, excellent information every single episode.
Colin, last question for you.
Something to plug, a closing piece of wisdom. I know we didn't talk about Ledium very much, so feel free to share with the audience more about what you're doing over there.
The floor is yours.

[30:52] Yeah, I'll keep it pretty simple. Best place to find everything that we got going on is just to go check out the podcast.
Whatever podcast app you're listening to this on, check out Sales Transformation.
We drop daily, seven-day-a-week content. And then from there, you can find other things like Ladium, the newsletter, and all that good stuff.
Amazing, love it. Colin, so glad that we've got to visit on Full Funnel of Freedom, and I really appreciate being on Sales Transformation as well.
Thank you for being our guest today.
Thank you. of the Full Funnel of Freedom podcast. I've been your host, Hamish Knox. Today, we've got some amazing ideas and insights from Colin Mitchell, host of the Sales Transformation Podcast and currently VP of Sales at Ledium around conversion is better than activity and some of the key conversion metrics that we want to pay attention to as well as advice for founders hiring sales leaders and sales leaders evaluating an opportunity with a founder-led company.
The Full Funnel of Freedom podcast is brought to you by Sandler Calgary. Sandler Calgary's clients desire to dominate their niche and seek to scale their sales sustainably.
If you know someone in your network who that sounds like, encourage them to go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler for additional details and to book a 15 minute initial call. Thanks for listening. Leave us a review and a rating and share this episode with a sales leader in your network who you care about. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[32:13] Thank you for listening to Full Funnel Freedom with Amish Knox. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to Full Funnel Freedom.

[32:25] Music.