I think that I'm really fun to work for.
We joke around a lot on the floor,
but when it's time to get down and get busy,
they know when I mean business.
What's up y'all.
I'm Emmanuel Acho,
your host for Simply Put.
A show that takes difficult business problems
and gives them clear solutions.
No "Sync up the ecosystem" here.
We'll translate it,
so it's actionable and understandable.
On this episode of Simply Put,
we'll be talking with Armstrong Steel Sales Director,
Brooke Gerhardt.
She is the ubersales person
responsible for managing the department.
Which means the buck literally stops with Brooke.
No pressure, Brooke.
You'll also hear from Fatima Mekkaoui,
all-around Salesforce expert at Sales Cloud,
who will help unpack the story.
Then, she'll walk us through a demo
that will really make sense of things.
Stay tuned for that.
We all in?
Cool.
Over to you, Brooke.
There's a lot of rules in steel buildings
that have to be followed,
otherwise it's not engineered properly.
I've been doing it for almost six years
and I'm still learning new things
that you can and can't do with a steel building.
So it's ongoing training.
I started in sales with the company,
so I understand where they're at right now
and the challenges they face on the phone.
When you're working with a customer,
you just have to understand that this is their dream
and you're helping them make their dream come true.
Most salespeople have a kind of fun, open personality.
I think that's what makes a good sales person
is someone that could have candid conversations
and get to know,
not just their project,
but them as a person.
Brooke is spot on.
Letting salespeople be themselves is so important.
I'm in sales
and let me tell you that
building relationships with prospects
may be my favorite part of the job.
And when technology allows us to focus on relationships,
that's fantastic.
Brooke and her team found that Sales Cloud
can make that happen.
Oh! My relationship with technology.
It's not great.
That's why I love having our IT guy, Sean,
there to help with that kind of stuff.
He is also my fiancé.
Salesforce is great.
It's super user friendly.
You don't have to be super tech-savvy
to be able to use it.
Luckily, because I'm not.
If we didn't have Salesforce,
it would be like six years ago.
When you have stacks of paper
sitting all over your desk.
Your hot stack,
your warm stack,
your dead stack,
sticky notes,
all over the cubicle.
So, how do you get away from piles of sticky notes
and endless spreadsheets?
You need the right tools.
Like a single source of truth where everything,
from prospect information
to call data lives.
For sales leaders like Brooke,
it's all about developing new methods of managing.
Sales Cloud really allows us to keep
everything all in one place
and have a 360 view of one customer.
When I first started,
we didn't utilize Salesforce as much as we do now.
And I mean, we would estimate buildings
on a piece of paper on graphs.
And now we have it hooked up
to where my reps can request a quote
with just a push of a button.
So we can have quotes back within the hour,
which is really, really nice.
Also with Lightning Dialer,
being able to track their talk time
and their dials.
It tracks how many emails they are sending
both outgoing and incoming.
It has them in a little bit of a competition as well,
because nobody wants to be on the daily slackers list.
Let's see what Brooke is talking about.
She's looking to find new ways to manage her team.
And because she wants every rep to be an A player,
she starts with sales coaching,
which helps her managers give their reps
personalized coaching at every stage of the sales cycle.
Using natural language processing,
she and her managers can track specific keywords
in call recordings.
They can glean market insights
like which keywords are trending,
so their reps can have better conversations.
Let's say it's mid-quarter
and Brooke wants to check her forecasts.
With the help of automated machine learning,
her managers can better predict their forecasts
and receive intuitive insights behind those predictions.
So when she looks for an update,
it's at her fingertips.
For a busy sales leader,
automation is key.
Brooke uses Salesforce automation to track
lead volume, conversion rates,
every part of Armstrong Steels’ pipeline,
for a real-time view of the business.
For sales leaders,
leading isn't just about hard skills and tech.
Skilling up your team is also about coaching.
Going remote has really helped me, as a coach,
develop my skill set.
I had to get a little more tech-savvy
than I have in the past.
I'm so used to doing things hands-on and one-on-one.
And when you can't do that,
you have to rely heavily on technology.
Normally, you know, when we're in the office,
I'm roaming the floor.
If I hear something,
something they're not saying right,
I can mute their phone and help them.
When we go remote, you know, you can't do that.
Einstein Call Coaching will help me find calls
that I might need to listen to
and help train better ways to say certain things.
Salesforce is literally the tool
that we use for everything.
Feeling inspired yet?
How will you coach your teams to big wins this year?
You can use Einstein Call Coaching
to help your team excel
in every call like Brooke did.
Or use Trailhead to make your team's learning
customized, gamified and engaging.
No matter how you lead,
Sales Cloud can help your team work more efficiently,
right in their daily context.
My name is Brooke Gerhardt,
and this is Simply Put.
That was one power-packed episode.
A million thanks to Brooke and Fatima
for letting us into the world of sales at Armstrong Steel.
We got to look at Lightning Dialer
and Sales Cloud
and loved what we saw.
Are we ready for episode three?
That's a loaded question.
Of course, we are.
Click that button and start the episode.
I'll be back.