Golden nuggets of Sales, Growth and Leadership Lessons worth learning from former Iconic CEO of Ruckus Wireless, Selina Lo - Part 1

Part of the program on the Elite Sales Athlete Cohort-Based Course is a fireside chat with a CEO. I have always been a fan of learning from great leaders. One leader who stood out and is close to me and built an Iconic brand is Ms Selina Lo.?

I am grateful to have Selina as a mentor; my students had a chance to gain rich knowledge from her expertise and experience.

I have combined the interview transcript and captured my key takeaway from our fireside chat, and I hope this provides value to your sales, leadership and growth strategies.?

It was an enjoyable fireside chat, and I just realized how much I miss the leaders, the culture and the team. Grab a drink and enjoy reading!

Disclaimer:?All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to me as the author and not necessarily to my guest and the organization, committee or other group or individual mentioned. Some statements have been transcribed from AI and might not have been correctly interpreted.?

Question: What is the number one attribute of a salesperson pitching their company and products to you?

"They need to know the basic requirements of the salesperson.?

They have to know what they're selling. And they have to know their customer. So they have to understand before they come that they had better than their homework and see whether I would need what they're selling. They need to know me. If they don't do their homework, that is a big strike. I like salespeople in general, you know, even when a salesperson is an introvert, they have the skill to be open and to work with people. Not all salespeople are extroverts, but they need to know How to work with people.?

They have to know their stuff, and they have to know us."

Question: What is the best approach to selling an innovation, when there is no established need yet??

"So many of our excellent salespeople know their counsel well that they have already developed a rapport with their customers and have their customers tell them where they are going. And the sales, a good account manager also knows what headquarter is coming out with, right? And you then figure out what you need to do is to figure out a story of why the two would come together, why what you know, our company is building is going to help the customer go where it's planning on going.

I'm talking about account direct salespeople who really sell to a company, a large company, where the company has a roadmap and the company has a vision and so you as the account salesperson will always try to figure out the story of how to weave in what the headquarters are building and what the customers vision is and put that story together.

You also have salespeople that are non-account oriented salespeople, there are a lot of channels salespeople who are very successful, Ruckus, for example, we have two kinds of sales, folks like Ren who are major account, they sell to major service providers, major enterprises, we also have people who work with channels, and they develop channels. They don't necessarily directly interface with every customer, but they know channel partners and what they need to sell. They understand the channel partners' business, so the channel is their customer.

So if you're talking to a channel company, the channel company knows its market and the channel company will come back to you and tell you this market is going that way and that other competitors are coming out with that. So you have to do that mapping, but selling to a channel is different. I mean, instead of selling to that vision, you have to figure out how to pitch your story into how do you make this channel partner more competitive in the market?"

Question: What was your revenue generation strategy in the very beginning? Because there probably there were no channels established. How do you find Partners? Customers? And how do you reach out to them?

"So if you look at a start-up, the first set of customers tend to be customers that are sold or acquired by the product developers, the actual technical people in the early days, right??

The technical people had ideas and old contacts; they contacted them to validate their ideas, and that relationship developed into becoming a beta customer, and so on. So you have that track; you also have the C-suite, right? I mean, we all, in the beginning, we are all in sales, I mean, you know, before you hire the first sales guy. So, in fact, the thing that's important is, you know, you build your product, and you have a certain vision as to how you are going to distribute the product, then you do a bunch of experiments.

And you know, I was the "salesperson" in the very early days. I would experiment with talking to these people.

I had two other start-ups I co-founded, and in those environments, we were selling to Fortune 500 companies. And this was a direct sales major accounting type of model. So, you also, as CEO, you're the first one to try and get a sense that validates that that's the right strategy.

Then very quickly, I look for a sales leader. The kind of head of sales that you want at a start-up is slightly different skills than the kind of head of sales that you want for 1000 people company, for a company that's generating 100 million dollars.

And the early sales leaders have to be able to not just sit in the office and make phone calls. These are people who actually have to also be able to go out and sell because they are the ones who are going to have to come up with the pitch. They are the ones who or who is going to have to go around if it's one ROI guy that this person needs to go around too, the sweet spots of the market and test out the story for the product line for the solution.?

So, in the early days of my start-up, I would hire a sales leader who is a salesperson. Meaning has the ability to sell and have a strong understanding of models. They need to understand, the model for different types of channel models and product delivery. So these are people whom I would look from people who both have the ability to go out to the trenches and to test selling the product tests the story, but also who can step back and look at okay, now that I've talked to these people, what is the commonality and how to build a sales model?"

Question: At its tactical level, if I was to approach, a lead over an established company, you probably won't have more than 30 seconds, or maybe two minutes. What information do you want to hear in that first 30 seconds or one minute to get you interested to a second conversation?

"Frequently you meet people at a conference. And, you know, the first thing you need to know is whether that person is in your target customer population. So you have to make that assessment. What is your new mousetrap? And do these people need that kind of solution??

Once you think that they have a need, ask them meaningful questions. And if the person does, then start trying to find out about their company and what their challenges are, and how technology could help them, in general, try and understand their business.?

But you also have to offer a little bit because, you know, at a conference, like sometimes I sit next to someone for lunch, and they are trying to, you know, I know that they're trying to assess me as a hard potential target customer, right? So they ask endless questions. I think you have to make sure the conversation goes both ways.

So other than asking questions, you kind of have to talk a little bit about your start-up. And you need to throw out things that are interesting, for example, your start-up, like among the founding team, what are the credentials? Are there things that you throw out that cause these people to go bing (lightbulb moment!), you know, this may be maybe I want to know, more??

So with like, dating, I mean, you know, it's like your first date, right? You have to get a sense of whether you want to go on a second one.?

And then, if you get that sense, you have to make yourself interesting to whomever you're talking to. So, you know, it's early selling is a lot about your personality.?

And you know, you are a big part of your business, selling yourself, selling your personality, (not selling yourself selling your personality, selling someone to sell…) making someone interested in hearing what you have to say.?

Question: Can you talk through like maybe how those sales models worked? And then it sounds like you're also selling To fortune 500 companies, I imagine the sales cycle was long. Can you talk through like maybe ways in which you were able to, like shorten those sales cycles?

To be continued in Part 2 of next week's LinkedIn newsletter.

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Have a great start to the week all!