Lori Richardson:
You really proved yourself if you got thrown out of an office. Because we would cold-call companies, in person, and I did get thrown out a couple of times. Yeah.
Corporate Bro:
Yeah, all these SDRs crying about getting hung up on, how about getting actually physically removed from a building?
Lori Richardson:
Yeah.
Corporate Bro:
How soft are we now?
Pouyan:
We are back. I am Pouyan, the CEO and co-founder at Scratchpad, here with my awesome co-host Ross, AKA the corporate bro. And we're here with our dear friend, Lori Richardson, who has spent time at a number of large companies in sales positions, from the bottom to the top.
Pouyan:
Maybe we just focus on for a second, what you're doing right now, and I know there's a lot that you've done to get to the place that you are.
Lori Richardson:
I have a sales consultancy now called Score More Sales, and it's actually my 17th or 18th year. So I help companies solve their sales issues, mostly mid-sized companies, large SMB companies. Also, about seven years ago, I saw that everyone I was working with was male, so I just started doing research on it and created women sales pros. So that's another thing that I'm really passionate about.
Pouyan:
And maybe we go back and say, how did you get here?
Lori Richardson:
My grandmother had a women's apparel store and I ended up learning about sales by watching my grandmother in action. She was very successful, she was kind of the talk of the town. She had fashion shows and she was kind of a big deal in a little town. Well, it was in Seattle.
Pouyan:
She was the OG Lululemon.
Lori Richardson:
She was, she was amazing.
Pouyan:
She was.
Lori Richardson:
And then I went on to become a teacher, and then I became a single parent. I got married, got pregnant, got divorced, and I was a single parent on a teacher's salary and I couldn't support my family. And so I thought, "What can I do? What can I do? What can I do?" And through a convoluted path, I thought maybe I can sell something that's tech related, because tech was really booming.
Pouyan:
What is it that helped you get to where you are now? Because there's probably a lot of folks listening that are maybe at that point, in the first few years and trying to figure out, "Where is the light here?"
Lori Richardson:
Yeah, I've thought about it, and I believe that one of the things that helped me a lot was that my first sales job was with a really great group of people. And people can take you a long way, if your colleagues, your coworkers are not just fun, but smart and able to get things done, it was just a wonderful place. And it didn't matter that I was a woman, I worked with other women, I worked with men, it was no big deal. But it was my next job that I wanted to go to this company that had bigger opportunity, more pay, more... Just a bigger future with working with corporate clients, and they had never hired a woman in sales.
Lori Richardson:
They kind of begrudgingly brought me on, I think maybe to try me out. But within three months, 90 days, I closed a multimillion dollar deal, and it was a deal that they would not have gotten had I not been there. Which is a good feeling because you know that you weren't just lucky, there was timing and there was a lot of things going on, but those things combined, I think really set the stage for me.
Corporate Bro:
I have a question for you because you sold during what many consider the golden age of the late eighties, early nineties. And I, obviously I missed that, but I would love... Could you set the scene? What was that like going to work? What was sales like then?
Pouyan:
And I'll just add, did anyone get on you for not updating your CRM being up to date? Did that even exist?
Lori Richardson:
I had a Rolodex, one of those spinner deals. But my point of view is coming from as a single parent. So I missed probably some of the wild and crazy things that might've gone on, but also, it wasn't in Silicon valley, I was in Seattle, it was pretty laid back pack then pre-Amazon days. And we just... We worked hard, and the funny thing is that I hear people today, I heard this a week or so ago, or people talking about, "We have to focus on the buyer now, right?" Well, we did that in the eighties, we focused on the buyer. Because that's how we helped them, we helped them buy. The difference was that they had to come to us for information.
Corporate Bro:
What was the office like? What was a day in the life?
Lori Richardson:
Well, the first company I worked for in downtown Seattle, I hadn't... I was first in inside sales, and so people would call us and they'd pass around the leads. They call it a red call, "You got a red call on line one," and then eventually...
Corporate Bro:
You got inbounds?
Lori Richardson:
Yeah, we had inbounds.
Corporate Bro:
Real, live inbounds? People are on the phone, trying to buy your stuff? Wow.
Lori Richardson:
Television and newspaper advertising. I remember at one point I had a zip code, and it was the Columbia tower building, which might be called something different now, but it was the tallest building in Seattle. And so the whole thing was that you really proved if you got thrown out of an office. Because we would cold-call companies in person, and I did get thrown out a couple of times. Yeah.
Corporate Bro:
Yeah, all these SDRs crying about getting hung up on, how about getting actually physically removed from a building? How soft are we now?
Lori Richardson:
I don't know.
Pouyan:
I'm so curious to hear about your perspectives on the reps today. What does... What comes to mind when you hear the complaints around, "Oh, I got to pick up the phone and call?"
Lori Richardson:
I have a lot of empathy for people, and I try to put myself in people's shoes, I also want to help educate people. And when it comes to sales, some people are in bad jobs, and they're selling products or services that are not great.
Pouyan:
Lori, at what point did you move on and say, "I'm in sales right now, but it's time to move on and do something different?"
Lori Richardson:
Yeah, my last corporate job, I came in as the 35th employee, and I was there. I was about the 380th employee and there were rumblings that we were going to go public or get acquired or something. And I had gone from being an inside sales manager, because I built an inside sales team at this last company, to running the corporate university. So I caught wind of the fact that we were getting acquired and that the company that was acquiring us was much bigger and already had the corporate university that I had developed, they had something much bigger. And so I thought, "I don't want to sell again, I don't want to manage again. What can I do?" So I asked, when I got downsized, and I asked them if they would be my client. So they liked what I did, they just did not pay me all the money I was making. So that's when I started my company, just out of that circumstance. I got my prior company to be my first client.
Pouyan:
Is that something you had in mind? Was that part of the plan or did that just emerge as a viable path?
Lori Richardson:
No, it's funny. My plan was to come out, I moved from Seattle to Boston for a different reason, and my plan was to go back to the west coast. So it was, I think that they knew that I wasn't in it for long-term, and that's probably why I was one of the people.
Pouyan:
What keeps you coming back to sales?
Lori Richardson:
Maybe I'm quirky. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy.
Pouyan:
I'm curious to see or hear, what are the trends you're seeing now? Compared to, and you were talking about... Ross was describing the olden days of sales, if you will, and you were saying, back then it was, the companies had never even hired women in sales. And now I feel like...
Lori Richardson:
Well, not where I worked.
Pouyan:
Yeah, not where you worked, but you said that some of the companies. So are you seeing that still today, where some companies have that mindset?
Lori Richardson:
You wouldn't think that there are issues today that women still have to be concerned about. There's really crazy stuff that's still going on, but what I do see is that there are some great companies out there that have really stepped up, that have it made it a point to tell people that they're all about diversity and inclusion, and that they welcome people to come bring your whole self and all that kind of stuff. And that makes those bad companies obvious, and people talk, and people say where to work and where not to go because of that, and-
Pouyan:
What do you think it'll take for the numbers actually start changing?
Lori Richardson:
There's a ton of opportunities out there. I think that there are a lot of women that I've talked to at the college level and even high school that have never heard of a B2B sales career.
Corporate Bro:
I didn't know what a business development consultant did, and I just ended up at Oracle when I found out that it was sales. On day one, when I did cold-calling training, I was like, "Oh my God, what have I done?" What advice would you give to folks who now have a fair amount of sales experience and are looking to leverage it elsewhere?
Lori Richardson:
That's the great thing about sales, it's that you can do so many different things. You can rise to be a CEO, you can go to another company, go to a competitor, go somewhere else and get into a role that you want utilizing those sales skills to sell your ideas to people. Or you could start your own company, and you'll have the sales abilities that a first time founder needs. It's like the biggest "Aha!" Moment people seem to have after they've started a company, like, "Who's going to sell? Nobody knows how to sell anything."
Pouyan:
Two questions that we like to ask everyone that comes onto the show. Number one is, what's your hype song?
Lori Richardson:
It's funny because I like jazz, but anything with an upbeat tempo is going to get me going. I don't have a single song that I have to... I mean, I've been speaking for 10 years and I don't have a song that I walk on the stage.
Corporate Bro:
That's okay, I listen to a lot of jazz too, usually when I'm writing, well, almost entirely when I'm writing.
Pouyan:
Well, if one stands out, we'll get some jazz on the playlist. But if there's one that stands out, send it on over to us. But what about your... What about the recovery song? The gut punch song?
Lori Richardson:
Jazz makes me creative, it gives me creative ideas like this. So maybe that doesn't even fit at all, but it's... But upbeat, when I'm selling, when I'm making something happen, and then jazz if I'm writing
Corporate Bro:
For anybody listening, before you go, where can people find you? What are you working on? Let's hear all the things that you've got going on and we'll end up linking everything.
Lori Richardson:
Womensalespros.com, or Women Sales Pros on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, also Score More Sales, same thing, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Conversations With Women in Sales, it's on iTunes and elsewhere, and you can find it from the Women Sales Pros website. That's where I'd love for people to... If you hear an episode, we'd love to get a nice five-star review on iTunes. It's always helpful.
Corporate Bro:
Yeah, amazing. Well, there you have it everyone. Lori Richardson.
