Principal Consultant: Frieda Maher of SalesPOD

Frieda Maher jumped onto Sales Operations Demystified to share his knowledge and experience in Sales Operations. Check out all the other episodes of Sales Operations Demystified here.

You can learn more about:

• Frieda Maher
• Sales Performance on Demand

Tools

• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Microsoft Excel

Key Takeaways

An unusual start of the career

Unlike other guests on the show, Frieda’s journey towards the sales operation started with a role as an IT developer. However, her breakthrough in sales came during her time at the Pepsi Co., when the Sales Director saw her potential and pushed her towards the sales team. 

Fortunately, the Sales Director did uncover a ‘diamond in the rough’ and today – Frieda holds the position of Principal Consultant at SalesPod, where she is responsible for providing support to the sales team at multiple organizations. 

Her sweet spots…

Although Frieda has worked with numerous organizations of varied niches, her two sweet spots are:

• Membership Associations
• Healthcare Associated Areas such as Pharmaceuticals

However, Cloud CRM remains her #1 priority when connecting with an organization. Her work in the sales sector relies mostly on data that should be accessible from anywhere. And thus having a Cloud CRM in place is the core requirement. 

Poor territory design is a major culprit of productivity

During her career span, Frieda found many organizations to be following an imbalanced system where the sales rep has varied responsibilities. Her perspective is to optimize the territories in the company and keep the communication channels open – so each rep knows exactly what they should be doing. 

Additionally, the concept of allocating a specific time each week for ‘Admin Day’ instead of focusing on the ‘selling’ is another feature that Frieda wants to limit. According to her, the CRM system and sales forecasting process of each sales rep should be updated on a regular basis – rather than keeping a full day of the week aside for the task.

#1 Sales Metric – Avoid looking at the rear vision only

For Frieda, the sales process should not be limited by looking back at the results and terming them as a ‘metric.’ Instead, she aims to find the single most important or predictive behavior for the sales team that could help increase the revenue and reach its respective goal. 

Frieda’s biggest influence:

There are a number of people who have been a source of mentor for Frieda during her extensive journey. However, her biggest influence came from:

• Pauline Bernard – Principal at The Right Outcome

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