Episode 88 | Let Your Personality Be the Script - Maggie Maloney

In this episode of Uncopyable Women in Business, I sit down with Maggie Maloney, Global Lead for Strategic Account Development and Enablement at Televerde, to explore her unique journey from working in sales while incarcerated to building a successful career in tech. Maggie shares key strategies like treating sales as a conversation, using corporate improv to keep interactions natural, and replacing rigid scripts with flexible guides. We discuss the importance of active listening, strategic selling, and how to walk away when a sale isn’t the right fit. Whether you’re new to sales or a seasoned pro, this episode offers practical tips for building authentic customer relationships and long-term trust.

About Maggie:

Maggie Maloney is a Sales Development Leader and Mentor with over a decade of experience in generating opportunities and building pipelines. With a diverse background spanning tech and startups, she believes sales is a human experience, driven by authentic conversations. Passionate about mentoring junior talent, Maggie excels in outbound strategies, combining the science of sales with the art of active listening and communication.

Reach Maggie:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-maloney/
twitter.com/MargaretM86

Resources:
Book: Improv(e) Your Conversations
https://a.co/d/cB11v2C

Kay Miller interviews women in sales with proven track records, as they share their experiences, success strategies and tools you can use to crush your sales goals. Kay has a history of sales success, earning the nickname “Muffler Mama” when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world. Kay and her guests deliver actionable insights and real-world tools that will help you overcome obstacles, adopt a winning mindset, and maximize your sales results.

Kay is the author of the book, Uncopyable Sales Secrets – How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell the Competition. Go to Amazon.com and search “Uncopyable Sales Secrets” to order the book, or click the link below.

Contact:
kay@uncopyablesales.com
linkedin.com/in/millerkay
Order Uncopyable Sales Secrets: amzn.to/35dGlYZ

Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:00  Welcome to UN Copyable Women in Business. I'm your host, Kay Miller. Also known as Muffler Mama. Now, I don't know if you're an entrepreneur, business owner, sales professional, or part of an organization, but I do know that you want to be more successful, earn more money, and make a bigger impact. Stay tuned as I, along with my guests, give you marketing, sales, and personal branding strategies that will give you an unstoppable advantage. I am here with Maggie Maloney, and Maggie is the global lead for strategic account development and enablement at Tel Verde. Maggie manages a team of six sales development representatives who support the company's internal sales team, generating new business through outbound prospecting. That's a lot. Maggie, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 00:00:58  Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it is a lot. It's a lot.
Speaker 1 00:01:03  And I was I try to keep the intros short, but you do so much and I don't want to sell you short. Basically, I want to mention that I believe the person who recommended you was Celeste Burke.
Speaker 1 00:01:16  Nicely, and I just interviewed her. It's episode 86, if you're listening. Now go back and make sure you listen to Celeste. And I was also interested to find out that you met through an online course, gap selling. And one of the things you said you're good at or one of your strengths is networking and relationships. So that's proof that you are.
Speaker 2 00:01:42  It is always a best practice, right? Like when I when I attend an event like that, I like to send over connection requests for all of those folks that are on that invite, especially the people that are putting the course on. And yeah, it was a relationship that started at them on that online course, grew over LinkedIn turned into a phone call. And isn't that what we're doing on LinkedIn?
Speaker 1 00:02:05  I can see you guys have a lot in common because both super sharp for one thing, and tons of great things to share. So I want to start out first of all. And in your when we talked before, you said that sales was not your dream job.
Speaker 1 00:02:22  And that's true for a lot of people that get into sales. Tell me a little bit about your journey and how you did get into sales.
Speaker 2 00:02:30  Yeah, for sure. Sales was not my dream job. I was originally going to be an art student, but through life I actually started my career in sales while I was incarcerated. So I work for the same company that I work for. Now. I'm a boomerang as we like to call it. But I started working and learning about tech and working in sales development during that time in my life, and it awarded me an opportunity to work for some really amazing companies in tech. I had no idea how. I had no idea, like what was really going on in the enterprise tech space that my actual first, like one of my first projects that I ever worked on after learning how to sell or learning sales development was net new distributed data management and. Just exactly. I was talking to I, I did a video about this the other day. I was talking to oncology researchers about data management and the.
Speaker 2 00:03:41  Ever think that I was going to be sitting in that role having those types of conversations? No. But what I learned over probably the first year of doing that as one, I really enjoyed it. I love connecting with people. I love helping people a conversation. It's a conversation with a stranger. But it's a conversation then, and I was good at it. Here I am having not a lot of experience, but with that ability to have a conversation and guide it. I did really well within those first couple of months and so I just fell into loving this. I was, oh my goodness, I'm coming up on we're in 20, so I'm coming up on nine years that I've worked in sales and sales development in the tech industry. Yeah, I just fell in love with it after that.
Speaker 1 00:04:29  I love that you say sales is a conversation, because that's so true. And I often tell people instead of thinking sales, think of the word help. If you are helping someone. You talked about being at a gap selling seminar, and if you are helping someone get from where they are to where they want to be and you're providing that service, what's bad about that? Nothing.
Speaker 1 00:04:54  Right? It's. And as you said, having that Conversation. I do think Talavera is an interesting company because they do provide employment for people who are incarcerated, as you said, and then that gives them a springboard when they are out and about. And you had all that experience that you could put to work. I also have to say you are obviously very resilient and overcoming obstacles. And when you're in sales, there is a lot of rejection, a lot of ups and downs. So I'm sure that helps you to be tough when you need to be tough.
Speaker 2 00:05:32  Yeah, no.
Speaker 1 00:05:33  Go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:05:34  Oh yeah. No, I was going to say absolutely. Like when I think about it, what it are like, we always used to talk about it. Right. Because we would have like when I was inside, we'd have clients come out to because we have call centers, their clients that we were working with call out, come out, and we'd get to meet these leaders and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 00:05:50  And it's like being in the situation that I was in, one, that the job that I had gave me hope. And it's even after I got out like We have these situations and these experiences in our life and we're like, are we going to be able to move past this? And I look at my life today and it's three years ago I moved from Arizona, which is where I lived for 25 years of my life, to the San Francisco Bay area. I worked for some very big names in tech, even here, before moving into the role that I'm in now. And it's none of that would have. I don't even know if I would have found that opportunity.
Speaker 1 00:06:28  Like I said, I am so impressed with the company for providing that opportunity. Not everyone takes advantage of it. Not everyone ends up where you are. So you really didn't let your past define you. So we're just going to leave that in the past and go on to what you're doing now, which you are very good at.
Speaker 1 00:06:47  You're very good at. So you are now in sales management. So you have a team of six people that support inside sales. And I'd like you to start out and talk about that. And then I have some questions for you to as you go along.
Speaker 2 00:07:04  Yeah. So I'll use the term muth for our mus.
Speaker 1 00:07:08  And then if you're listening and you don't know moose you need to buy all the in Copyable books. But yes that is your ideal target customer. So who is your moose?
Speaker 2 00:07:18  So our moose is primarily B2B software technology hardware manufacturing organizations. It's primarily the companies that we are targeting and talking to. And in managing the team that I have with. And I love it. Thank you so much for saying I manage a sales development team. Nothing much for calling them sellers. I think sometimes people look at that and they're like, oh, sales development. But those are like, those are the junior sellers. Those are the future.
Speaker 1 00:07:52  Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:07:53  Executives and seller.
Speaker 1 00:07:55  They don't want to be there forever.
Speaker 1 00:07:56  And they're getting some fantastic experience and some perspectives that other people wouldn't have.
Speaker 2 00:08:03  Yes they are, and it's so with my team, I really focus on two key areas of the sales process. So a lot of times sales development teams will focus on just the prospecting piece. But in thinking about where are they going and what is their career, where, where do they want to go with their career? I work very closely with my team on both prospecting and discovery. So those first two stages and that's where like having them read gaps, selling, doing trading's really diving into that. Because one of the things I've heard over years of listening to calls is we fall into this pattern of our agenda and we lose the human connection in that. And so I work a lot with them on active listening and maintaining flow. And there's these fundamentals of understanding what's going on today. What are they looking to accomplish which challenging in between that and ultimately, what impact does that have to really figure out. Can you help somebody.
Speaker 2 00:09:08  But like in between like those are buckets of understanding. That's what I always try and share with them, their buckets of understanding. They're not necessarily questions. And so in between that, it's that listening and being the detective thinking like Sherlock Holmes, really digging into that information and getting curious, that is going to allow you to get all of that information and get it in a very organic kind of way through human interaction.
Speaker 1 00:09:39  And a lot of times, the people that you're talking to don't exactly know what they want. They might not realize the possibilities. And as you said, think like Sherlock really being curious. And one question might, you know, their answer might lead to another question that you wouldn't have thought of. and I shared that when I started my podcast, I it was new, I was nervous, and I was like a politician no matter what someone said, I had my next question ready. And that's what salespeople fall into. And for various reasons, some of us have goals we have to make.
Speaker 1 00:10:14  Some of us are just super excited about our product, but it really is all about the customer. And if you think about how you want to buy, that's such a great perspective and then you can help them through the process, define what they want. So what I know you do some role playing. So tell me about that.
Speaker 2 00:10:34  So we do a lot of role playing. So I do some role playing sessions that are one on one with my teams. But the ones that you see most lately on on LinkedIn are popcorn session. So I was reading them, I was introduced, I went to a webinar in sales retreat. I'm a while back, and I was introduced to this whole idea of corporate improv. Right. And wait a minute.
Speaker 1 00:10:56  Let's spell that out. Corporate improv. I haven't even heard of that. And I want to make sure that just doesn't slip by one. And then I want to hear about corporate improv.
Speaker 2 00:11:07  So I am not a master at corporate improv. But what I started reading was another book called Improv Your Conversations or Improve with the parentheses eight.
Speaker 2 00:11:18  And I started to learn a little bit more about it. Right. And it's about maintaining that flow of conversation. And if you ask a question that sort of seems out of place. So a lot of times when we think about call scripts, they have these qualifying questions or these boxes that you have to check. And so what will happen is, oh, I'm not listening on calls or this is what I would hear is, hey, I'm not listening on a call. So I'm going to pivot and I'm going to go into this qualifying question because I know I have to ask this and then hopefully I'll get the close to the meeting. And so with these popcorn sessions, what we really wanted to focus on was starting with some information Because you don't always have to know what somebody is talking about. That's where that getting curious and being the detective comes in handy, because it's okay not to know. And I think sometimes we get uncomfortable not knowing. And so what I started doing with my team is we'd start with a live call clip, and then between the whole team and I was included, one person would ask a question, and then the next person they'd tag someone, they would respond, and then the person that responded would tag somebody.
Speaker 2 00:12:28  But that next person could only answer based on the information that they were just given, so that it was very much you have to be paying attention, have to be listening and focusing your question on what you just heard versus what is it that I need to ask? And then we will play it through as a team, because the idea behind improv is that you improv comedy, you don't know, you don't practice at the same way as like a standup skit, right? Oh yeah. Everyone has to feed off of each other, and that's much what we're doing in conversation when our defenses are down. Right? Like if me and you are having a conversation or you're having a conversation with a family member, it's very different and very natural. And so trying to bring that natural sort of flow into the conversations that they're having from a business perspective.
Speaker 1 00:13:17  This podcast is sponsored by my latest book, which I co-authored with my husband, Steve. It's part of the UN Copyable series, and this one's called UN Copyable.
Speaker 1 00:13:27  You create a personal brand that gets people to know you, like you, trust you, and remember you. Order it now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your favorite independent bookstore. Well, that corporate improv. What a great concept. And there's a show on TV and I think it's called Whose Line Is It anyway? That might not be right, but there's a group of comics and they have to improv based on what they're told or feed off each other. And as you said, that really makes you tune in to what someone saying. For sure. One of the things that I like that you talked about as well is not micromanaging your sales team. And I think that is a big mistake that leaders will make. I'm not sure if you said micromanaging. I think you said in Overengineering or something. Why are you passionate about that concept?
Speaker 2 00:14:25  It all ties into that conversational piece when it comes to the overengineering of the talk track, right is there's the stage. We all know the stages of the sales, but that says there's prospecting, there is discovery, there's qualification, there's negotiation.
Speaker 2 00:14:40  Like those stages are the same, and there are certain boxes that you have to check as you go through that. But what's happening a lot of times is that we've engineered the conversation so much with these scripts that it's it takes the autonomy, the human out of the conversation. And I think we talked about it earlier. Right. Like whether it's numbers, whether it's whatever the pressure is that's not allowing the individual to show up in that call. All those external factors. Along with this, I have a guide that I can follow and takes that out. And it was it's actually been an interesting journey, as I've taken a lot of those questions away, because I think Celeste called it the Freedom Box. They have a call opening and they have a way to open the call. And then there's literally four boxes on. They have a playbook within their playbook that says, understand current state, understand futures, say what's challenging. But when thinking about getting through both and what's the impact if they say the same or do nothing, that's all that's on that paper.
Speaker 2 00:15:51  And so a lot of times they would be like, oh, hey, you're trying to force us to do something new or this is you're trying to control the way we have a conversation. And I'm like, I'm actually trying to give you more autonomy to just show up and be who you are on that call, because that's, I don't know, I can speak for myself. We talk about trust a lot, like you don't have to like somebody to buy from them, but in a lot, like you have to trust them, especially when we're talking about some of these larger ticket items, enterprise technology, all this kind of stuff. Like if you don't trust somebody and you learn to trust people. One my biggest thing is always the listening. If you're listening, people are like, they're so surprised by that sometimes. And the second thing is show up authentically as yourself.
Speaker 1 00:16:40  And our whole umbrella of what we do is and copyable and most products and services are copyable, but you are not copyable you what you bring to the table, what your story is, your personality.
Speaker 1 00:16:53  So many things about you just even being quirky or whatever you have that makes you so you're really providing kind of a template or a little roadmap, but there's a lot of freedom within there so that the people that are making these calls, I think that's a really good balance. And as far as go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:17:15  It's called a guide. It's not a script, it's a guide. But did I say script? No, you said no. But that's what I always tell my team. No, you said you set a roadmap.
Speaker 1 00:17:28  And whatever the acronym or not, acronym analogy, whatever the analogy is. But the other thing too is I have been called or tried, so I won't say sold because I usually don't buy, but people can smell a script a mile away and I just hate that. And now with AI taking over the world, being personable, being you is, I think, more important than ever. And that is what's going to set you apart. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:00  So yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 00:18:03  And so when your, your team of six is helping your inside sales reps or salespeople, how do they move along to the sale? What is their next step when they are done. Does that inside sales rep make the sale for the enterprise technology that you're selling, or do they pass it off to someone else? How does that work?
Speaker 2 00:18:27  No. So our pretty much our our entire organization is built on like when we think about like sales development like this particular role, like they do handle like, oh, some of the high level discovery, discovery happens at all stages. But I always like to frame it up as high level discovery. So they do understand, like what some of those initial pains and challenges are. But after like their Conversation. They are working with our enterprise sales team to hand those over who take it through the rest of the sales process. So the closing and all the negotiation like that's handled by their sales counterpart.
Speaker 1 00:19:09  And like you said, probably a lot of the inside salespeople, that's where they want to be, right? They want to be outside being sales people, which again, is not a bad thing we talk about.
Speaker 1 00:19:20  I swear, everybody thinks about car sales. We usually say car salesmen when you go in and they're like, they act like piranhas and approach you and attack you. And and that's not how we like to buy.
Speaker 2 00:19:34  It's. And we don't want to I don't I love selling and I've seen it and I'm like, oh, I hope people don't think that way about me. Like I don't want to be that salesperson. So yes, that like it is salespeople got a bad name.
Speaker 1 00:19:49  Oh for sure. And if you are pushy or just answer ask question after question. It reminds me of people that come around and try to sell solar panels or windows or whatever like that. It's a one and done sale, so you might be able to do that once, but if you want a contract, I'm sure that you get agreements and ongoing relationships. it looks like you have something to weigh in on about that.
Speaker 2 00:20:17  I definitely do. This has been something that I learned through throughout my career, right? Not everyone's a fit, and it's okay.
Speaker 2 00:20:27  Like it's scary. Can I get it? Like, people have pressure and thus have people have pressures and quotas and all that kind of stuff. But like at the end of the day, sometimes the sale isn't right and it's okay to walk away. And that's been a big learning in my life. Another one has been, I don't do this early on in a conversation, but if I've had a couple of conversations, like with a prospective buyer, whatever it is, I have asked people like, I'm like, I feel like I'm missing the mark here. Like, how do I earn your trust? And people are very shocked by that question when you ask them. And you can't ask that question and not mean it. Like you really have to want to know, like how you want to, but you can be that direct and people appreciate it. So whether it's really doing your due diligence to understand, like how do I get those person to trust me? And or sometimes it is like, I mean, I've had those conversations and I'm like, look, this year you're not in the right spot for this.
Speaker 2 00:21:33  Like, you're not like, and I don't want to take your money. And believe it or not, if you want lifelong customers tech world, sales world is small. You typically stay within the same industries. You work with. The same people like those our customers for life, even if they're not a customer.
Speaker 1 00:21:50  Today that does take guts to say I feel like I'm missing the mark. And if you use that perspective of being really curious, you could. You just don't say, I feel like I'm missing the mark. I feel as we're talking. Like I'm missing the mark. Tell me what? Where are we? In alignment. Where are you having question? However you say that. But yes, ask the customer and you don't want to waste their time. Or yours. Of course your time. You do not. And you don't have to sell everyone. You don't want to sell everyone. That's why we talk about the moose. And we like to say you want the big hairy moose because a lot of sales.
Speaker 1 00:22:31  And when I became the top sales person for Walker exhaust, selling more mufflers than anyone else in the world, what a claim to fame, right? It was strategic. I you can't spend a lot of time and give the kind of service. If you're selling to everybody, you need to drill down and get that. And I love that line. I think that's really good.
Speaker 2 00:22:54  Hey, that's awesome though. Hey, it doesn't matter what you're selling. You're number one in the world, girl.
Speaker 1 00:22:59  That's right. And I earned the title Muffler Mama. And that's, part of my branding. And our latest book is called UN Copyable U, and it's on personal branding. And so we talk about your vision, what's important to you, what you want your branding promise to be. And then we also talk about symbols of your brand, like moose and the word unstoppable. And the color I'm wearing, which is orange. And we've talked to a lot of people I love that is that. When I was talking to Celeste, she had read on and she told me she always wears red, so that was her company.
Speaker 2 00:23:42  Colors are orange. So whenever I'm at an event, I do often wear orange.
Speaker 1 00:23:50  I like that if you do something like that consistently. Oh, she's the one who wears orange, or she's the one who, you know, whatever. Something that sets you apart that they can't say about anybody else. So what have we missed here? Let's see. We have a little bit of time left. what would you what advice would you give? I know you're a sales leader, but for the actual sales, whoever is in contact with the customer, do you have any more thoughts or advice besides what we've covered?
Speaker 3 00:24:23  I think the only thing I was just.
Speaker 2 00:24:26  Thinking about this morning as well, because one of the other like really big elements in terms of the things that I work on with my team, working with junior sellers, like strategy is key. And even you're like, you're talking about the moose, like when you're.
Speaker 3 00:24:43  A.
Speaker 2 00:24:43  Junior seller, like even Raven. It's like people don't know.
Speaker 2 00:24:48  Sometimes people don't know, and sometimes they're afraid to ask because they're like, oh, are people gonna think less of me? Or I'm not going to be able to, like, they're going to think I'm not confident of doing this job if I ask questions. But strategy is something that I've had to work at throughout my career, and it's something that I'm always trying to teach my team. So even within whatever the moose of the organization is, if you're given this book of business and how do you prioritize your time and how do you look at these accounts strategically? How do we primarily target large organizations? So we're talking like a billion and above. And it's like a lot of those are public companies. And what does it look like to read a 10-K report and really understand that business. So you know who you're reaching out to and why your product might be able to help you think strategy is as a missing piece. And so if you can lean into either folks that you know or I'm sure there's books out there, I don't have any great recommendations or at the top, I'll have to.
Speaker 1 00:25:49  Think on that one.
Speaker 2 00:25:50  Yeah, but like strategy would be the biggest thing. Look at your look at what is given to you as a seller and think about it strategically and build a planner around that, because that's a like, I've never been able to hit my number when I was just like, I'm going to throw a dart in the dark, get see what happens.
Speaker 1 00:26:09  Not a guessing game, right?
Speaker 2 00:26:11  If you start out with that strategy and then just go have a bunch of conversations.
Speaker 1 00:26:16  And I think salespeople, we love to have the conversations. We don't like to sit in our office and think, okay, how would they approach? What's the best approach? How can I learn the most about this company? Yeah, we want to get out there and and do it. Strategy is something that one of my other guests mentioned and her name is Nikki Malcolm, and she is the president of the NRA, which is the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Association. And she's been in sales roles through her career.
Speaker 1 00:26:45  Of course, I believe everything is sales. One thing that she does for her strategy is to use mind maps. so it gets it on paper, and it's a great way to build an outline. I assume most people know what a mind map is, but really it's you draw a circle and then you make all these like a spiderweb, and then you can make a strategic plan that also has flexibility. So I'm going to throw that in mind map Nikki Malcolm that's a great tool. And in my book if you want to talk about strategy. Yes. An unstoppable sales secrets I do talk about strategy. The Pareto principle is the 8020 rule. And 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers, but an 80% of your time will be spent on the things that aren't generating revenue. Try to make that 20% super, super effective. So so I think this has been fascinating, and I love your enthusiasm. And I think you're a great team leader because you have a big smile. You love sales.
Speaker 1 00:27:50  You have a background that I'm sure makes you appreciate every day. And so good for you.
Speaker 2 00:27:56  So thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. This is so much fun.
Speaker 1 00:28:02  But thank you very much Maggie.
Speaker 2 00:28:04  Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:28:08  Thanks for listening to this episode. And by the way, I invite you to join my Facebook group, Unstoppable Women in Business. See you next time. And always remember to be unstoppable. You.