“From Salesperson to Strategic Advisor: Kristie Jones on the Future of Selling”

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Kevin talks with Kristie Jones, founder of Sales Acceleration Group, about the death of traditional selling and what replaces it.

Kristie shares how AI, digital research, and buyer autonomy are reshaping the sales role — and why the future belongs to leaders who position themselves as strategic advisors, not persuaders. Whether you’re a career coach, consultant, or executive, this episode will equip you to adapt and thrive in the new era of influence.




Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiekjones/
Website: https://kristiekjones.com/

Transcript

Kristie Jones: 0:00

Coming out of the conference, I understood that buyers are, you know, we used to say that buyers were about sixty or seventy percent through the buying cycle or the sell, you know, the selling cycle, the cycle before they wanted to engage with a sales rep. That's getting closer and closer to ninety, right? So I mean, they're gonna come on that, you know, buyers are now gonna come in only just needing to maybe haggle for a price at the end. Like I don't, the selling job is gonna change so dramatically. And again, the sales leadership role is gonna change so dramatically. Um, and and you know, I knew I I I was starting to see things earlier this year, which is why I kind of threw myself into some conferences to see if I was crazy.

Davis Nguyen : 0:36

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wayne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Kevin: 1:07

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Christy Jones. She's been in the industry for about nine years and is the founder of Sales Acceleration Group. Welcome to the podcast, uh Christy.

Kristie Jones: 1:23

Thanks so much for having me.

Kevin: 1:24

Yeah. Let's start at the origin story, the lore. Tell me how you got into coaching and more importantly, how you started your business.

Kristie Jones: 1:32

Yes. I don't have the I may maybe I do have the typical story, but I was laid off for my company during a restructuring. So I went out to find my next W-2 sales leadership role. Um, I had been a SaaS B2B sales leader for quite some time, 20-ish years, um, when I got re-orged out. And at that point, really just through networking, I was truly, like I said, looking for my next sales leadership role. And then I said the universe conspired to push me in the direction that I live today. A bunch of things happened within the three-month period of time when I was um being reorged out. So the company had asked me if I would stay on for three months while they were transitioning uh during the reorganization. If I stayed on for three months, they were gonna pay me three months severance. So I said yes to that. Um and during that um 90-day period of time as I was networking, um I had a lot of connections in the VC world, a lot of uh people I had worked with in the past, so I was reaching out to everyone. And it all started with a general manager at a VC reached out to me and said, Hey, we've just invested in a cybersecurity company, and that founder needs to move from founder-led selling to building out their first sales team and doesn't know what to do. Do you think you could have coffee with him? And I said, Of course. One of my mantras is I have 30 minutes for everyone. So I believe in uh the world will take care of me if I, you know, do the right things, the right things will happen. And I believe that helping others is the right thing to do. And so I met with Brian, and over 90 minutes, he took a bunch of notes in his notebook. And as we were walking out of Starbucks, he said, This was amazing. Um, but I don't believe that I'm qualified to do almost anything you told me is gonna need to be done. Do you know someone who can help me? And without hesitation, I said, I can. And so while I was still trying to figure out the rest of my life, I took on his project and he ultimately became client number one of my consulting business that did not exist at the time.

Kevin: 3:17

So crazy. And Starbucks, too. That's so funny. You wouldn't expect that normally.

Kristie Jones: 3:21

Everybody loves a good Starbucks story.

Kevin: 3:23

Yeah. And you said that was nine years ago, right?

Kristie Jones: 3:25

Yeah, 2016, March of 2016, all of that happened.

Kevin: 3:28

Yeah, so that's quite a long time. That's almost a decade. And so if we fast forward to today, who do you help today? Like what is the target market kind of the same type of avatar?

Kristie Jones: 3:39

Um, it really is. I, you know, and that was one of the things for the coaches that are listening today. That was one of the things I really had to, you know, get comfortable with and wrap my head around because I had been being I had been a sales coach and a sales trainer, I had been an executive at a lot of companies. I'd been sort of living in the startup world. So I kind of gravitated towards the startup world. But I truly felt felt like I had a lot of skills I could bring to the table. But when I when you, you know, at that time, if you go back 10 years and looked at my LinkedIn profile, it would have sounded like every other sales uh consultant or sales coach out there, right? And somebody really challenged me one time. It was around pandemic, and I'd reached out to a LinkedIn expert who was in my network and I said, Hey, no better time than to refresh my LinkedIn profile while we've got some time on our hands. And so as she and I were working together, she kept challenging me. I think I can't remember how many characters, but at the time there were fewer characters that you could put in your little LinkedIn profile, in your profile one sentence or two sentence area. And she kept challenging me and challenging me, and she said, I don't know why you're hesitating to talking about helping startup founders. And I said, Well, that just seems like it's really limiting me. And she said, I know, but it's also what makes you different because it's very niche. And so, really from that point forward, I sort of embraced it. I was already doing it and I was getting a lot of business from VCs, but now I call it go go small to get big. So, you know, I really basically now I say I really truly work with startup founders that are in the one to five million range because that really is my sweet spot. And the minute I got really specific about my, you know, ICP, my ideal customer profile, then people knew exactly who to refer me to and who to introduce me to. And so, you know, I would say I got more and more, you know, during that period of time, I did some, I do do some service companies, but I did some not, you know, I did some B2C as opposed to B2B. I did some, you know, manufacturing, I did some other things. And then once I really, you know, I really had to get comfortable and trust that, you know, if I said this truly is my swim lane and my sweet spot, that people that would resonate with people and I would the right people would show up and the right people have.

Kevin: 5:43

Yeah, I'm kind of curious about this ICP too. Like, have you noticed any common themes or problems that these like startup founders uh struggle with, I guess?

Kristie Jones: 5:53

Yeah, and that's the good news. They all have the same problems. So, um, so it's very easy for me. I used to do, um, I used to say I would do like two to three discovery calls to try to make sure I fully understood the problems. But is the the more I did it, the more the problems were all the same and similar. Everyone has a top of the funnel problem. No one has enough deals in their pipeline, no one has any processes documented or formalized. No one knows how to interview and separate what I call the posers from the players. Salespeople are professional interviewees, buyer beware. And so founders know how to hire developers. They don't know how to hire sales professionals. Um, again, I think the number one problem that I run across, and this is probably uh across more than just the sales function, but lack of discipline. When you're an early stage startup founder, some money is better than no money. But at some point, once you get to that million dollar mark, you really have to start saying no to people who don't fit your ICP. It's a distraction. Those people are PETA customers, as I affectionately call them, pain in the ass customers. You know, they take more time, they suck the energy, they distract your dev team, right? Because the product is never right for those people, right? If they're not your ideal customer and they don't fit your use case, then they're gonna want you to do something special for them, which takes away devs time from improving the product. Now they're all of a sudden you've got seven different versions of the product for seven different customers that you should have never sold to. So it's a lot of things that they have in common.

Kevin: 7:17

Man, I love how you shared your your personal journey about like how you had to jump on three discovery calls to figure out the actual problems for these people. But as you narrow down your niche, it's really, really interesting how these common problems that you mentioned are recurring themes and all that. And so now that we kind of know who you kind of help and the problems that they have, let's talk about the marketing for a second. And so I think you said you're on LinkedIn, but what kind of marketing are you doing right now? How do people in general find out about you?

Kristie Jones: 7:47

I do a few things. Uh one, I've outsourced my marketing to a company uh the where the the founder is currently living in Thailand. When I met her, she was living in Argentina and then she moved to Spain, so she's a nomad. But uh, you know, she we meet weekly. But for for the beginning of my coaching and and consulting business, I was trying to write one blog post a week and I was trying to post on LinkedIn as often as I could about things that I thought were relevant. But I've gotten to the point in my business where I've outsourced that. So she and I meet every week for an hour. I use stories from my current clients. I tell her what I'm hearing. I just got back from a conference in DC where I'm gonna dump all that on her on Wednesday and tell her all of the things that I learned so we can build some posts around that. I actually met with her while I was in the middle of that conference, but I've got more information now. And so I think it's very important. So a couple of interesting things. One, I mean, LinkedIn, just like most of these types of platforms, are very algorithm driven. And so you, you know, you have to know how to play the algorithm game and want to play the algorithm game, which is why I've outsourced it as somebody else because I don't want to spend time learning LinkedIn's algorithm. I just want to talk about things that I'm passionate about or that I think are important to my audience. And so we now post five days a week. We post Monday through Friday. I do a newsletter. I drop a LinkedIn newsletter on Wednesday, and I have a database of 9,000 people in my HubSpot sequ um instance. So we also email that newsletter out on Wednesday mornings as well. One of the things that I spend a lot of time doing, and I'm actually I've just come back from one and I'm leaving for one tomorrow morning. I speak at startup weeks all over the country. So I was in Vegas two weeks ago speaking at that startup week. I'm headed to Reno tomorrow to speak at that startup week. Um, I'm speaking at a conference in early October. So my audience is startup founders, and so most major cities have a startup week. And so I do travel all over the country to startup weeks. I've spoken in DC, I've spoken in Raleigh Durham, I speak here locally in St. Louis tech weeks as well. So I find a lot of um, I find good prospects in that arena because I mean, I always say if you can afford it, conferences are always a very good lead source because it's your people all in one room who are, you know, people who are trying to get educated, they're lifelong learners, they're people who wanna, you know, who are wanna be at the forefront of trends. And so I always I've always said that conferences are good. They're not always uh affordable for some of my clients. Um, but you know, again, in these kind of startup weeks, we're not looking at a 10 by 10 booth, you know, we're not looking at major, you know, expenses. I'm gonna fly in tomorrow morning, I'm speaking tomorrow afternoon, and I'm staying for the morning on Wednesday to hear some other people's sessions before I fly back out. Um, I did the same thing in Vegas. So, you know, I do a lot of things to market. Um, I wrote a book, which actually isn't for startup founders, it's actually for sales professionals. So I wrote a book last year that got published in August called Selling Your Way In, the Playbook for Setting Your Income and Owning Your Life. One of the things that, one of the reasons why I started helping my clients hire sales professionals, it was not one of the services that I originally offered, but I saw people mishiring sales professionals, thinking that they were hunters when they were really farmers or gatherers, not hiring someone for, you know, someone who came from a big logo, but big logo people are normally not good startup fit candidates. But on the flip side, I also so saw candidates who were applying for jobs that did not fit their their trait set, as I call it. They did not truly understand what their superpowers and secret weapons were or what type of sales role they should they should be getting in order to get to the top 10%. And so I wrote a book for those individuals last year.

Kevin: 11:10

I love it. You have the whole spectrum. And it sounds like, you know, I loved one thing, one thing I like about you is like you tell the whole story. You tell you told me that you started off trying to do your own post, really struggled with it, so you outsourced it, then came speaking, and then you had your book, and then you added you kind of shifted the things that you offered based on um the problems that you saw in the market too. I love that. It's really interesting.

Kristie Jones: 11:35

I was just there a couple weeks ago at the startup week.

Kevin: 11:38

Yeah. Um, okay, so people are finding out about you. Let's talk about them actually working with you. When someone does maybe a coach, like let's focus on the coaching aspect of your business. When people want to do a coaching engagement with you, what does that look like? Is that like a one-on-one coaching, group coaching, organizational training? Like, kind of curious about your offers.

Kristie Jones: 12:01

Yeah. Um for the exec I normally just do executive coaching. Like I said, there are sales trainers out there. I don't, you know, I'm not certified in medic or some of the other certifications that are out there, some of the other sales methodologies that are out there. I believe in certain sales methodologies, but I don't train on those. So I'm not a group trainer. Sales trainer, there are plenty of people out there, and I'm happy to point you in a direction if you need one. Um, I got lots of people in my network who are sales trainers. Um, I really prefer to do executive coaching. So I do it normally, it's normally two different types of people. Normally it's a founder, it's a it's a startup B2B founder who's not ready to hire their first sales rep yet, who's still playing sales rep, if you will, but needs somebody to come in as the sales leader, right? So I mean, we're doing weekly one-on-ones, we're doing pipeline review meetings, we're doing deal strategy sessions. So I'm truly just playing their leader for them in order to help them get a little bit further down the revenue path before maybe they can get some funding from a third party. Um, and then the other person that that tends to seek me out and ask is a new sales leader, someone who has not been a sales leader before. Um, we in the B2B SaaS world love to promote the top sales rep into sales leader when they have had no prior experience doing so. This is not something that I advocate, but it's something that happens all the time. And so a lot of people um ironically hear me on podcasts and reach out to me. Um I have a particular affinity for females who have been promoted from sales leader to sales or sales rep to sales leader. A lot of women reach out to me. I think it's because they, you know, they sense the female factor here, you know, and there's not that many of them out there in the B2B SaaS world. So a lot of first-time sales leaders, I'm doing some executive coaching with. So, you know, I do, um, I like, I I call it the, you know, we do the therapy session once a week for an hour. I like to do at least three months. So we'll sit down together and we'll understand the competencies that are already sort of in place and then ones that aren't. A lot of times they don't understand things about creating an accountability culture. You know, what are the consequences for what I call bad behavior? So how do we handle reps that are missing quota, that aren't doing the activities that are needed? Um, a lot of them have not been given good sales coaching or training themselves. Some of them are self-taught and they did not come up in an environment. So I believe in the art of sales. Um we are flooded right now with the science of sales. There's a, you know, there's a data set for everything right now. There's AI, there's automation, there's data. But we're losing, I think the art of sales is becoming extinct. And so helping them figure out how to teach the art of sales skills that are necessary when they're not only hiring new reps, but also trying to get B players to A players or C players to B players, that type of thing. So those are the really the two big executive coaching areas that I spend my time in.

Kevin: 14:40

Sounds like the work you do is pretty intimate, by the way. So, like, how do you manage your client capacity and all that? Like, yeah, good question.

Kristie Jones: 14:49

I I know what I can take on right now. Five is the five's the magic number, nothing over five. That breaks the that breaks the model. Um but it uh but it really depends on how many people I'm currently hiring for. Because while I'm doing a hiring project, it's about three or four weeks of super intense and time and very time consuming. So I have 1099s that that review resumes and do phone screens, but normally once we get past the phone screen stage and we involve the client, we actually project manage the hiring process from start to finish. So the client is never left alone with the candidate. So unlike a staffing company where they just, you know, go through a bunch of resumes and send you 10 that they think are qualified based on their vetting, we actually never leave your side. So we're with you every step of the way, including we do the offer, we stick around for the first two weeks of onboarding. So those are very intensive projects. So I can't take on any more than two of those at a time. Um but I can do, you know, I can do a lot of executive coaching projects because it's an hour or two per person per week. And so I can, you know, I can handle a lot of those, the sales playbook projects and putting together all the sales processes, formalizing them. I can, I can handle a lot of those as well. I can handle two or three of those at a time because those are only one to two hours a week of work. Um thanks to AI, things have I've made my life a little bit simpler and using AI myself to be more efficient. So what I love most, Kevin, is a little blend, right? I love a couple of playbook clients, I like to help people hire, and then I like a couple of executive coaching clients all at once. Um, I have just enough ADD in me that I like a little variety in my life.

Kevin: 16:17

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, because you know, even from my experience too, like working with some of these like sales placement agencies and stuff like that, they just like plop you 10, 10 candidates, and half of them are trash, by the way. Right. And I'm just like, oh my God, like, dude, your standards and my standards are totally different, and they just piece out. It's so frustrating.

Kristie Jones: 16:40

So it's really we actually charge less than yeah, we charge less than staffing companies who normally charge about 30% of base salary. We charge less than that and offer a whole lot more.

Kevin: 16:50

I have so many questions there, but that's probably for a different podcast.

Kristie Jones: 16:53

Okay. We can do a hiring only podcast.

Kevin: 16:55

Yeah. The other thing I'm very curious about too is like um one of the things that a lot of people struggle with listening to this is pricing strategy as well. And so you being a salesperson, sales expert. Um, I of course you don't need to give any h uh hard numbers, but I'm very curious your thoughts on pricing strategies, especially with the executive coaching uh part. Do you I know some coaches they charge hourly, some do project-based, some do value-based, some do retainers and stuff. Where have you kind of gravitated to, I guess?

Kristie Jones: 17:26

Yeah, um, I was grateful and privileged to have a mentor when I first started. I fell into a situation where I was I was doing a fractional sales leadership role and I was working my way in to someone who was working their way out. And he was deciding no longer to do sales consulting and coaching in that way. And so, but as we were, as we were overlapping, he took me on as a project, if you will, and I became his mentee. And one of the first things he said to me is, do not charge hourly. Nobody likes lawyers, nobody likes accountants, and nobody likes the hourly charge. And he said, Plus, like, what are you gonna do when they call you on a Friday night, you know, for 15 minutes or a quick seven-minute question, like, how are you gonna charge for that? He goes, People get really disagreeable when they get that bill, the invoice, when it is listed all of the seven minute calls that you've had, that they rounded up to 30 minutes. And he said, You just don't want to do it. So um, I do the, I do um project base for most of it and retainers for some of it. So if I'm doing the sales process playbook build out, that's a project. And I charge I charge a set fee half up front before we get started and half when I deliver the product, right? When I deliver the final playbook. For hiring, it's the same situation. It's a set fee. The fees are based on the type of individual I'm hiring. The more, you know, if I'm hiring an enterprise AE with a, you know, $1.5 million quota, much different than hiring an SDR who needs to get 10 appointments a month. So uh, but same concept. Half up front before we drop the job description and half when the offer letter is signed. So I hold myself accountable. So again, the quicker we do these things, quicker I get my second half of the money. As far as the executive coaching is concerned, I do do a monthly retainer. So what I say is this is the price per month, and I need a three-month minimum because I don't think I can make any impact with anybody in under three months. And then as part of that, we decide how many times a week we're going to be meeting. It's normally one, sometimes it's two. But then I say, as part of that package, and actually as part of all of my packages, they have full access to me at any time or anybody on my team that they need access to about anything. So whether it has to do with hiring or not, whether it has to do with building out a sales playbook or not, if you have a question and it's sales related that you think, you know, as an expert, I can I can help you with, you get full access to me through email, text, phone, whatever you need, Slack. I'm on a lot of people's Slack channels. Um, so as part of that, you can call me outside of our scheduled therapy sessions um and ask me anything you want.

Kevin: 19:48

And I'm not sure if you can share this, but do you tend to price the client like based off how big the organization is? Or do you have like, do you do set rates for everything?

Kristie Jones: 19:58

In most cases, it's set rates. For executive coaching, it doesn't matter whether you're a founder who needs executive coaching or a brand new sales leader. Um, I think the value is the same and the time commitment's the same. That normally ranges around, and I don't charge a ton for it. It normally ranges around two grand a month. Um and we do, you know, four, four set if that's for four sessions and any time that you need me outside of that. If we need to meet more frequently, then the price will go up from there.

Kevin: 20:22

Yeah, I see. Thank you for sharing that, by the way. I've just been so curious because um, you know, I I'm I'm also in sales. I've been head of sales for a lot of YouTubers and stuff like that too. And, you know, as I'm like reading different books, some people say you should charge value base and stuff, and you should always price a client. And so I'm very curious about how different like sales experts in the industry think about it. But it's really interesting how you think about it as well.

Kristie Jones: 20:46

Yeah, I'm part of um I'm part of a group called women's sales experts. We're female sales consultants. There's 35 of us across the US. And I know the answer to a lot of these questions because we do an annual pricing survey. So I know what people are price charging for things, and for the most part, no one's charging hourly. I'll only charge hourly if a former client calls me and says, Hey, can you do a final interview with a candidate? Or, you know, like, hey, the executive team wants to bat an idea around you, you know, can you spare an hour for us? I'll charge hourly at that point. But in general, I prefer not to do that. Um, and I'll do it on one-off cases like that. But most people are not doing value-based pricing either. I think one of the reasons is value is subjective, right? It's in the eye of the beholder. I think I add a lot of value. I think my clients would agree, but putting a price on that seems sort of like um the you know, the visa commercial things are, you know, priceless, right? So how do you convince somebody that this is the price you should be paying for the value you're gonna receive when you don't know yet, like, you know, how many, like how many new clients might you get once you put a formal playbook together and I teach you the secret sauce of making sure you've got enough pipeline in order to close deals? Sales podcast, but you know.

Kevin: 21:54

One of the things I'm also curious about is you're coming up upon almost a decade in your business. And so I'm curious about your future goals. Like, where do you want this coaching business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any secret dreams, ambitions no one knows about, desires to scale? I would love to hear.

Kristie Jones: 22:11

Yep. Good question. I I'm actually thinking maybe the opposite. I'm starting to think about getting out. I think it's, you know, I I just came back from this conference that I mentioned, and one of the breakout sessions was a room full of coaches and consultants. And there were probably, I don't know, 70 of us in the room. And I I I think the the space is getting crowded. And here's the reason why the white collar recession is real, and a lot of people are losing their jobs and they're having trouble finding a job. So it's taking the average sales. So in my world, I was giving you my stats, in the average B2B SaaS world, if you lose your job, it's taking an average of 27 weeks for you to find your next role. Sales leaders, the median amount of time a sales leader, so like a CRO, a chief revenue officer, VP of sales is staying in their role is 12 to 15 months, right? And so a lot of people who are out of, who've lost their job and are struggling to find a new one are getting into our business, right? They're getting into the coaching and consulting business. I I met a guy at the conference, sat next to me, we were at a session together, and that was his situation. And there were a lot of people in the room that that was their situation. And so I think the space is gonna get really crowded. I think that AI is gonna change, is gonna dramatically change things to the point where there will be more white-collar workers out of work than ever before. And so I'm really trying to decide. I'm either gonna lean in, to be honest with you, I'm either gonna lean in. So I think as an example, I think the playbook business that I have, that service is gonna be out of business in two years. I think AI will be able to do that. The question is, should I be by building an AI agent to help my startup founders build their own playbook? So either I'm gonna have to lean way in and say, I'm gonna take lovable and I'm gonna build out an app, a playbook app for B2B startup founders around a million dollars in revenue. And I'm gonna build it out. So all you have to do is I'm gonna ask you all these questions. You're gonna answer all these questions, and then the playbook will be developed for you. I think I'm gonna need to actually potentially double down on the hiring help part of my services, because there are gonna be more people out of work than ever before that are gonna be qualified for the job, so to speak. And I think you're gonna get down to where you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I have seven qualified candidates, but I only have budget for one or two. And I think that's where my expertise and my team's expertise will come in. You know, you're gonna have more A players, if you will, who are gonna be available to you, but only you still only have budget for X. And so I think it makes sense for me to maybe lean into that a little bit more. Um, and then, you know, I've had a lot of people approach me about doing individual coaching. And I'll be honest, I don't have any outside of the executive coaching, I mean individuals for people who are out of work. Like, you know, would you coach someone who's out of work to try to find a job? It feels like a couple of things. Like morally, I feel a little bit bad about asking people to spend money when I know they don't have it. And then in general, I don't know that I'm the best person to do that.

Kevin: 25:01

Yeah.

Kristie Jones: 25:02

Um, and so I have been doing some webinars for those who are out of work. Um, I have been giving some advice about what your resume should look like, how to get some attention. More and more again, resumes are being run through automation, AI. And so there's certain things that need to show up on your resume. But in general, I don't think, you know, I'm not a life coach in that way. I'm not a work coach, find your next job role coach in that way. But I'm I'm seeing the future. I'm attending a lot of conferences this year so I can get ahead of the trends. Um, but I think it's gonna become a more saturated industry, coaching and consulting. And I'm sort of, you know, even though I have a very specific niche, I think a lot, a lot of the people that I work for, again, are coders and developers. Founders are technical founders, right? They built their product out. I think they'll be very quick and early adopters to AI, not only AI native, making AI native products, but I think they're also going to be using, you know, vibe coding and other things and even their, you know, their own staff to be able to build out things that they don't have today. I still think one of the advantages of working with me in those type of situations is if you don't know the right questions to ask, you may not, the playbook may be incomplete because you don't know what you don't know and you don't know all of the processes and things that need to be put into place. But I think, you know, like right now, as an example, you know, there's a 10% uh unemployment rate for recruiters. So that seems to be the first industry that's really getting pummeled. Um, but I but I am asking a lot of questions, meeting with a lot of people right now. I'm trying to meet with anybody who will have this discussion with me because I I think that a lot of, and I'm getting ready to speak at my own conference. So the women's sales experts group, I'm speaking on this topic in two weeks in Chicago when the group comes together, um, which is, you know, based on how quickly the world's changing, are you pivoting your business? Are you gonna iterate? Are you gonna pivot? Are you gonna get out? What are you gonna do? Um, you know, if you're worried about keeping up.

Kevin: 26:56

As you're going through this transition right now, what are some challenges that you're noticing, right? Like, because it seems like there's a dilemma right now. Either lean in or lean out. And what's kind of going through your mind during this season of business?

Kristie Jones: 27:08

Whether or not I want to change my business in a way that the thing I love most about my business is the human one-on-one interaction that I get with people is, you know, coming in and facilitating, you know, the workshop in order to make sure we get the best playbook out of it. I love that human interaction. I don't know that I'm gonna enjoy, you know, using lovable to build out an app to help other people build playbooks that don't involve a human. I don't know that I'm gonna get good set. I don't know that that'll be satisfying for me. It may, it may provide some recurring revenue, right? May give me some ARR that I don't have today, because really very, I mean, nothing I do is a recurring revenue model, except for the executive coaching and that it always doesn't last a year. But I just don't know that I'm gonna get that that that will fill my cup. I've, you know, I've got a large amount of passion for what I do. People who I work with are so grateful. I have expertise and information and, you know, uh skills in areas that others don't. And so I just don't know that I will enjoy doing it the way that it might need to be done in the future. I also think it's gonna get more and more complicated. I mean, I just did a demo this morning with a company who does automated demos. I think uh for a current client that I'm working for in Buffalo, I think this is the perfect product. I met them at the conference last week. And so when you think about even things like this, like right now, and the in the sales rep was great, he said, now this doesn't replace your live demos. We still expect you to be doing live demos, but we're letting you build, let's say, a template of demos that are five minutes, right? Like just this feature, just this functionality, just this component, just this dashboard, and being able to automatically send those out through your CRM system or through email. I hear him now, but I'm not so sure that in the future isn't automatic demo automated demos where you don't even have a human prospect, you know, the buyer doesn't even have a human on the other side. Uh, I just don't know that that's gonna be enjoyable for me.

Kevin: 29:00

Yeah. You know, the concept of automated demos wasn't even a thing like five years ago. No one would it was barely a thought. It was kind of like how we thought Terminator or like things like Terminator and Skynet, like when it came out in the 90s, it wouldn't be a thing of the future, but it's looking very, very likely, you know.

Kristie Jones: 29:18

And it's it's already here. I mean, uh coming out of the conference, I understood that buyers are you know, we used to say that buyers were about 60 or 70 percent through the buying cycle or the sell, you know, the selling cycle, the cycle before they wanted to engage with the sales rep. That's getting closer and closer to 90, right? So I mean they're gonna come on that you know, buyers are now gonna come in only just needing to maybe haggle for a price at the end. Like I don't the selling job is gonna change so dramatically. And again, the sales leadership role is gonna change so dramatically. Um, and and you know, I knew I I I was starting to see things earlier this year, which is why I kind of threw myself into some conferences to see if I was crazy or if I was onto something. And it's very Very clear. Mark Menioff, who is the CEO of Salesforce, one of the one of the breakout sessions I was in, they used a quote from him that said, This generation, we are the last generation that will ever manage just humans. Every generation forward will manage a combination of humans and agents. And I wonder how long it'll be before we're just managing agents andor at that point, not needing humans to even manage agents. Right. So I mean, I'm reading I read an article yesterday about a company who the CEO by the end of the year has hired like a chief um like automation officer, if you will, and has said by the end of the year he wants 40% of his staff to be agents. So where does that leave consultants and coaches if your swim lane is not agent-centric, AI native, you know, and you're gonna have to be wired for that, right? Like I think a good coaching business, by the way, that I'm not qualified to do. I read a Saster is a very uh Jason Limkin is a influencer in our industry and there he runs a company called Saster. And he's talking about the burnout that's coming because we've gone from work-life balance being a concept to who gives a shit about work-life balance. If you need, if you are gonna survive in this AI native world with your product, developers are now working six days a week, 80 hours a week, and CTOs and CEOs are saying, and we don't really care about your personal life. Like either, you know, this is the this is gonna be the most exciting time in software, this next two-year period. So either come along for the ride and be a part of some of the frontier, be a pioneer in the frontier, or go find something else to do. And so if you were a life coach, or perhaps you were into you were uh uh someone who took people through psychedelic journeys or whatever, but I think a lot of I think it's very clear he took had a whole article on the the concern about the burnout factor of these individuals who are now going to be working at a pace and and they still may not win, meaning they still may not get their product to market or the AI native piece of the product that needs to go to market before their competitors. And then what will the fallout be from people who fail, companies that go under because they weren't forced to market with their product or they didn't provide the best AI native type product? So I think there is gonna be a place for those type of coaches potentially where people are lost, right? They've gotten divorced, their kids don't have a relationship with their children right now, those type of things. And there's plenty of money. We're paying developers in that situation more than we've ever paid them before. But I think that I think that's how fast the world is changing. And so, you know, if you're a coach and consultant right now, I think you should be absolutely asking yourself, what should I be doing differently in the next six months? Because that's how quickly I think things are gonna happen.

Kevin: 32:41

Do you feel like there's a silver lining to this? I know it seems very like doom and gloom with sales skynet, like like the guy uh hiring 40% of agents to replace. Yeah. But do you see any silver lining?

Kristie Jones: 32:53

Uh I I actually I'm not yet seeing it, I'm not yet seeing a silver lining, and I would like to lean into what you've said and try to find some sort of positivity. I think everybody's scared. I mean, I think the room that I was in with full of consultants and coaches, everybody seems nervous. Um, I think the people who are like again, if you're open to change, so I think the silver lining is I think there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of people to be helping. If you lean into the new ex, right, whatever that might be in your world and your industry, but but truly understanding that no matter what industry you're in and no matter what coaching business you have, AI is going to change things. Um, you know, I'm coming out of this conference working on building my digital twin so that I have somebody to debate with, right? And so how will AI impact? We've had I've we've heard I heard a really scary story the other day, and I'm sure you heard it too, of a teenager that used Chat GPT, right? To as a therapist who was not qualified to do so. I think they're gonna be some of those stories. So, but I think if you can like I'm trying to figure out what the world's gonna look like when all of these white-collar workers are out of work, what sort of coaching or consulting might we need? What sort of business maybe could I start that I'm not even thinking about today that could help those type of individuals? I think a lot, but I think a lot of those people are gonna try entrepreneurship. And so, you know, maybe if you're an entrepreneurial coach, this is definitely a silver lining for you. But I think more than anything, there's just the world feels very uncertain right now. And so I do think, by the way, there will be a clearing, right? Like this feels very much like the tech bubble, right? Where everybody thought, you know, every company out there was gonna be a unicorn and everybody was gonna get an IPO and everybody was just gonna get their private island and their yacht and their private chef. I think there's a lot of that feeling in here. But we but I think if you look at, you know, let's not repeat the past by understanding it, I think, you know, there were a lot of people that didn't make it. And in general, you know, a lot of new companies don't make it, right? Never a lot of companies don't make it to the five year mark. I think a lot of companies aren't gonna make it to the two year mark. But I think if your entrepreneurial mindset is in place and you have an entrepreneurial spirit, I think this is probably the best time in the last you know, 10 to 20 years for you. If you're somebody who loves learning new things, who embraces change, this is your time. Jump in with both feet.

Kevin: 35:07

I was gonna ask these questions in a different order, but since we're on this topic, given all the AI stuff going on and you were to start like a coaching business now, and let's say you had a gun to your head, you had to do a coaching business with all the AI stuff. What would you what would your first 90 days kind of look like if you had to build a coaching business today?

Kristie Jones: 35:26

I would be reaching out to your network, right? I mean, that's where I started. I think that's where all the best coaches and consultants start is reaching out to their network and figuring out where, like, even with the a concept of just AI, like what does that mean for your company? What does that mean for you personally? You know, what are the things that you're worried about? You know, even though AI is now in embedded in every company, most people are not using it efficiently. Um, you know, it's not getting up and running. But I I would be doing, like, I'll go old school with on you. I would be doing focus groups, right? By putting people together. I mean, and that's why I went to this conference. It was, you know, it was 700, it was a big 700-person focus group, right? For me. I was asking a ton of questions, was trying to get the pulse of people. I sat in on a couple of sessions where it was like, this demo is going to be more important. Again, people aren't going to want to go through a discovery call anymore because they will have already done that work with AI. They will ever they will know everything about you and your company before you ever say hi to them. And so a lot of the speakers that I was talking to in sessions I was sitting in on were talking about, you know, demo first, which is like an old school bad practice, right? We used to stop pimping. I would say stop pimping the demo. Have a conversation with people, get to know them, figure out what's going on with them so that you can customize your demo. But now what we're starting to hear is people don't want to do that. They just want to know, can your product fix my problem? So I I would just say, like, talk to everybody, right? Talk to people who've been in the coaching business, talk to people who are who not in the coaching business, talk about people who've talked to people who've used coaches in the past. Ask them, like, you know, where do you think going forward a coach might fit into your, you know, you know, infrastructure in the company? Where might you at what point, for what things might you hire a coach for? For what things do you think AI can do it instead of a coach for you? So I mean, I would just be asking, I would be like a verocious learner right now.

Kevin: 37:16

A lot to think about right now, especially with the AI, AI stuff going. And you know what's kind of crazy? A lot of the things that you're saying, a lot of my peers, a lot of the things I've been personally thinking as well. But let's switch gears a little bit. Let's change up the mood and then we'll close out the podcast. I'd love to play game with you if you're open to it. I'm a I'm very competitive. It's not one of those games. It's one of those storytelling games.

Kristie Jones: 37:39

Okay. I was like, I like a good game. I'm very competitive.

Kevin: 37:42

So, you know, a lot of coaches, they and entrepreneurs, they they invest to things. They invest into things like coaching, training, marketing, team members, a lot of different things, right? And so I'm gonna prompt a short phrase, and I want the first thing that comes up to mind. You can just mention the first thing. Okay. And I'll ask you a question at the very end. First business investment you remember?

Kristie Jones: 38:05

It was the marketing, it was outsourcing my marketing.

Kevin: 38:07

Okay, okay. Interesting. Last business investment you made.

Kristie Jones: 38:11

Publishing my book. Big, big financial investment there. Publishing a book is not cheap.

Kevin: 38:18

What are some of the investments that were required to publish a book?

Kristie Jones: 38:22

Uh well, first and foremost, the publisher requires you to buy X number of copies of your book. I think I spent $25,000 to $30,000 publishing my book. The first investment of the book was hiring a book coach. So I'm a big as a coach myself, I'm a coach junkie. So I got a coach for if I if I've not done it before, I think it's inefficient for me to try to figure it out. So I hired a woman to meet with me every week to hold me accountable, to give me homework, and she held my hand through the entire writing process, um, which people thought was interesting because I have a journalism degree and writing is my thing. I'm a very good writer, but I needed to be held accountable because again, I was trying to do this and run my business simultaneously, which made it very challenging. So the very first investment was in a human to coach me and hold me accountable. Um I then spent money with the publisher. I spent money with an IP lawyer who reviewed that contract. I had to invest in, uh I didn't have an IP lawyer at the time. Marketing, I had a marketing company at the time. I changed my marketing company. I let them go and hired a company that I thought was better suited to help promote the book. Um, you know, I invest in, I mean, even the startup weeks that I go to, I 75 books to Vegas and I've sent 75 books to Reno that I'm giving away. Those are investments. Those are still uh book tour investments, if you will. Um, but there was a lot of money invested in the book. I mean, uh I hired a graphic designer to make the cover. I didn't like the publisher's cover, so I hired a graphic designer to do that. Uh, along with the book, I created Christian cards with the same graphic designer. These are there, these are there's a lot of it's like a deck of cards with Christie's Christians on the back. And so I created these. I have a chapter in the book of all my Christian, so I'm created playing cards for the book launch as well. So writing a book is not free. And I mean, the goal is just to break even, right? I mean, most people who write a book don't make money from it. Um what a in the way I call it getting paid on the back end. So to your point, speaking engagements that come from the book, those type of things help cover the cost of the book.

Kevin: 40:27

Best business investment you made.

Kristie Jones: 40:28

Hiring the book coach, probably for sure. Hiring hiring a coach and hiring experts. My best business investments are hiring experts who know more than I do about whatever topic. Investing, investing in myself in that way.

Kevin: 40:40

Worst investment you made that you kind of want your money back from. Uh I'm kind of want my money back from the book thing a little bit.

Kristie Jones: 40:46

It's a lot of money. I can't I don't know that self- I I didn't want to self-publish because again, I'm not an expert in publishing, but it wasn't the experience that I hoped it was. And I think it was a lot of money for not as much re probably not as much return as I'd hoped for.

Kevin: 40:59

What were you hoping to get from the book? What what were the initial reasons why you wrote the book?

Kristie Jones: 41:04

Yeah, good question. I was hoping to get five to eight speaking engagements a year. And I think I think I pushed really hard at that initially. And I did get a couple of speaking engagements. But really, like I think, you know, I have a couple of women in my women's sales experts group who are professional speakers. This is what they do all the time. It's a very different business model. It requires a very different level of commitment. I didn't want to, I wasn't really willing to walk away from my startup world in order to just go 100% into the speaking business. But the whole goal was to what I call get paid on the back end. So to get new clients that had never heard of me before, I meant to get speaking engagements. I love speaking. Uh, I would love to speak more and work less, but I just don't think I don't think that that was a real, I don't know that that was a realistic expectation. I think for some people it is. I don't know that I bought or I wrote a book, because I wrote a book for individual contributors, individual sales professionals. I don't know that that was that type of book gets you the kind of speaking engagements that I was hoping for. I do do a keynote that came out of the book on identifying and leveraging your superpowers to be able to own your life and unleash your possibilities. And so that keynote that came out of the book seems to be the one that gets the most traction, particularly with sales teams and you know, sales kickoff meetings, those type of things. Um, because it's not a lot of the book talks about finding the right sales role. So if you're a sales leader, you probably don't want to bring me in to talk about that because it might not be your sales role that's the right sales role for people in the room. But leveraging and identifying your sales superpower or your superpowers in order to see how far you can get, i.e., I mean, ideally you'd get to the top 10% by but leveraging part of your superpowers understands what roles you should be taking and how to leverage your superpowers. But I think the book, um, I'm not, I have no regrets. I hear from people all the time randomly on LinkedIn that reach out to me and said, I read your book and I quit my job and found a new one as a result. That is why I wrote it. I wanted, I thought there were a lot of people who were in the wrong job role. And I wanted you to find something that you would love getting up and doing every day and that you could help you get to the top of your profession financially and recognition-wise, you know, emotionally.

Kevin: 43:11

Yeah. And on that note, Christy, how can people find you and connect with you?

Kristie Jones: 43:15

Yep. LinkedIn's the gr the best way. Um, I'm under Christy, the letter K, my initial starts with K Jones. I'm also at ChristyK Jones.com. If you're interested in learning more about the book, selling your wayin.com. But probably the easiest way and the way that people find me the fastest is on LinkedIn.

Kevin: 43:31

Wow, Christy, this was definitely a very interesting podcast because it's not every day that I get to interact with another like sales individual and stuff or like a sales expert. And so it was really refreshing hearing your uh take on the role of AI in the future and just everything that you've done. You've built out a really solid like marketing um marketing pipeline and stuff too. Just really interesting hearing your background coming from the SaaS world. So I appreciate you sharing all your experience and all your investments on this uh podcast. So thank you so much, Christy, for coming on.

Kristie Jones: 44:07

Thanks for having me. I I wish the best for all of your listeners. And if I can be of help, please reach out.

Davis Nguyen : 44:12

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit join purplecircle.com.