Johanna, Dear Lucy

Johanna Korhonen (00:00.278)
have a hard stop five to five, like in an hour, a bit less than an hour. I have a class that I need to attend and I need to be out of the door at five, so if we can keep this in the four to five minutes that would be great.

Wilma (00:12.153)
Absolutely.

That's my goal as well, but very good at your highlight. Okay, then the monologue kicks off. Hi there, you have tuned in to Fail and Grow. It's an OPEX, there is to say, operational excellent podcast show. So Fail and Grow is for you who want to increase your revenue and become more profitable. I mean, who doesn't? This is actually season seven.

Johanna Korhonen (00:17.964)
Perfect.

Wilma (00:39.309)
And you, the one who are listening, are fortunate enough to learn and laugh and listen to world-class leaders within operational excellence, who are not just full of knowledge, but also humble enough to share their fuck-ups and what they've learned from it. And your host is me, Vilma, and one of the co-founders and the CEO of VeloxQ, Configure Price. Quote. So what we do, that is, we increase the user adoption of your CRM.

We take away all unnecessary spreadsheet where you do your pricing and coding as of today. And we ensure that it's an error-free process. And that will lead to, of course, an increased revenue and profitability. But enough about me and VillexQ. Today, we're going to talk about a really superstar within sales. She works at a company called Dear Lucy. They are a sales performance management platform. They help sales team.

in 150 countries globally. Sorry, I'll take that, cut it. They help over 150 clients globally in 20 countries to crush their targets on a monthly basis, ensuring the sales performance is really high. So Johanna Corunen, I hope I pronounced your name correctly. And I always ask a little bit about bragging before house and you were like, no worries, I'm working within sales.

And you said, and I just love this, a sales powerhouse lady. I've been working in mostly sales for 10 years, selling to 140 countries directly from Helsinki. And you also led global teams. So it's a true pleasure meeting another outreach superstar.

afraid of taking that cold call and that thanks to you that you're here today because I will now should we schedule that call and you are so so welcome Johanna thank you for being that persistent

Johanna Korhonen (02:37.358)
Well, thank you Vilma and that was such an incredible introduction. It makes me humble, you know, we're working sales and we're here to crush targets. So we shouldn't be too humble because there's always a new target to hit, but it's a pleasure for inviting me here. And yeah, it's all about being persistent, whether that is connecting with new potential clients or podcast shows.

Wilma (02:48.341)
you

Wilma (03:03.115)
I totally agree. And with your words, what do dear Lucy do and why did you decide to join them as a team?

Johanna Korhonen (03:12.206)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think you gave a really good introduction. You could work for us in our sales as well. Yes, so essentially what we do, we provide a sales performance management platform that integrates with the mainstream CRM. So we're talking about Salesforce, HubsPie, PipeDrive. It enhances the analytics and reporting capabilities. So you

Wilma (03:19.033)
I don't know that.

Johanna Korhonen (03:40.814)
can essentially track any KPI that you have that then again helps you to increase your sales and your performance and really optimize that. So I am a data geek myself. I've always been data driven and especially when it comes to sales, it's a very binary function. So sales is

a numbers led function overall. It's all about hitting your quota, counting how many activities you've done for the day. I think sales teams overall could really, really focus on maximizing their performance and time spent on the correct tasks. It's a lot that sales teams usually

Wilma (04:31.865)
Right.

Johanna Korhonen (04:35.554)
have to do on a daily basis. There's the admin, there's the outreach, and your time is limited. And with data analysis, you can really allocate where you focus your time on which activities you need to focus on, which accounts and deals and opportunities you need to focus on. And that is what we do. So we take the performance management to next level.

Every individual in the sales organisation can have dashboards and reports that coach them what actions they need to do on a daily basis, whether that it's an SDR, BDR, inbound, outbound, AE, a team lead, manager, management board. You know exactly where you are today and you know exactly what you need to do by utilising your own data and on your own.

Wilma (05:09.721)
Mm.

Johanna Korhonen (05:30.19)
sales anatomy really the ways that you close deals and do business.

Wilma (05:36.727)
Very interesting. I always said that if you work with sales, my background is with the sales, and you don't know your numbers, then you don't know the strengths and you don't know, I mean, your weakest links either. So if you're like stressed, I'm going to take my quota or will I, you know, back and forth having that? I I assume everyone worked in sales have had that feeling. If you know your numbers, then you can like drill it down and say, okay, but they

Johanna Korhonen (06:00.084)
Mm-hmm.

Wilma (06:03.895)
If I focus on this now, or these two things, then my chances will rapidly increase. That nervous feeling, you know, getting lower.

Johanna Korhonen (06:15.262)
Exactly, and utilizing intelligent algorithms, predictive analytics. Sales reps don't really need to focus on being data analysts. They are not and they shouldn't be, but they can use these intelligent algorithms to kind of map out, okay, so how much pipe do I really need to have?

what are the deals that I need to focus on. So we have all this AI emerging and data science that really can help us to tell us, so these are the deals that I need to focus on. This is how many more calls I need to place in order to hit my quota. I think leading sales teams and being a salesperson myself, I want to crush my target.

the shortest way I can. So I want to hit my goals and kind of be as lazy as I can without doing the extra work so to say because I think in sales you have to take so many kind of missteps in order to hit your quota because you don't really know the way to succession but you can utilize data and kind of

Wilma (07:07.267)
Yeah.

Wilma (07:12.666)
Yeah

Johanna Korhonen (07:30.418)
use that as your roadmap. Okay, so what do I need to do exactly in order for me to get this quarterly target?

Wilma (07:40.089)
We are almost entered today's topic, data-driven sales to have a really, really slick sales management performance. But we're going to do some maybe not so relevant questions beforehand, but I think they are joyful. So here they come. So your favorite after work drink. I don't know if you drink alcohol, but if you do and you are maybe close to a huge... Sorry, I tied in my head.

Johanna Korhonen (07:53.004)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Wilma (08:08.769)
I only find the Swedish word for making it. Now we take it again. You have closed that dream deal that your current top target customer, you have closed it and you're going to celebrate what you would have poured in your glass then.

Johanna Korhonen (08:15.394)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (08:21.506)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (08:25.272)
Well, I am a gin lover, so I always love a gin drink, but my ultimate favorite after work drink is an espresso martini. That is the one that gives you a little pick me up with the caffeine, especially five o'clock and if it's a sunny day or if it's a rainy day and you need a little extra energy, that is always my go-to drink.

The importance is not to have too many because then you will stay up very late with all that espresso after hours.

Wilma (09:01.245)
Yeah, it's an efficient drink in many ways. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you. And then I'm going to ask you about something more maybe personal, but you of course decide where you want to put the level. So your funniest work related fuck up that you want to share with us. What is that?

Johanna Korhonen (09:05.026)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (09:20.302)
Well, I'm very accustomed to doing and saying a lot of wrong things at the wrong time because I work in sales and I have a lot of social interaction and I think even with working in sales for over 10 years, I still somehow always mix up people's names and I think that's kind of like the dyslexic in me just can't get those names right and that doesn't only apply to

Wilma (09:37.241)
Hahaha

Johanna Korhonen (09:46.976)
sales but also Tinder and I always use the wrong first names when approaching the different people. But that's not my biggest thing that I could think of but that's something that I do on a weekly basis. I think something that I'm really not probably the most kind of rigid when it comes to details so I do a lot of contracts and obviously you need to get the

Wilma (09:56.825)
No.

Johanna Korhonen (10:15.278)
data correct in them. So the right addresses, the right amount, the right values. And yes, I've had my few mishaps with entering wrong information into official contracts, but I think the biggest one I remember, this was years ago, I sent a very big contract out and it was one of my biggest deals and the delivery number

was supposed to be 100k, so that was kind of what we were supposed to deliver as a company. And the proposal, the official proposal I sent out with the paperwork to every stakeholder had 1 million.

And it was late at night, I was going through the contract and I realized, my goodness gracious, I have given them 10 times more than what we agreed on. And obviously that would have made us as a company in a very bad position. So I stayed up the entire night. I sent the messages late at night, like, I'm really sorry. I need to, I need to abort this mission.

I've made such a big mistake with the contract, like we need to pull this back, please do not agree on this. Luckily my client sent me a message in the morning, yes I noticed that you made a mistake and you weren't supposed to deliver a quantity of million with this deal size and this value.

Wilma (11:49.965)
It was very nice of that customer to like, we know that this is wrong.

Johanna Korhonen (11:55.04)
Yes, so that was probably the biggest fuck up I can still remember even today. I literally stayed up the entire night.

Wilma (12:07.533)
Oh, I'm good that it's sold, I should say. That it was sold, yeah. And the first on the daily base, you know, that I would name my ex-boyfriend, we were together for like 10 years, so he's still one of my best friends. Thank you, God, for that. When we dated like 20 years ago or something, he didn't even call names either. So we all, it was like, hi, dear, hi, dear. And I thought it was very cute.

Johanna Korhonen (12:10.178)
Yeah.

Wilma (12:34.743)
And when we had been together for like four years or something, I don't know why we start talking about this. Probably someone was dating someone, you know, back in the days. And it was like, yeah, yeah, but I did it to everyone just because I didn't recall the names. And I was like, huh? Okay. So maybe if you're single using Tinder, you can apply Tim's way of approaching people or just.

Johanna Korhonen (12:56.366)
Well, I think in the English language it works. You can call like hello mate, hello love to almost everyone. But I think in Finnish and Swedish it's not the same. You can't call my dear or my love everyone you meet.

Wilma (13:03.235)
Yeah.

Wilma (13:09.529)
But in Swedish you can say, hej hjärtat. That you can say in Swedish, like high heart. That is a little bit tricky, yeah, directly on. So, I'm finished. I wouldn't dare to say anything, but maybe you have an idea then. Okay. Yeah, think about that. Not that important, of course, but now we're gonna maybe continuously deep down here into the data-driven sales.

Johanna Korhonen (13:14.812)
Okay, Hi, heart. Yeah

Johanna Korhonen (13:26.732)
I need to think about that.

Wilma (13:38.937)
and sales management performance. And I know this isn't supposed to sell there loosely, but I'm also curious about your ICP. So I would be really interesting to hear the data driven approach also from like, if you see the sales team in whole divided into different, like, I don't know, tiers, like 10 people or 50 people or 500 people, if it differs.

Johanna Korhonen (13:48.46)
Mm-hmm.

Wilma (14:06.073)
And if Dear Lucy matches one of them better, then please shout it out here. We work with sales. So data-driven sales and sales management performance. What's your take on that? why do you think this is important?

Johanna Korhonen (14:12.088)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (14:20.91)
Well, I think overall being data driven and utilizing data is been a hot topic probably more than 10 years and by now every company should be utilizing data to drive business performance and operational excellence overall.

When it comes to sales, as I said previously, it's so numbers-led and very binary at its core. It's a measurable function. So data analysis should be essential in leading sales teams and sales performance overall.

Wilma (15:04.491)
And do you think it is just like a side question there? Isn't it that for everyone now? Or do you still see that people are struggling with this?

Johanna Korhonen (15:07.15)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (15:14.102)
Yes, absolutely for sure. When it comes to like overall business strategic data analysis and the majority of utilizing data analytics, it varies a lot. I've been working in the field of analytics for seven years myself. So prior to Dear Lucy, I was working in another SaaS company called Supermetrics, which provides marketing data analytics. So moving from marketing data analytics to sales analytics and

Wilma (15:40.504)
Right.

Johanna Korhonen (15:43.884)
That was kind of, that was seven years ago when I joined that company. And, and, and definitely I've, I've been working with different data teams for quite a while now. The maturity level, differentiates a lot from one company to another. And I think when it comes to utilizing data, it's, it's a journey. Data analytics is a journey and you have to start somewhere and

Obviously with all the tech and AI and the data science scene overall taking a lot of leaps ahead, you can do a lot nowadays. And sometimes that is also the downside of it because it can seem then very overwhelming. Companies don't really know where to start their journey and

And they feel like they could be like so many steps behind already that they don't even know where to start and how to take the first step. But I always encourage that just take the first step, start simple. And even the companies that have a very intelligent data science team and utilize data analytics to kind of like next level.

Even there it's important that you don't drown in dashboards and reports because then they don't serve you any purpose. And with Dear Lucy, the idea is that every role has the top KPIs that they need to manage their own daily performance. So for example, you look at the sales organization, not every individual have the same targets.

Wilma (17:07.641)
Hmm.

Wilma (17:18.263)
Right, right.

Wilma (17:27.737)
Mm.

Johanna Korhonen (17:36.82)
nor the same KPIs or OKI. Also, if you look at SDRs, they're most likely looking at activity metrics and maybe generated revenue that they had an impact on. And then you have your outbound, inbound, expansion success reps. Everyone has a different target. So you have your net new revenue, you have your churn, you have your upsell.

Wilma (18:00.803)
Right.

Johanna Korhonen (18:02.606)
You have your new customer acquisition target. So you really need to have the data that serves your role, not the overall sales organization. Then you have your sales managers, your territory leads. They're not really interested in individual level performance or how many calls have this individual place today.

Wilma (18:28.985)
Great.

Johanna Korhonen (18:30.774)
And then you go into a kind of higher on the hierarchy. You have your whole management, you have your board, you have your investors, your other stakeholders. So you need the data that is important to that specific individual or team.

Wilma (18:42.841)
Mm.

Wilma (18:50.841)
So if I hear you correctly, I'd say start somewhere. You have to start doing it and then, okay, look into, like, set a number of KPIs for each role that you have currently in your organization to get started in the next step, really, to make it relevant for that person and really drive performance and ultimately revenue by looking at the right KPIs. Is it?

Johanna Korhonen (18:55.928)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (19:11.128)
Mm-hmm.

Wilma (19:20.281)
Yeah, is this a summarize correctly?

Johanna Korhonen (19:23.03)
Yeah, exactly. So quite often the first step is to start to track data, first of all, and collect your own data. And then after you have some data, you can start to look at the historical data. Okay, so what has happened? How did we come to this current situation that we're in? So that's kind of first step. Collect data. Second, look at your historical data. Then the third step is to

utilize that historical data to guide your next best step. Okay, so how can we then kind of define what to do next? How should we make different choices, different moves in order to either replicate the success that we already did or aim higher? And obviously after that we get the prescriptive analytics.

So essentially using analytics to describe what you should do next, for example, having a look at your entire pipeline analytics and then using different algorithms to have a predictive pipeline forecasts, which then shows if you are on an adequate level with your activities, your pipeline generation.

Wilma (20:40.771)
Right.

Johanna Korhonen (20:47.734)
and then it can map out, okay, so how much more do you actually need to generate in order to hit certain levels. So it's a journey. Data analytics is a journey and you can be at any step in your maturity journey and DLUC can help with that, whether it is that you're just...

Wilma (20:56.481)
Right. Yeah.

Wilma (21:10.585)
How do you... Sorry, you finished.

Johanna Korhonen (21:15.47)
Now I was about to say that we can help you with anywhere you are in your data journey, whether it is that you're just setting up your reporting and having your first reports or you've gathered some data and you want to do some historical analysis or you want to take the next steps into predictive and prescriptive analysis.

Wilma (21:36.353)
Okay, interesting. how do you handle when companies feel that their historical data isn't of the highest quality? What is your recommendation then? What should one go back in time? What do you do when the historical data isn't in the highest quality?

Johanna Korhonen (21:47.352)
with it.

Johanna Korhonen (21:59.384)
Well, obviously there's a lot of things that you can do to clean up that data and there's different tech for that. We don't really do data cleanup, what we do is we help the sales team to keep the data quality high from here onwards, obviously. So we have different CRM hygiene checks, check reports, for example. So I think that's

Wilma (22:25.881)
Okay.

Johanna Korhonen (22:28.472)
probably one of the most common issues in sales teams that sales reps can be quite slow, let's say, let's put it politically that way, to update CRMs. So we can help with that. So really build the data-driven culture. I think that comes from kind of...

Wilma (22:32.621)
Yeah.

Wilma (22:40.194)
You

All right.

Johanna Korhonen (22:53.258)
the perspective that data analysis has to be beneficial for the individual sales rep because I know in most companies and in most teams, updating CRMs, that's kind of like the most tedious jobs that you have and usually it's perceived in a way that okay it serves the management so they get their reports and what nots and this is kind of like the

the thing I need to do without it giving anything back to me. But I really want to reverse that thinking and kind of turn the tables is that I want to challenge that every individual sales rep should know the anatomy of how they sell in order to sell more. Isn't sales what it's all about? It's to perform.

really well all the time and understanding how you perform well should be at its core. So I always talk a lot about taking responsibility of knowing your own DNA of selling and this is what we can do at DLUC and what we do is we don't just do the board and management reports.

Wilma (23:52.931)
Yeah.

Wilma (24:00.376)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (24:19.276)
We actually do coaching dashboards for individual sales reps on their own data and their sales behavior and how to improve that and what to focus on in order for them to hit their quotas.

Wilma (24:36.919)
Right, interesting. And when we jump into like common mistakes companies do when they try to drive, they really, really try, they aim to be data driven, but for some reason they don't manage. What would you see common mistakes that leading to, I mean, not reaching their targets of being data driven?

Johanna Korhonen (25:00.11)
I think it's probably two things. Data analysis isn't implemented into the daily processes when it comes to kind of sales day to day or overall company day to day. You really need to start your day with data and really make it mandatory for everyone. Same as

updating CRRent. That's a mandatory task for everyone in the sales team and same should go for looking at dashboards and using them as your guidelines for your day to day. So you always open your dashboards and you see, this is how many calls I need to make. This is how many meetings I need to have this week. This is how much pipe I need to generate this week or this month. So really

making being data driven part of your day to day process. And it doesn't have to be complicated at all. And I think we come into the second most common mistake, which is that a lot of the times I see companies overcomplicating the process. So they might have reports and they might have

150 reports. have your CRM reports, you have your BI tool reports, you have your spreadsheets, you have your every individual platform reports and none of them make any sense. You don't even know what to look at, when to look at and the data is incorrect in most of them. So most of the time you're just looking at the discrepancies in data between different platforms and it doesn't serve you any purpose and that's where I

Wilma (26:22.125)
Right.

Wilma (26:28.909)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (26:48.256)
Always say, okay, start simple, start with one dashboard or two. Don't make it overwhelming. Don't overcomplicate it because it's not going to serve you any purpose if you have a hundred dashboards which no one is going to use. Sales teams don't even know where they're located. They're let alone if they've ever opened them.

Wilma (26:57.059)
rights.

Wilma (27:09.977)
Sorry for laughing, I've been selling CRM for five years back in the days and it was like, yeah, but we start with one and we send that out to everyone, even though it's super basic. We start with that. we embrace the way it works, like always by implementing something that has with IT or SaaS, it's a change management, like the culture, like embrace it first and then we can drill down and do more reports with more dashboards and so forth.

Johanna Korhonen (27:17.218)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (27:25.176)
Mm-hmm.

Wilma (27:39.961)
So, yeah, very interesting to hear. And I have an idea, but of course, you're the expert here. So I'm going to ask you, of course. So what effect and results could you expect when you have implemented this? are doing it your daily life, you look at the reports, they are niched into roles. What could you expect in the clear numbers?

Johanna Korhonen (27:40.75)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (27:48.494)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (28:06.67)
But as I said previously, needs to be beneficial for everyone and it needs to make you more effective. So you only have a certain amount of hours in a day and in a week to do your job. let's face it, we don't want to work more than those hours. And in sales, it's the same as well. So it's all about being the most efficient.

but with the least amount of effort. And that is what data analysis can help you do, is knowing where you should focus on and not to spend or waste any time on the ventures that will not be beneficial or fruitful to you. So let go of the opportunities, the data shows that you're never gonna close or let go of the ICP, the data shows that you're never gonna...

Wilma (28:38.275)
Love that.

Wilma (29:03.417)
Hmm

Johanna Korhonen (29:03.758)
you're never gonna connect with and same goes for all your activities so should I focus on making phone calls in Sweden or should I focus on sending emails in Sweden or maybe you have a way that works in a different market that doesn't work in another market so

really becoming smart in the way that you do in sales in not just different countries but in different functions. So we talk about doing upsell and an expansion and outbound and inbound.

Wilma (29:42.585)
Okay, more efficient and better disqualification I hear. But do we have any numbers, some use in numbers that we're gonna share? Some customer stories, cases of, I mean, obviously implemented their Lucy, they're tracking this, they work with a data-driven sales approach. Do you have any use in numbers you wanna share? I know that I'm stressing this, but I know that people like it, so.

Johanna Korhonen (29:58.712)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (30:06.958)
Yeah, absolutely. Is it easy to kind of calculate the impact of the overall revenue at the end of the day? Probably not. And I think that goes for most of the tech that is out there. It's not so imminent, but I think where we usually see the best results is in the

time saved and kind of put into the hours of reporting and I think everyone does reporting to certain extent. Some spend hours and hours in a week and in a month to do their monthly weekly reports. I think that's kind of the immediate result that when you automate everything and you have your role-based reports, they are ready for you. You never have to spend any time on creating those.

And next is then the impact on fine tuning all the processes as said, data can show you and expose a lot of processes that are not working in your sales organization. So for example, if we look at utilizing deal scoring.

Wilma (31:34.009)
Right.

Johanna Korhonen (31:34.942)
You can then really know which steps to make in order to map out the deals that will close and the deals that won't most likely close.

Wilma (31:51.205)
Yeah, very interesting. And your ICP then. Which sales organization could manage very well with a CRM report? Or is it everyone that should invest in another tool like Dear Lucy? Or what is your experience here?

Johanna Korhonen (32:14.072)
So we serve kind of two purposes. So we have customers who use DLUC for the entire sales organization management. So for every role that you have. And then we have companies that use DLUC for management reporting. So where we really fall is in between CRM and BI tools.

CRMs are great for relationship management, but they are not the greatest when it comes to data analytics or performance management. So you can't really set targets for every KPI that you have. can't see the progression towards those targets. It's difficult to see historical trends, map those out.

utilize predictive forecasts for example. So whenever you've hit the limits of the CRM reports, that is when usually people start to use and companies start to use DLUC. And then when it comes to kind of management reports, we are then used as a BI tool for management purposes.

for sales teams and individual sales reps. I said previously, don't think sales people should focus on being data analysts or doing any data analysis or trying to decipher any of their data or really get that accustomed to utilizing BI tools because those are very complex.

DLUC is a very simple tool to use by the sales team. So it's aimed for sales teams to use.

Wilma (34:18.684)
I think your dog has very many important things to say here too.

Johanna Korhonen (34:22.026)
I think so. I think so as well. She also loves sales and sales performance management overall.

Wilma (34:27.886)
haha

Wilma (34:32.281)
She's true passion by heart there. That's great to know. but okay. Sorry for me, but obviously everyone can hear the dog barking. Interesting and I can really see the value of that. As I said earlier, mean selling tools beforehand and now running a company and making reports. Everything that could ease it is, yeah, yeah, it's of course very nice. Or a need I would say and also to have

Johanna Korhonen (34:34.7)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (34:38.476)
No?

Johanna Korhonen (34:51.278)
Mm-hmm.

Wilma (35:01.529)
the correct numbers to make good analysis and ultimately take decisions on. So of course, very important. And that little bit leads me to the last question within the topic today. And we're a lot about like internally efficiency and so forth. But if we take the customers, like your customers, customers, why is it important for them that the organization

Johanna Korhonen (35:09.422)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (35:26.786)
Mm-hmm.

Wilma (35:29.697)
trying to sell to them or selling to them have a data-driven approach, you feel.

Johanna Korhonen (35:36.76)
So I'm talking about our customers.

Wilma (35:39.545)
No, your customers' customers, really. So, say you... I know that you have... What are they called? You cut it out. Andreas' company. Yeah, Ingrid. I know you have Ingrid as a customer, for example. So, why is important for Ingrid's customers that Ingrid uses Dear Lucy? What's the value for them?

Johanna Korhonen (35:55.412)
Ingrid and Quinex and yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Wilma (36:08.781)
people at Ingrid have a very data-driven sales performance. What makes the customer experience better, if you will, or something like that.

Johanna Korhonen (36:21.408)
That is a good question. What is the end result for the customer's customer? I think it's probably from when it serves the customer success team or the expansion team. recognizing new opportunities inside the already existing customers from a sales perspective, I would say that's probably the most beneficial. And obviously then

well, because it sells revenue analytics, then probably those are not the numbers or the topics that are really kind of discussed with their end customers, so to say. It serves more the internal purpose of the sales team. I'm sorry, my dog is really barking out.

Wilma (37:13.165)
Yeah. And it's okay. It's okay. And I think you mentioned one thing to disqualify. the, mean, if you are going to enter Sweden by phone or email, if it doesn't work for something or region, I mean, we don't have to nag customers or prospect. They're not going to buy product XC or, you know, so forth. I think that is to me, at least a huge value.

Johanna Korhonen (37:24.322)
you

Wilma (37:40.901)
Focus on the one that's probably going to date you or close deals with you, not the other ones, because you will just snag the shit out of them, to be honest. Sorry, my language. Is there something that you would like to address that we haven't spoken about yet when it comes to data-driven sales and become really, really nitty-nitty performance by this?

Johanna Korhonen (37:41.208)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (37:50.614)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (38:04.654)
I think I always kind of repeat myself. So start from somewhere, implement data into your day to day processes. Don't leave it just for your management to solve or for the management to utilize in the monthly reports. Use it for everyone in the sales organization and make it part of your process. And that's the best way to start really.

Wilma (38:34.979)
Good. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing. Now I'm super curious when you want to be like inspired by data driven sales, where do you turn to? Is it a book? Is it someone at LinkedIn you follow? Is it a podcast show or I don't know. Where do you turn?

Johanna Korhonen (38:50.286)
I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn. I'm very active myself over there and I follow a lot of people on LinkedIn, especially sales leaders and all these new CROs and revenue operation leaders that are arising and popping out everywhere. But if I were to name one person who I've been following for quite a while is from here in Finland, the co-founder of Vainu Mikko Honkanen.

Wilma (39:07.022)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (39:19.342)
He does a lot of education around being data driven and being tech driven as well. He talks a lot about the benefits of having a rev-up function in a company.

Wilma (39:38.817)
I couldn't agree more. Every time he posts, he's like, I have to see, is this relevant? And then it's like, I read the whole posts. This too was relevant. So if you're not already following him, non-depending if you're on SaaS or somewhere else, he's really good. Yeah. A very humble guy. And he actually recorded one of the first podcasts that now it's a couple of years old, but I think it's probably going to be relevant. I don't recall what we talked about, but he's like an ever relevant person. So podcast tips, if you will.

Johanna Korhonen (39:40.75)
in

Johanna Korhonen (39:44.59)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (39:53.506)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (40:05.869)
Yeah.

Wilma (40:07.257)
Okay, now it's your turn to wing an answer to an earlier podcast that says a random business question. So take some deep breath. Give me some time to try to share this. Super tricky always. And now we'll see here, share, screen. And we take this one and this one, and I'm gonna try to put it on as well. That's not always the easiest thing.

Johanna Korhonen (40:17.912)
Yeah? Yeah?

Wilma (40:38.361)
little bit trouble with this before as well if we do like this

Wilma (40:59.743)
And this was from Fredrik Landström, the CTO of Invice and HubSpot agency that I truly recommend. They are very, very tech savvy. So that was this nerdy question.

Johanna Korhonen (41:03.758)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (41:12.494)
I think I've been in a very fortunate position for both this company and my previous company that myself as a sales leader I've had quite a lot of authority and autonomy in making new purchase decisions when it comes to acquiring tech for my team and that could be beneficial.

But definitely building a business case from the user perspective. So what is the benefit for it for the individual user? I would say that's where I've always started and really highlighting the importance in that. And I love tech overall. I've always used a lot of tech. So, and I think that's also drawn me towards companies that have

been tech positive and I just encourage every board to be curious and experimental with new tech.

Wilma (42:13.835)
Right. Yeah.

Wilma (42:27.095)
I love that. Tech positive. Yeah. I'm going to trade money to you Johanna and I'm going to use it. Very nice. So final three questions. What are your main challenges in your business right now? Problem that you are addressing it dear Lucy.

Johanna Korhonen (42:31.264)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (42:37.996)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (42:44.014)
I think sales has become more difficult in the recent years, not just due to whatever economical changes there has been going on in the world for X years now, but also due to tech and the volumes of

products that are being sold to different buyers has increased enormously lately and I think the problem that we solve is exactly that so how to focus on the most beneficial cases for you and and how to

Wilma (43:14.285)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (43:36.856)
how to kind of stand out in the crowd, how to make your voice heard to the right crowd instead of just shouting to everyone and hoping for the best. I think that's the most challenging thing in sales overall is how to get your message heard to the right people.

Wilma (44:00.909)
Yeah, couldn't agree more and make like, there's so many initiatives and how should we make the priorities, it looks cute above anything else that that could by solving probably other problems that they also have in their organization to really make it clear, both of course in our outreach and our prospecting and our dream customer, target customer so forth, trying to be very, very neat. But then when you have the dialogue, okay, why should they then

prioritize you now because it has been so many, it's been, as you said, a tougher economic environment than the five year beforehand. And also there's so many different suppliers and vendors talking about like, we will do this for you. But, okay, but that and that and that said so too, but from different angles. prioritize. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Who would you like me to invite to this podcast to fail and grow?

Johanna Korhonen (44:43.49)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (44:55.712)
I had a think about this and it's from your side of the Baltic Sea. I've gotten to know this very high energy, super positive sales leader, Markus Enkvist. Maybe you've met him already. He leads the sales in CAPI right now, but he has this super high energy that's just contagious.

Wilma (45:13.305)
Huh?

Wilma (45:24.735)
What was the company name you said? I missed it. Cappy. Yeah, Cappy. Okay. I don't know him. Marcus, you're so welcome. High Energy. We love that, right? And talking about High Energy, we are now on a bar together, drinking a very nice drink and this favorite after work song, Expressa Martini. And I love it too. I actually had...

Johanna Korhonen (45:26.958)
Happy.

Johanna Korhonen (45:32.11)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm

Johanna Korhonen (45:47.018)
espresso martini

Wilma (45:51.917)
I only had it once actually, first time June, this summer, last summer. Because I don't really like, favor coffee drinks. I don't like, they're so sweet. And my colleague was like, come on, Wilma, you have to try it out. You can't just disqualify them. like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You have to try everything. Yeah, yeah, once, know. And I was thrilled. So we have a espresso martini, maybe one.

Johanna Korhonen (45:55.513)
Really?

Johanna Korhonen (46:03.147)
No,

Wilma (46:12.823)
Maximum two, because I don't run that well on caffeine. And this song's come out. So now understand, you have closed that big deal. Now we are super happy. Now we're really going to kick this party off. What are we listening to then?

Johanna Korhonen (46:14.675)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (46:26.627)
It's FlowRider Good Feeling.

Wilma (46:29.337)
Ooh, nice choice.

Johanna Korhonen (46:31.462)
And this one has a story because I've closed a lot of deals with this song. A long time ago, I used to work in a sales organization where we had this culture of playing our victory songs through the sound system at the office every time we would close a deal. So everyone would know each other's songs and that would be the best thing ever on a day to day basis when reps used to close deals. And that would be

Wilma (46:49.421)
wonderful culture.

Wilma (46:55.16)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (47:00.846)
my song at that time. So I have partied to that song so many times and it always signals me the feeling of victory.

Wilma (47:05.785)
You

Wilma (47:11.743)
Yeah, accomplishment, victory. I had the same back at the Serum company and I had the Don't Stop Believing with Journey. And that's actually the most asked for song in this podcast. I think we are three or four that had that same song. but Johanna, you go.

Johanna Korhonen (47:16.234)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (47:21.846)
that's good.

Really?

I think that's core at working in sales team. You always have to believe there's a deal somewhere around the corner, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Wilma (47:39.897)
Look them up. If you're data driven, you of course already know what it is. But Johanna, thank you so much for contributing. was a true pleasure meeting you.

Johanna Korhonen (47:52.544)
Likewise, Willem, thanks so much for having me. It was such a pleasure.

Wilma (47:57.721)
Cheers. Have a great weekend.

Johanna Korhonen (48:00.386)
Thank you.

Wilma (48:01.995)
Okay, beautiful. Now we should just record your question as well. I learned a lot of things, got really inspired because in my CEO role, I have too many responsibilities and many of them I feel actually is quite boring, being the CFO or not nagging at people, but ensuring every deadline is actually hold and so forth. And my passion is with her. I'm a true hunter by heart. I'm a true hunter. So you spoke to my hunter heart, fueled it with energy. Thank you.

Johanna Korhonen (48:05.742)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (48:22.382)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (48:26.483)
Yeah

Johanna Korhonen (48:32.48)
Now you have to go do a couple of cold calls with that good energy.

Wilma (48:34.925)
Yeah, yeah, really, really, I need to. Okay, so it would be lovely if you could like just present yourself, like your name, the company, and then your question. So whenever you are ready, you can just go.

Johanna Korhonen (48:48.43)
Mm-hmm.

Johanna Korhonen (48:52.384)
Absolutely. So hello, this is Johanna from Dear Lucy and I have a question for you. If you could swap roles with anyone in your company for a day, who would it be and why?

Wilma (49:11.789)
Very good question. I would for sure not be a developer myself at least. But it's a really good question. No, no, no, no, no.

Johanna Korhonen (49:18.568)
Do you know what? I was thinking about that and that was probably my choice. Because I was like, I don't know any code, I'm not a developer at heart at all and I've worked in tech for so long and just looking at what they do and just having an understanding. Okay, so what is it that you do?

Wilma (49:26.178)
It would.

Wilma (49:35.385)
Yeah.

Wilma (49:41.859)
That is very good of you. should be. My grandma, my late grandma, she taught me the key to a happy long life is to be curious. So kudos to you. Could we take like, I got to put it up on LinkedIn just now, like a freeze picture like this, like, hi. Are you with me? One, two, Great. Then I take a print screen of that later. Thank you so much, Jana. I think this is going to be large like,

Johanna Korhonen (49:52.556)
Yeah.

Johanna Korhonen (50:07.726)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you. Okay.

Wilma (50:11.289)
two to four weeks, something like that. I'll give you a notice beforehand. If there's something when you know waking up tomorrow and felt like this was weird, I want to retake that or something.

Johanna Korhonen (50:20.374)
Nope, there's no retakes in life.

Wilma (50:23.577)
I always agree with you. But sometimes people feel differently, know, so you should ask. Okay. Thank you so much. Let's stay connected. And whenever in Stockholm, let me know.

Johanna Korhonen (50:26.722)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, definitely, definitely, absolutely. Thanks for having me here. Have a good rest of the day and let's stay in touch. Bye bye.

Wilma (50:38.115)
Take care.

Yeah, bye.