Quick WINs: Sales hiring, content strategy, and avoiding silver bullet syndrome with Elizabeth Copeland

By Ian Richardson, Managing Partner, Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Podcast Season 1, Episode 16 Guest: Elizabeth Copeland

Born into a military family in Japan and then moved and became a lifelong resident of Georgia, Elizabeth has a master’s degree in water quality which helped formulate her focus and passion for creating effective and appropriate technology solutions for real world problems.

I flew to Georgia to spend some with Elizabeth a while back (her insight and guidance was critical for R&R to formulate and crystalize our needs around our first employee hire). Our conversation lasted over a day, during which we grabbed a block of time to record a chat for WIN around the topics of hiring sales professionals, content strategy, and the systemic issue in the I.T. channel of leaders looking for silver bullets. As always, I took notes on the conversations, and I have those notes here for your reference and use as you see fit.

1. Sales Hiring: Elizabeth and I dove into the challenge of hiring for sales roles. Too often, organizations will expect a “salesperson” to be able to create the systems, processes, and documentation needed to support an organization’s sales growth needs. Salespeople are not unicorns – they’re no different than any other team. Entrepreneurs need to be able to set up the infrastructure to support the salesperson in their role, and invest the time and resources to train, coach, and enable them to succeed.
2. Content Strategy: Elizabeth shared her recent achievements around utilization of “long form” content to create multiple, more digestible pieces of content. Specifically, her and her team used previously recorded webinars (around an hour long each) to create blog articles, newsletters, and short 90 second video clips that extended their visibility and reach while not breaking the marketing bank on creation of said content. Making sure you maximize your content investment is critical to your marketing strategy.
3. Silver Bullet Syndrome: Elizabeth and I both have noticed that there is a systemic problem in the I.T. channel of entrepreneurs and leaders casting about looking for a “silver bullet” to their problems. Entrepreneurs normally fail to recognize that they themselves are the solution for their team’s woes – their focus, drive, and skillset can often be deployed to solve organizational challenges. Entrepreneurs need to manage their capacity and time, use their team effectively to manage the day-to-day operations, and maintain focus on what’s important now for their business.

I gain so much value from meeting with fellow entrepreneurs and leaders. Each and every person I speak with brings their own experiences, knowledge, and viewpoints to the table, and without fail, I walk away with a head full of ideas and motivation to do better in my own business. I so greatly appreciate El’s willingness to come onto W.I.N. and share her story.

If you’re interested in joining me on an episode of W.I.N., it would be my privilege to host you. You can book your spot by visiting https://randr.consulting/connect and selecting the Podcast Booking option from the services menu. You can find previous episodes of W.I.N. on our website and subscribe to it on whatever your platform of choice is.

Always Forward,

Ian