The Growth Workshop Podcast
Episode 6 Review - Centricity in SaaS: Lesley Ronaldson Keeps the Customer First
Mon, 15 Jul 2024
We recap strategies from Lesley Ronaldson (VP of Sales EMEA at Gong) on the importance of a customer-centric approach to digital transformation for your business, including her experiences and practical tips that you can use to understand customer needs for business success in the digital age.
Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop podcast. Jonny, what a great conversation we've just had with Leslie Ronaldson, the VP of Sales here at Gong. She shared some incredible insights with us in that conversation and the energy, I think, just really filled me up in that discussion. I'm curious, what was your key takeaway from our chat?
Well, it's so tough. One takeaway. That's all I'm allowed, Matt. I'm afraid so. Oh, come on. Well, let me just prefix it with the fact that I came off that conversation with Leslie. She's a person that just gives you so much energy. She's someone that...
I think if I was 10 years younger and she was leading the workforce and there was an opportunity to work at one of the institutes that she worked at, I'd snap it up. I think there's two things for that. One, she's just tireless in her motivation, her energy. I don't think you get away with just chilling on a day.
Secondly, clearly with her expertise and knowledge of sales, it comes across differently. And one of the things that she said, and my key takeaway is the word that she said many time over. I wonder how many times she said Gong would probably be able to pick it up, is integrity. And I go back to my career and think about the sales roles I've had. And I think there's a bad name about selling.
And the bad name comes from where people have been missold. Or when they've been sold or purchased, the actual benefit has not been seen and the value outweighs that. So, you know, there's been a cost issue. And I think the word integrity is really important because that makes it much more value based as that has given me the insight of going, well, 10 years ago, did I sell with integrity?
And I'd say that I've been quite fortunate because every business I've worked with has has had some relationship to SBR and the DNA that we work with. So I've been fortunate on that aspect. And at SBR, we constantly think about buying atmosphere and having conversations around integrity. So For me, that's a really strong word that she shared with us.
It gave me an opportunity to reflect back on my own experience in sales to go, do I sell with integrity? I really do think I do, but I must carry on doing that because that's key to customer centricity. So that's my key, key takeaway, Matt. I only had one thanks to that, but what's your one takeaway? Okay.
Jodie, thanks for sharing that. And I agree completely. I think selling with integrity is the opposite of lots of people's perception of what sales is all about. And I think it's so, so important to remember that. We talk to people coming new into sales careers or new into sales roles and having that. I don't want to try and flog something to somebody. That's not what sales is about.
Sales is about understanding what somebody needs to aligning to those needs and then winning together. And I think she encapsulated that really nicely in her examples, hadn't she, Johnny? So yeah, I'm borrowing yours there. I think the other thing for me and my real key takeaway was she talked about how she helps her team in staying client-centric. And so many people I speak to
turn around and say, we're a client-centric team. We're all in it together. And sometimes what that can cause is just chaos and havoc.
And without the clarity that she shared, the importance of having that track to run on and the team having clear responsibilities about what they needed to do, but at the same time maintaining this universal, unified focus on the client and the client being at the heart of all those decisions, I think is such a hard thing to achieve. And she's clearly
done that and continues to work to reinforce that in her organization. I found that really, really inspiring.
So I think for me, it's about, you know, thinking about how I take that into the advice and the guidance that I'm giving my clients when it comes to creating that robust sort of end to end process that has to have a certain amount of structure whilst retaining this vital focus on client centricity. And I think that was, yeah, stand out for me. Again, what a fantastic conversation.
As you said at the beginning here, Johnny, her energy is just, I think we could have talked for hours. So thank you again so much to Leslie Ronaldson, VP of Sales in EMEA for Gong, for joining us on the Growth Workshop podcast and all of our listeners out there. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And a bow for Johnny and I. See you next time. For more insights, make sure you subscribe.
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