Resources for Business Owners and Leaders
Podcast Appearances & Hosted Webinars
With over 30 years experience, Jane Gentry is a highly sought-after speaker for leadership events, business podcasts and webinar sessions. Jane has been featured on many podcasts to discuss common challenges for business owners, obstacles for leaders and managers, and the importance of coaching. In these podcasts, Jane leverages her experience as a business consultant for Fortune 500 companies to advise and educate leaders in today’s business landscape.
The Growth Catalyst Show: Jane Gentry's Unique Perspective on Business Growth and Transition
April 24, 2024
Jane Gentry joined Dan Mahony on The Growth Catalyst Show to share her business growth and change management expertise. Watch now to gain valuable insights into understanding market needs, fostering individual success, and navigating change through effective communication and empathy.
“Most leaders aren’t terrible at change management. It’s the transition management, the people management, that causes 70% of change initiatives to fail.” – Jane Gentry
My Pivotal Moments: Small Change, Big Impact with Jane Gentry
February 2, 2024
Jane Gentry joined Bret Nelson and Sue Steinfeld on the My Pivotal Moments Podcast to discuss Jane’s journey to creating her own business through her steadfast dedication to overcoming challenges and staying true to her values. Hear the steps she took to create her company and how she inspires and motivates others to find success.
“Life is terminal at the end, but your business decisions are rarely terminal. For most of us, if you take a step and it doesn’t feel right, you’ll have the time to take another step and see.” – Jane Gentry
March 14, 2023
Jane Gentry joined Angela Gennari on the Pretty Powerful Podcast to discuss how Jane supports small and mid-size businesses as a CEO Advisor or Co-CEO. Jane shares the benefits of hiring outside help to guide businesses through transitioning, selling, or scaling a business.
“Business is still about relationships and empowering people, engaging people, enabling people in your company is about understanding them and what motivates them. ” – Jane Gentry
December 16, 2022
CEO Advisor & Business Consultant Jane Gentry joined Anthony Chen on Family Business Radio to discuss common mistakes made by business owners. Jane shares how she helps businesses diagnose problems and determine how to approach changes in the organization. She also describes common issues that come up when moving a family business into the next generation of leadership.
“Look at unprofitable clients. I would rather you cut an unprofitable client than an employee. It’s hard for a business owner to cut a client loose. Be willing to say goodbye to business that is not good. All business isn’t good business.” – Jane Gentry
November 15, 2022
CEO Advisor Jane Gentry joins Carole Mahoney on LinkedIn Live to provide insight on taking a buyer-first sales approach. With over 30 years of sales and leadership experience, Jane shares her perspective on the sales process from the seat of a buyer.
“Buyers have to be in a lot of pain to move off of the current solution that they have. It’s easier to walk around with a limp and you just get used to it. And that’s the same with technology or anything else – ‘it’s not the best solution for me, but I’ve gotten accustomed to the limp and I feel like the surgery is going to be really painful.’ So you have to have a really compelling solution for a customer to move away from their current provider.” – Jane Gentry
April 28, 2022
Business Consultant Jane Gentry speaks with Stone Payton of Cherokee Business Radio about the common challenges faced by CEOs and leaders in the post-COVID business landscape. Jane helps leaders course-correct, stop chasing the shiny object, and find their organization’s purpose.
“What I’m passionate about is helping owners realize the things that they want in their business, realize that they can have a life and have a business which is really hard to do, and that they can sell their business and make money and not get not get ripped off.” – Jane Gentry
April 19, 2022
Jane Gentry joins Eric Holtzclaw on The Claw, The Marketing Podcast for C-Suite Executives to discuss improving the process for hiring your sales team. Sales people need to hired based on specific skills and there are better tools that can be leveraged to assess sales candidates.
“First, hiring sales people is one of the hardest hires in your organizations. Secondly, people let the wrong person in the organization hire that person. A lot of people give that to HR. HR is the last person who should be hiring for sales in your company. Ramping up a sales person and realizing later that they were a bad hire is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make in a company.”
– Jane Gentry
November 12, 2021
Leadership and sales expert Jane Gentry joins Trip Jobe and Darren Rand on Marketing Madmen along with Jen LeMaster, the Chief Administrative Officer of the Georgia World Congress Center. In this episode, Jane discusses how to elevate the effectiveness of your trade show presence post-COVID.
“The industry has struggled for the 30 years I’ve been in it to figure out the right ROI [measurement]. Most of the time it’s stuff that doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t enable you to do anything different or better in your marketing program.” – Jane Gentry
June 18, 2021
Following her keynote presentation at EDPA Engage 2021 Reboot, Jane Gentry joins The Don and Mike Show to discuss the evolution of staffing challenges over time and how to approach rebuilding your team post-pandemic.
“Employees have had time now to experience a different kind of life, reimagine what their lifestyle looks like, reinvent the way that they work and they’ve decided that they are going to put parameters around what’s acceptable and not acceptable to them in terms of their job.” – Jane Gentry
August 31, 2020
Jane Gentry discusses how the pandemic did and did not change best practices for relationship building in sales with Tim Patterson, Tradeshow Guy. Jane provides three important points about navigating the sales process and networking amid the pandemic.
“Relationships are built so much more quickly face-to-face. Leverage Zoom, don’t be afraid of Zoom. This is a way to build relationships with people that you cannot do on the phone. ” – Jane Gentry
December 16, 2019
Jane Gentry and Elizabeth Frederick discuss a manager’s role in coaching sales people on Let’s Talk Sales. Learn tips on how and when coaching makes the most difference from a sales and leadership expert.
“What you want to coach as a manager are the leading indicators of success. What are the behaviors your salespeople should be exhibiting? How many calls should they be making? What are the kinds of conversations should they be having on those calls? Are they asking the right questions? Are they selling value? These are things you can coach to.” – Jane Gentry
March 11, 2019
Jane Gentry is a top voice in sales and leadership. She joined the Sales Game Changers podcast to discuss the importance of developing strong sales leaders, and how to maintain a relationship-focused sales approach.
“[Sales] is a career where you really can be the captain of your own ship, you can see there’s a very visible line to your contribution to an organization when you’re in sales. You can see it in ways that other people in parts of the organization have a harder time seeing the contribution that they make.” – Jane Gentry
March 4, 2019
In celebration of International Women’s Day, Scott Ingram features Jane Gentry on the Daily Sales Tip podcast. From book recommendations to networking tips, Jane shares tips for women in sales to change their mindset and improve their skills.
“In eight seconds, a person decides if you are smart, competent, trustworthy and whether it’s worth it to continue having a conversation with you. So I say, put your best foot forward and be intentional and strategic about your executive presence.” – Jane Gentry
July 9, 2018
Jane Gentry and Eric Holtzclaw discuss the common challenges while hiring salespeople and how to make the right investments when building your sales organization. Learn how to identify leading indicators, measure the sales activities and behaviors that achieve success, and understand buyer behavior.
“Many sales managers, in all sizes of companies, measure the wrong thing and they see their role the wrong way.” – Jane Gentry
May 9, 2018
With over 30 years of experience as a business consultant, Jane Gentry discusses common mistakes made in the hiring process for sales people, and how to establish better hiring processes.
“You don’t have to be an outgoing person to be a great sales person. Personality is not what we should be testing for when we’re looking for sales people. We need to be testing for sales competencies.” – Jane Gentry
February 12, 2018
Andy Paul and Jane Gentry discuss skill gaps with the new generations entering the workforce. Are new generations not learning relational intelligence? A high reliance on technology causes gaps in social skills, and these skill gaps are solvable.
“Leaders need to assume a positive intent [when working with the Millennial and younger age groups]. From my experience, when [Millennials] do something differently (use technology differently or work different hours), the knee-jerk reaction of leaders is to say they are lazy, or they are this, or that. The first thing we have to do as leaders is get out of our own way and realize our biases about those generations. Once we do that, and that’s not a simple task, is to realize that we have to lead differently. We’re talking about culture changing, and changing cultures has to start with leaders. ” – Jane Gentry
February 15, 2018
Jane Gentry leverages lessons learned over her 30-year career to develop a simple formula for improving the learning and development process and ultimately enable growth for sales organizations.
“Do you know where in the sales process your tools and templates should be leveraged? If you don’t know, then it’s likely that your sales people don’t know. I love to see clients who can put the buyer journey, the sales process, the tools [and templates] aligned under each section of the sales process, and then the capabilities and the skills that their sellers need to have also aligned with each part of the sales process. If you can create that, that’s what you need to create an effective selling organization. ” – Jane Gentry
January 31, 2018
Business Consultant and Sales Expert Jane Gentry discusses the challenges with a millennial workforce in sales and how that changes your approach to sales leadership. Jane speaks about authenticity, purpose, and the critical importance of social intelligence and relationship building.
“Millennials are amazing and they are adding so much value to the workplace but you have to be aware of their gaps as well and the great news about that, which is that they are coachable. All these things are coachable.” – Jane Gentry
December 13, 2017
Jane Gentry joins Corey Rieck, Linda Gabbard and Mindy Godwin on a podcast featuring Women in Business in Atlanta, Georgia. These leadership experts discuss the great work that female executives and leaders in the community are doing to contribute to organizations and companies.
“Culture change in a company starts with leaders. [Leaders] need to shift their mindset first. Yes, down the road, we’re going to work with the younger people in the organization. We’re going to figure out where their gaps are around skills like social intelligence. We’re going to figure out where their self-awareness is lacking. But nothing changes without the leaders changing first.” – Jane Gentry
October 31, 2017
Sales Guru Jane Gentry joins Bernadette Boas on the Shedding the B!tch podcast to discuss increasing their sales effectiveness through better processes, changing your mindset and building relationship.
“The minute I stopped thinking about my pocket book and how much money I was going to make, and I started 100% focusing on making my client successful. The minute I shifted my mindset, I tripled my income.” – Jane Gentry
August 31, 2017
Executive Coach and Sales Expert, Jane Gentry joins Paul Watts on the Sales Reinvented podcast. Jane shares her top three dos and don’ts in sales, focusing on how to add value for your customers.
“We need to stop selling and start helping our customers. Sales people are so focused on the number that they forget that if we would start helping the customer solve a problem and buy a solution that meets their needs, selling would become a lot easier. ” – Jane Gentry
August 14, 2017
Jane Gentry, business consultant and sales leadership expert, joins John Golden on Sales Pop!. John and Jane discuss why it’s important to look at management and leadership first when trying to improve the effectiveness of your sales team.
“We are really weak in manager development inside our organizations. We don’t really realize that the person that interacts with sales people day to day is the thing that’s going to make you win or lose as a sales organization.” – Jane Gentry
May 17, 2017
Jane Gentry discusses battling the perception of sales people and changing the mindset of who and how to sell within an organization. In this webinar, Jane explains how “non-sellers” build client relationships through trust, and enabling them to add value and generate revenue.
“The first part of any successful relationship is to build trust. Clients don’t care about your vision or innovation until they know they can trust you and trust your motives. No matter how technological, sophisticated and brilliant we think we’ve become as sellers, the bottom line is still that relationships come first and trust is the first step to a good relationship.”
– Jane Gentry
March 22, 2017
Sales expert and executive coach Jane Gentry discusses the importance of relational intelligence, how it’s become a gap for newer generations, and what you can do to create a more relationally intelligent culture. The good news is, Relational Intelligence is coachable.
“About 80% of employers think graduates lack soft skills. My suggestion to you is that these are not soft skills. They are real skills and they are skills that people from past generations were a lot more comfortable with because we did not have technology to hide behind. We were in face-to-face conversations and relationships everywhere we went.”
– Jane Gentry
March 7, 2017
Jane Gentry leads this webinar about learning and development within sales organizations and how to increase the effectiveness of your program.
“[Manager Engagement] is the one thing that will make or break your sales learning program. Front Line Managers are the differentiator. Sellers behave by mimicking what they see their managers doing and what their managers are coaching. Getting those front line managers on-board and engaged is as important an activity for you as anything you build out in this learning and development strategy.”
– Jane Gentry
Meet Jane
ABOUT JANE GENTRY
Jane Gentry has had a successful 30-year career as a CEO, Business Consultant, Executive Coach, and Keynoter. Jane formed her practice in 1999 and since then has partnered with her clients to improve growth, profitability, client retention, employee retention, leadership capabilities and business value.
Jane leverages strategies including the proprietary Value Blueprint to enable business owners and leaders to successfully create healthy organizations, plan for succession or sell their businesses for the highest possible market value. Jane is considered one of the top voices in leadership and sales.
