Latest / Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say / Modern Rules from a Sales Veteran with Glenn Poulos

Transcript

Modern Rules from a Sales Veteran with Glenn Poulos · Founder Unfiltered - What Founders Think But Never Say

• 0:00
  Welcome to another episode of 6 Figure Secrets for Fractional
• 0:03
  Experts. My name is Bradley Jacobs.
• 0:05
  I'm your host, the founder and CEO of Mylands.
• 0:09
  Today I'm really excited to be joined by Glenn Poulis.
• 0:12
  Glenn is a veteran sales leader and entrepreneur.
• 0:17
  Author of Never Sit in the Lobby.
• 0:19
  He Co founded Gap Wireless, scaled it into a leading tech
• 0:23
  distributor and successfully exited twice.
• 0:26
  Now retired from day-to-day operations, he helps founders
• 0:28
  and teams sharpen their sales, simplify their systems and win
• 0:32
  back their time. It's also a speaker, podcast
• 0:35
  guest and LinkedIn top voice. Glenn, welcome to the show.
• 0:39
  Hey, Bradley, thanks for having me.
• 0:40
  It's great to be here. Yeah.
• 0:42
  Really excited to chat with you and.
• 0:44
  To dive. Right in I want to talk about
• 0:46
  your book. Let's just start there.
• 0:48
  Sure. So.
• 0:49
  The title is kind of catchy. You never sit in the lobby.
• 0:51
  I've researched, but give our audience like, what does that
• 0:54
  mean? Yeah, what it means it's one of
• 0:56
  the 57 tips that's contained in the book is the book is kind of
• 0:59
  a book of tips, right? And really they're the rules
• 1:02
  that I that I learned along the way.
• 1:04
  I got into sales in 1985. Of course, I owned the sales
• 1:07
  companies along the way, but a salesman, sales manager, owner,
• 1:10
  this stuff, but always sort of client facing, customer facing.
• 1:14
  And you know, I learned a bunch of things and in the 80s I
• 1:16
  started writing them down and over the years I started
• 1:19
  retelling them and making jokes about them stories.
• 1:22
  And people were like, you come tell these stories at our sales
• 1:25
  meeting, which started doing that here and there.
• 1:27
  And then someone's like, oh, you should write a book.
• 1:29
  And of course I never did. But in the, in the pandemic, I
• 1:32
  had nothing else to do being locked up.
• 1:34
  I decided that I was going to take my notebook of golden rules
• 1:37
  and see if I could get it into a book.
• 1:39
  That's where the book came from. And the editor helped me pick a
• 1:42
  title and it was one of the chapters.
• 1:44
  Never sit in the lobby. And what it means is, is that
• 1:47
  often times, you know, you go and you show up at a customer
• 1:50
  and you announce yourself and then you go sit down, you pull
• 1:52
  out your phone, you start messing around.
• 1:54
  The wife starts sending you like the shopping list for after
• 1:56
  work. And you get all distracted.
• 1:58
  And then a customer comes in and he's like, Hey, are you Glenn?
• 2:01
  And you're like, you're oh, and you're going to and it's just
• 2:03
  not a good look. And so I tell people, when you
• 2:05
  get to the lobby, show up on time a few minutes early.
• 2:07
  Early is on time, on time is late.
• 2:09
  And then just don't sit down, right?
• 2:10
  Like don't go looking at the wall with all their plaques,
• 2:13
  don't pick up their magazines, don't get on the phone.
• 2:16
  Just be waiting. And so that you can greet the
• 2:19
  customer as they walk in and you're ready and you're prepared
• 2:21
  and you're standing up and you're out of tension, right?
• 2:23
  And you know when there's another rule that falls
• 2:25
  immediately after, which is always have something in your
• 2:28
  hand and something in your mind. Customer comes in, you want to
• 2:32
  give them something and you want to ask them something, right?
• 2:35
  And those are just two of the 57 rules, right?
• 2:38
  And so that's what never sit in the lobby means.
• 2:40
  It was one of the catchy ones. So that's what became the title.
• 2:43
  Yeah, it certainly is catchy. So when we think about, because
• 2:48
  I remember 10 years ago I was a management consultant and yeah,
• 2:51
  we'd go into our like, I have the exact visual of what you're
• 2:54
  talking about, right? Like going to the headquarters
• 2:56
  and sit down. OK.
• 2:57
  These days, so much of what happens is virtual, right?
• 3:01
  It's so much remote and it's LinkedIn and it's Zoom and.
• 3:05
  I love this question. Is there an equivalent?
• 3:08
  Don't sit in the lobby for like the.
• 3:10
  Yeah, there is. What is that?
• 3:12
  There is don't not, not sit in the lobby, which is like, 'cause
• 3:16
  the guy, guess what? The guy's getting the orders in
• 3:18
  the lobby, right? You're the one that's doing it.
• 3:20
  Virtually. The winners are not doing it
• 3:23
  that way. I always challenge people.
• 3:25
  I say, look, imagine you can become super successful and you
• 3:29
  know, you pull $50 million out of your business and you're
• 3:32
  going to buy a jet. And I said, and there's two
• 3:35
  guys, 2 jet salesman. One of the jet salesman picks
• 3:39
  you up in a Bugatti drives you to the airport wines and dines
• 3:44
  use the flight attendants come down, you know, off your off the
• 3:48
  G5 or whatever it is and walk you into you introduce you to
• 3:51
  the pilot and the copilot pour you some champagne, give you
• 3:54
  some more derp, sit you down, fly to Miami, give you lunch,
• 3:59
  you know, specs and tell you everything on the way.
• 4:01
  Then they fly you home. They begotti you back to your
• 4:04
  house and whatever the other guy, he does it on Zoom and he
• 4:09
  virtually picks you up and you're, you know, at home,
• 4:13
  right? And he virtually drives you to
• 4:15
  the airport and meet, you know, meet everyone virtually.
• 4:18
  And the pilot this, you know, they all fly to Miami and have
• 4:21
  lunch without you. But of course, you're all there
• 4:23
  on Zoom, right? Which one of you guys thinks is
• 4:26
  getting the order right? Like and so, and the reality is
• 4:29
  take 50 million and make it a $5,000,000, you know, piece of
• 4:33
  capital equipment, make it a $500,000 piece of
• 4:36
  infrastructure, make it a $50,000 system that you're
• 4:39
  buying or even 5000. It doesn't matter.
• 4:41
  The point is you always want to try to get in front of the
• 4:44
  customer if you're on Zoom. And the other the never sit in
• 4:47
  the lobbies are like always have your camera on, you know, always
• 4:50
  be at attention, keep away the distractions.
• 4:53
  And still you need something in your hand and something in your
• 4:55
  mind, you know, you want to like maybe send them something in an
• 4:58
  attachment. You want to play him a video or
• 5:00
  something to capture their attention and get them into the
• 5:03
  space, right? And that's where, you know, I
• 5:06
  have another thing called the punch perfect pitch and close,
• 5:09
  right? And that's where you, it's a way
• 5:11
  of presenting to customers where you punch perfect pitch and then
• 5:15
  you close, right? And the punch is to change their
• 5:18
  state. And you can do it virtually and
• 5:20
  you can also do it at their facility, right?
• 5:23
  And again, you know that by now that I'm going to tell you to do
• 5:26
  it at on site if you can. But if you can't, you need to
• 5:29
  basically change their state, right?
• 5:31
  Because so often these presentations, they start with
• 5:35
  boring shit. They basically start, Oh, like,
• 5:38
  let me show you like, oh, we have a factory in England with
• 5:41
  1200 people and our head office is in Germany where we have over
• 5:44
  3000 pre already sleep. The guy's already checking
• 5:48
  e-mail, right? Like, so whether he's on zoom or
• 5:51
  whether he's, whether he's sitting across the boardroom
• 5:53
  table from you, you, you need to capture attention and you need
• 5:57
  to connect with the customer, right?
• 5:59
  And that's what, where these rules were born from because
• 6:02
  losing for, and most of the time I, I learned these things by
• 6:06
  losing for not doing them. And so the the cold crux behind
• 6:10
  the book was how to get act and stay in front of your customer
• 6:15
  and to be a pleasure to do business with always.
• 6:18
  It's this unwritten subtitle of the book.
• 6:21
  And it's like, well, what do you mean be a pleasure to do
• 6:23
  business with always? I'm like, don't be a pain in the
• 6:25
  ass, right? Like, just don't be a shitty
• 6:27
  salesman, especially when you lose the deal, right?
• 6:30
  Because if you're selling high end stuff, you may have a chance
• 6:32
  to go back and they may never want you in again because you
• 6:35
  misbehaved losing the last deal. You know, some of the nicest
• 6:38
  comments that I've ever heard about myself over the years were
• 6:42
  from my competitors in competing with me and whatever, right?
• 6:45
  And just the the way I attend to these, this kind of like
• 6:49
  impression and that you put upon people, right.
• 6:53
  And so, but again, inside the book and inside my philosophies
• 6:57
  and whatever are a bunch of rules to protect me from those
• 7:00
  things, right? Like it's not a one way St. you
• 7:02
  know, I'm not saying, oh, lose the order and then be a nice guy
• 7:04
  and take him out to dinner. That's not what I'm saying.
• 7:07
  What I'm actually saying is like, for instance, sometimes,
• 7:10
  you know, you go into a deal and maybe you didn't make a call at
• 7:14
  the beginning. And then all of a sudden you
• 7:16
  realize you got to make a call. So you, you know, you fly to
• 7:19
  Denver or whatever to see this guy, which you should have maybe
• 7:22
  done originally, but you didn't because you said you could do it
• 7:24
  over soon. And so then you go there, right?
• 7:26
  And you show up in the lobby and Glenn says, hey, never sit in
• 7:29
  the lobby. So I'm not sitting in the lobby
• 7:31
  and I wait for the guy to show up and he shows up.
• 7:34
  I saw I got something in my hands, something in my mind, and
• 7:37
  then I asked him the next rule. The next rule is always ask for
• 7:41
  a mini tour, right? The guy says, no problem, let me
• 7:44
  give you a mini tour of where your equipment's going to go or
• 7:46
  where your system's being installed or where your software
• 7:48
  is going to run or the people that's going to be using it or
• 7:50
  whatever. And he takes you and he opens
• 7:53
  the door to leave you behind the wall of the lobby.
• 7:56
  And you notice that every third person has a shirt on that says
• 8:01
  IBM or Dell or Microsoft. And you work for Apple, right?
• 8:07
  And you realize that they got 9 systems from Microsoft or Apple
• 8:11
  or Dell or whatever. And you're the other guy and
• 8:14
  you're quoting them on one of these systems or whatever,
• 8:17
  right? And you realize you're just the,
• 8:20
  you're just the guy that's going to keep the other guy honest,
• 8:22
  right? There's no way they're going to
• 8:24
  be doing a, you know, a forklift overlay of of 1 Apple system on
• 8:29
  top of nine Microsoft, right? It's just not going to happen.
• 8:31
  You would have figured that out if you had it gone there in the
• 8:33
  1st place, got in the mini tour, got behind the door, etcetera.
• 8:37
  And then you can do my next rule, which is I'd rather be
• 8:41
  last than second, right? So I like to lose quickly
• 8:45
  because when you come in second, you're just really the number
• 8:48
  one loser, right? So what I do is I try to lose
• 8:51
  quickly if I'm going to. So at any moment in time where I
• 8:55
  realized unequivocally through some deduction of it, of
• 9:00
  information that without a doubt, I know there's no way I
• 9:03
  can win at that moment, I quit working for that person and I
• 9:08
  graciously back away and stop doing anything, right?
• 9:12
  For instance, I show up and I'm, you know, Apple, Microsoft,
• 9:16
  whatever, right? And I realize there's nine
• 9:18
  systems. They're not getting the
• 9:19
  business. And then they go, you know what,
• 9:20
  can you install a system for like 8 week trial?
• 9:22
  I'm like, sure, no problem. Our stuff's backed up.
• 9:25
  We got orders out till Christmas.
• 9:27
  We can install one next February.
• 9:29
  And they're like, no, no, no, no, we need one in two weeks in
• 9:32
  order to do this thing and whatever.
• 9:33
  I'm oh, I'm sorry, like the soonest we could get a system in
• 9:35
  here would be January, you know, maybe, maybe, but probably more
• 9:39
  like February or whatever, right?
• 9:41
  I'm, I'm just making this up as we should talk here, right?
• 9:43
  But but what my point is is that I'm not going to install a
• 9:46
  system where I know I'm not getting the deal.
• 9:48
  And so I just, you know, I just, I just stopped participating.
• 9:52
  And then I follow my next tip, my next rule, which is run to
• 9:56
  the next customer, right? And so while Microsoft is there
• 9:59
  fighting off Apples and, you know, other companies that are
• 10:03
  trying to get the business and they're installing systems for a
• 10:05
  two months trial, knowing, having not knowing they should
• 10:09
  not be doing it, I run to the next client and I try to lock
• 10:14
  them down with my systems while everyone else is busy fighting
• 10:17
  over this one, right? And that's what I do with my
• 10:20
  time and I do it nicely and politely and whatever and, and
• 10:23
  this is just the way it all the rules kind of all flow together.
• 10:27
  So you've been in the sales for a long time, right, decades and
• 10:31
  things have changed so much in the landscape of business,
• 10:35
  right? Whether it's technology and AI
• 10:37
  and COVID changed a lot of things.
• 10:39
  And you know on down the line, what are things that have not
• 10:42
  changed that like since you know 40 years of doing of doing sales
• 10:47
  or whatever that has not changed over that period of time?
• 10:51
  The one thing that immediately comes to my mind is something
• 10:54
  that has both changed and not changed, right.
• 10:57
  So it's kind of ironic in a way. My answer is in somewhat ironic.
• 11:01
  OK, so what's not changed is like the, the, the real guys
• 11:06
  that do the business and get the business buy from people like
• 11:09
  Bob, the Vice President of Finance, you know, who's talking
• 11:12
  at SAP about a system or whatever.
• 11:14
  Like he's talking to the guy at SAP and he's having lunch with
• 11:18
  him and he's known him for 10 years.
• 11:19
  And when he calls, you know, the cell phone numbers are
• 11:22
  programmed in and they know it's Bob from SAP.
• 11:24
  And what's changed is the guy at the fact the guy at the plant is
• 11:28
  buying something won't pick up the cell phone to anyone he
• 11:31
  doesn't know. Like he's if he if you're not in
• 11:33
  his cell phone, you call his cell phone doesn't know he
• 11:35
  doesn't answer it right. He calls desk phone his
• 11:37
  voicemail and never checks it right.
• 11:39
  You send him an e-mail. He looks at his e-mail every day
• 11:41
  and he says what are emails can I look at here and delete and
• 11:44
  not get fired? This one, this one, this one and
• 11:47
  this one. Boom, every time you get deleted
• 11:49
  because he knows he's not going to get fired for deleting some
• 11:51
  e-mail from some company that they don't work with.
• 11:53
  It's not paid to be be solicited.
• 11:56
  So you can't get him on e-mail. You can't get him on the Direct
• 11:59
  Line. You can't get him on The Voice
• 12:00
  on the cell phone. What has changed is that before
• 12:05
  you could phone people and they would answer the phone.
• 12:07
  And so even if you knew him or didn't know him, you had an even
• 12:10
  equal likelihood of being answered.
• 12:13
  But now it's quite, quite the different.
• 12:15
  I know you know this to be true because your cell phone rings
• 12:17
  all day and you never answer it, right?
• 12:19
  Sure. What what happens is, is that
• 12:22
  for instance, I mentioned Oracle earlier because Oracles like
• 12:25
  sort of chasing me. They want me to forklift,
• 12:28
  upgrade my ERP system in the new company that I bought and
• 12:30
  whatever. And I'm using a different system
• 12:32
  and they change people a lot in their business development.
• 12:36
  And so I don't have their cell phone numbers in my phone.
• 12:38
  So when they call from like a 212 was 617.
• 12:42
  I just think Boston. I don't run in Boston.
• 12:44
  Delete. What I suggest you have to do is
• 12:46
  you have to come at them from 7 different angles, right?
• 12:49
  So he, he calls my cell phone and he leaves a voicemail which
• 12:52
  he knows I may or may not even listen to, right?
• 12:55
  But I have visual voicemail. So I might see Oracle.
• 12:58
  So it's Bob from Oracle. So again, don't start with oh,
• 13:01
  hi, it's Bob. Hope you're having a great day.
• 13:03
  Just wanted to check in with you.
• 13:04
  It's Bob from Oracle. I know I'm not gonna listen to
• 13:06
  the get to Oracle. And then he sends an e-mail,
• 13:08
  right? And then he follows it up where
• 13:10
  he might even mail me something. And then in a series of
• 13:14
  repetitive where he has to breakthrough the, the melee of
• 13:19
  like obstacles I've created for him to finally get to the point
• 13:23
  where at least from a personal perspective, like if the guy
• 13:26
  from Oracle gets through 6 or 7 hurdles, I'm probably going to
• 13:29
  pick up just because I feel sorry for him in a way, right?
• 13:33
  That's where the the magic starts to happen.
• 13:35
  And then all of a sudden now there's a dialogue and I can,
• 13:38
  you know, personally went with salespeople.
• 13:40
  I'm very honest with them and I'll tell them, look, look like
• 13:43
  I might buy your thing later, but not now or, you know, but
• 13:47
  you're competing against this and that and whatever.
• 13:49
  It's not like I make that all be a guessing game.
• 13:51
  I'm 100% transparent. And eventually over time, for
• 13:54
  instance, if it's the Oracle guy, I get to know the guy, of
• 13:57
  course, right? And then I'm buying from
• 13:58
  somebody that I know. And it's, it's the same thing
• 14:01
  with things that get bought over and over again.
• 14:03
  Guys buying motor oil for some generator or something or
• 14:06
  whatever. He buys Quaker State and the
• 14:08
  Quaker State Rep drops in every month and brings doughnuts and
• 14:11
  you know, and this and that, whatever the Quaker State guy
• 14:13
  can get in front of them at any point in time and show them
• 14:15
  whatever Quaker State's got to sell in.
• 14:17
  In addition to oil, oil treatment, oil cleaning, oil
• 14:20
  clean up stuff, oil storage, you know, oil cooling, oil, oil
• 14:24
  heating oil, whatever products Quaker State makes, this guy can
• 14:28
  bring in the factory reps, you know, from, from Quaker State at
• 14:31
  any moment. But the guy works for Pennzoil.
• 14:33
  Good luck, right? And I'm, and I'm picking all
• 14:35
  these different random products because people are like, oh,
• 14:37
  that won't work for me because I sell HR software, right?
• 14:41
  Or I sell widgets, or I sell oil, or I sell jets, or it
• 14:46
  always holds true. What I'm hearing you say is the
• 14:48
  end of the day, people buy from people they know.
• 14:52
  Yeah, right. It's as simple as that, right?
• 14:54
  Become someone that your client knows and they're more likely to
• 14:59
  at least give you the time of day, hear from you, and
• 15:01
  potentially buy from you. You're a LinkedIn top voice,
• 15:04
  right? You, you invest in LinkedIn, you
• 15:06
  show up on LinkedIn. How does that tie into this
• 15:09
  principle of becoming someone that you know or the client
• 15:14
  knows? Well, one thing about LinkedIn
• 15:16
  is like there's this, you know, need that you got to be like
• 15:18
  super genuine, right, Because I mean, now AI, which I, you know,
• 15:23
  I'm doing a lot of research and development on on AI, how you
• 15:26
  can deploy it and what have you. And I'm using myself, of course,
• 15:29
  and whatever. And, and everybody's telling me
• 15:32
  that then, you know, they can do my call setting for me.
• 15:34
  They can do all my engagements. And I can't remember what it
• 15:37
  was, but I got like, so I got like engaged by an AI thing on
• 15:41
  something, but it was very it was 1 dimensional the product,
• 15:45
  right? Like, I can't, I wish I could
• 15:46
  remember what it was, but I mean, but, but the things that I
• 15:50
  sell are like, I barely even understand them myself.
• 15:53
  I need the factory engineers to help me explain it.
• 15:56
  And how do you engage with a guy who has that same level of
• 15:59
  technical acumen with AI? It's like very, very difficult,
• 16:03
  right? And so the point is when you're
• 16:05
  using a LinkedIn, you know, it's not about volume.
• 16:09
  You need to like use all the tools that are available to
• 16:12
  isolate down to the exact right person that's appropriate for
• 16:16
  whatever it is you sell, right. And, and there's a secondary
• 16:20
  rule, which hopefully I'll remember to tell you in a
• 16:22
  second. But I mean, it's so in the sense
• 16:23
  that like, let's say that, you know, it's the finance man,
• 16:28
  maybe the controller, it's not the VP of finance, not the, not
• 16:31
  the CFO, it's the, the director of finance or whatever that,
• 16:34
  that, that buys the, the kind of stuff you sell.
• 16:37
  Then focus on that. Don't be like spamming the CFO
• 16:41
  saying like, Oh, I just kind of get a few minutes to bug you
• 16:43
  about something or whatever, right?
• 16:45
  If your thing cost $1,000,000 and, and the CF OS, the one
• 16:50
  that's going to sign off on it, then you need to start with the
• 16:52
  CFO and, and, and focus on that particular relationship.
• 16:57
  There's quite a quite a soliloquy in the book on on that
• 17:02
  whole thing about approaching the right person first.
• 17:07
  And I turned it into kind of a funny story or whatever, but
• 17:11
  about selling, you know, forklifts, tow motors, you know,
• 17:14
  and calling the CFO, a CEO and the guys tell me, what are you
• 17:16
  talking about? Like, I don't care about
• 17:18
  forklifts, right? Talk to my vice president of
• 17:20
  warehousing, right? And so call the vice president
• 17:22
  of warehousing and saying, I was talking to Bob, the CEO.
• 17:24
  He said I should give you a call, but what forklifts, you go
• 17:27
  forklifts, I'm care about forklifts.
• 17:29
  Talk to my head of manufacture, my head of warehousing or
• 17:31
  whatever, right? And I call the head of
• 17:32
  warehousing. He's like, I don't care about
• 17:34
  forklifts. Call the foreman, right?
• 17:36
  And the foreman is like, don't call, don't talk to me about
• 17:38
  forecast. You know, you need to talk to
• 17:41
  the, the, you know, the movement manager or whatever, right?
• 17:44
  And the point is though, is that the end of the day, these
• 17:46
  forklifts cost $120,000. And in the company that I'm
• 17:50
  selling to, I know the CEO has to sign it.
• 17:53
  It's not like I'm not selling to a Fortune 500 company, a billion
• 17:56
  dollar Corp. I'm selling to a company where
• 17:58
  120 grand is make or break. Like it's like I always start,
• 18:02
  you know, whether it's on LinkedIn or whether it's on the
• 18:04
  phone or whatever it is at the highest possible and then let
• 18:08
  them kick me down the, the stack so that I can always climb back
• 18:12
  up the stack at any point. And I can say, hey, look, you
• 18:16
  know, I took your advice. I called the VP, the unit's in
• 18:20
  trial. I know you got to sign off on
• 18:21
  this. It's here for the day.
• 18:23
  Can you give me two minutes pop down and have a look at this tow
• 18:26
  motor? This thing's to run in circles
• 18:28
  around the tow motors you've got in the warehouse right now. 2
• 18:30
  minutes later, the CE OS in the, in the warehouse.
• 18:32
  Everyone's like shaking their head going what, what, what just
• 18:34
  happened because I need to call them later to get the deal.
• 18:39
  The shitty sales guy, he he boss says what's going on with the
• 18:42
  deal and he goes, Oh, they sent it upstairs.
• 18:44
  I talked to the warehouse manager and I think we're in
• 18:47
  good shape. And I'm like, oh, where's the
• 18:48
  deal at? Just like, oh, they sent it
• 18:50
  upstairs to the powers that be, right.
• 18:53
  I'm like, what are what are the powers that be?
• 18:56
  I don't know. They just said nobody.
• 18:58
  They didn't know. I asked them that and they don't
• 19:00
  know who the powers that be are. The powers of BR, the manager,
• 19:04
  the director, the the senior manager, the vice president,
• 19:07
  senior vice president, CFO, then the CEO.
• 19:11
  Those are everyone. And if it's 120 grand or
• 19:13
  $1,000,000 system or whatever, it's all going to go through
• 19:15
  that chain and whatever stop wherever it needs to.
• 19:20
  And the it's only the people that invest in learning these
• 19:23
  things and viewing that. And most people are lazy and
• 19:25
  they don't do it. The, the majority of the
• 19:27
  audience listening to this is either an independent
• 19:31
  consultant, A fractional executive, right?
• 19:32
  Business of 1. They're selling their services,
• 19:34
  they're selling what they do. Some also founders and
• 19:38
  entrepreneurs listen as well, but it's a lot of right.
• 19:41
  And so I'm thinking about how this applies to the the
• 19:46
  independent consultant that's selling a, you know, $20,000 a
• 19:49
  month retainer for marketing services or fractional CFO.
• 19:54
  So what they have to do is they have to say, and I in my new
• 19:57
  business, I use I'm, I'm all in on fractional, right?
• 20:01
  Everything's fractional, Everyone's fractional because
• 20:03
  it's small. And so, but, but I learned from
• 20:06
  my last company that was not fractional and that was not
• 20:09
  small that I needed all the right people in the right seats,
• 20:13
  right? And me in every seat is the.
• 20:15
  Recipe for disaster, right? Because I know just enough to be
• 20:18
  a just enough to be dangerous in every seat in the business,
• 20:22
  sales, OPS, finance, IT, marketing, you know, etcetera.
• 20:25
  The, the fractional guy that's selling 20 grand a month
• 20:28
  retainer or whatever has to look at that business and say this
• 20:31
  business that I'm calling who signs the checks for 20 grand.
• 20:35
  And if he doesn't, he she doesn't know who that is, then
• 20:38
  they may most likely probably won't get the business right.
• 20:42
  And and of course, if it's, you know, a fractional guy girl
• 20:46
  selling to a one man show, then obviously it's pretty obvious,
• 20:50
  right what's going on. But that that's typically not
• 20:53
  the market. They're trying to sell to
• 20:54
  companies that have some modicum of number of people like and,
• 20:58
  and and they need to figure that out and they need to start with
• 21:02
  that person and and then they need to come up with the punch
• 21:06
  perfect pitch and close, right? First of all, they can download
• 21:09
  the whole guide to doing a punch perfect pitch and close to my
• 21:12
  website for free and whatever, and they can so they can now
• 21:15
  come up with their own that works for them.
• 21:17
  One of the another other rules in the book is the power of
• 21:21
  three, right? And so mild, medium, hot, good,
• 21:24
  better, best, you know that kind of a thing, right?
• 21:27
  Small, medium, large, everything has to be broken up into the
• 21:30
  power of three because that's magical.
• 21:32
  It's magical. I don't know why, like I didn't
• 21:33
  make it up. I just, I just followed the
• 21:36
  rule, right. And so essentially, you know,
• 21:39
  you have to figure out where are they now and where are you going
• 21:43
  to take them? And through the series of three
• 21:47
  succinct things, take them from where they are to how dealing
• 21:51
  with you will take them to there.
• 21:52
  And the punch is usually either something just to get their
• 21:55
  attention or something to show someone else already in the
• 21:59
  state, you know, they want to be in, right?
• 22:01
  Like a video of the perfect marketing campaign for the
• 22:04
  company that's, you know, like for like or whatever kind of a
• 22:06
  thing, right? And say, this is where you can
• 22:08
  be after, you know, three months with Jax outsource marketing or
• 22:13
  whatever, right? And fractional's no different
• 22:15
  than 1000 person company. It's still somebody signing off
• 22:19
  on it. And if you call the marketing
• 22:21
  people, they're probably not going to want to buy for me
• 22:23
  because they're going to be worried about their job, right?
• 22:25
  I mean, you, you want to be, you know, you want to be maybe
• 22:29
  talking to the CFO or something like that, right?
• 22:32
  And I mean, after having several successful sales, they've
• 22:35
  probably figured out who they move the needle for more than
• 22:39
  anyone out of business. And that's where they want to
• 22:41
  start. If they're in New York and the
• 22:43
  customers in LA, then obviously they're not going to go sit and
• 22:45
  stand in the lobby and not sit in the lobby.
• 22:47
  But at some point, if the deal is big enough, at some point
• 22:50
  they might need to, right. And if, if, if the competitors
• 22:54
  in the lobby, then you better be in the lobby.
• 22:57
  I know in the book you talk about successful digital
• 23:00
  outreach, like really making it count.
• 23:03
  And I'm curious if you're willing to share whether it's,
• 23:05
  you know, specific like a line or tactic in whether it's an
• 23:09
  e-mail or LinkedIn message that you seem to be the most
• 23:13
  effective and kind of like tried and true over the test of time.
• 23:16
  One, you need to have your targeting on point, right?
• 23:19
  So most of the times it's not about quantity, it's about the
• 23:23
  quality and the accuracy, right? It has to be personalized.
• 23:27
  It needs to be shortened to the point, in my opinion, right?
• 23:30
  And so you need to be sharing the value 1st, right?
• 23:33
  In terms of you need to share some kind of an insight or some
• 23:37
  kind of a win or something that they can get.
• 23:39
  I know I'm not directly maybe answering the question.
• 23:41
  I'm trying to answer in a roundabout way because it's what
• 23:43
  what builds the magical digital outreach, right?
• 23:47
  But you know, share an insight or something or a win that it
• 23:50
  makes it about them and not about you or, you know, not not
• 23:54
  some braggadocious thing. You need you need to think of it
• 23:57
  in a multi targeted approach where it's not just LinkedIn has
• 24:01
  to be LinkedIn has to be e-mail. You know, you have to know how
• 24:04
  to make the phone call and you know, shameless plug, there's
• 24:07
  there's there are scripts in the book for like phone things and
• 24:10
  whatever, right. But I mean, in short though,
• 24:12
  like when you leave a voicemail, it's always like never less than
• 24:15
  20 seconds, never more than 30 seconds, right?
• 24:18
  And so, and there's all these little rules, right?
• 24:20
  When you get them on the phone, like don't ask them how they
• 24:23
  are. I say, hey, Bob, it's Glenn from
• 24:26
  Acme. Hope you're doing well.
• 24:27
  I'd like 15 seconds to explain to you how I can improve your
• 24:30
  productivity by 25% deploying, you know, robots in your, you
• 24:34
  know, in the outer space or whatever, right?
• 24:37
  Like, and the point is it all, it all comes out very quickly in
• 24:41
  one breath. I don't care how he is.
• 24:42
  That's why I just hope he's doing well, right?
• 24:45
  Because if I say, oh, hey, Bob, it's Glenn, how are you?
• 24:48
  And he's like, I hate you. That's my number one thing.
• 24:52
  I'm all right, I guess, how are you?
• 24:55
  And then I do the kiss of death after they say that, which is
• 24:58
  like, oh, I'm fine, thanks for asking.
• 25:02
  I hate it when people say that. I most of the time when
• 25:06
  salespeople say that to me, I actually school them on how
• 25:08
  annoying it is. I said, talk to your people.
• 25:11
  Get to the point. Right is that is.
• 25:13
  That obviously, yeah, because you're talking to the.
• 25:16
  Remember I told you, you got to start with the guy who's signing
• 25:18
  the check. He's dealing with a million
• 25:21
  things that day, right? And so you want strong, you
• 25:25
  know, and again, you want strong, like subject lines and
• 25:28
  things like that. And the magic number is 7,
• 25:32
  right? It takes 5 to 7, magically 7 to
• 25:36
  make it happen when you quit at six.
• 25:37
  That's why you failed. And that's where I want everyone
• 25:40
  listening who feels annoying after 234 touches to just let
• 25:46
  that go. Right.
• 25:48
  And remember, they're doing, don't do six of the same thing,
• 25:51
  right? Like you're doing, you're doing
• 25:53
  phone call, then you're doing an e-mail, then you're doing a mail
• 25:56
  thing, right? Then you're doing, you know,
• 25:58
  maybe doing a door hanger for all I know, right?
• 26:00
  Then you're phoning them back, right?
• 26:01
  Then you're emailing them again. And you're, and you're often
• 26:04
  referencing it, right? It's like, oh, you know, I
• 26:06
  called, I left you that voicemail.
• 26:07
  I said I'd follow up with an e-mail, you know, that kind of
• 26:09
  thing. And then the e-mail.
• 26:10
  And if he ever listens to the e-mail and then he sees, you
• 26:13
  know, Glenn, Glenn, twice in a row now I've got my 2 little
• 26:16
  things in there, right? And then, you know, and then I
• 26:19
  just keep trying to work it in. This won't work for the
• 26:22
  fractional people because they're, they're not calling on
• 26:25
  the same customer over and over again.
• 26:27
  But I mean, a lot of the people that I talked to, you know,
• 26:30
  they're dealing with the territory and the territory has
• 26:32
  accounts and the counts are they're not one and done.
• 26:35
  They're repetitive, right? Like, and so you go in and you
• 26:39
  learn people and you use the people that you know to get to
• 26:42
  the people that you don't know. And so I've really been trying
• 26:45
  to trying to get a hold of Bob. Thanks for seeing me today.
• 26:48
  It was great to have my mini tour of the new thing.
• 26:51
  I'll get back to you with that stuff.
• 26:52
  Is there any way you could run me by Jack's desk so I can drop
• 26:55
  a piece of literature off? And you pray the Jack's there
• 26:58
  and they say, Jack, look, I'm sorry, I don't, don't, you know,
• 27:01
  don't want to pounce on you, but I just, you know, these guys in
• 27:04
  the back can't get enough of my shit.
• 27:06
  Can I get 5 minutes on your calendar next week when I'm back
• 27:08
  in here, you know, servicing the rest of your company who loves
• 27:12
  me, right? And you've got all this social
• 27:14
  proof that builds up around it. He's standing there with the
• 27:17
  other guy. He's like, Oh yeah, Glenn's
• 27:18
  awesome, we love him and whatever and blah, blah, blah.
• 27:20
  And then you say, OK, cool, let me get 5 minutes.
• 27:22
  How about next Thursday? I'm here, I'm here anyways,
• 27:25
  which you're not, but you say you are.
• 27:27
  And then you know, Thursday morning, you already know you
• 27:29
  got one appointment, 5 minutes with Jack, the decision maker in
• 27:31
  a different department. Then you call everyone else.
• 27:33
  You know what that business and you feel the entire morning
• 27:36
  visiting that customer. The other golden rule is if they
• 27:40
  if you're not sitting in the lobby, what are you doing?
• 27:42
  Well, if you want to be early. And so you sit in your car and
• 27:47
  when you're in your car, you pull out your phone, which is
• 27:51
  called the call book factor, because that's where this
• 27:53
  started back in the 80s. But now it's a phone or a laptop
• 27:57
  or a or a tablet. And you call up your customer
• 28:01
  Acme, you know, distributing or whatever you're calling on that
• 28:04
  day. And you look at every name of
• 28:05
  person you've ever met and you re remember their face before
• 28:10
  you walk in the door and that. And if you don't remember their
• 28:12
  face, go to LinkedIn and look at their face and re remember it.
• 28:16
  Because when you're getting dropped off at Jack's desk,
• 28:19
  you're going to bump into Sally. And Sally remembers you from two
• 28:21
  years ago when you sold her the whatever.
• 28:23
  And she's like, oh, Glenn, good to see you.
• 28:25
  And you're like, oh, and and all of a sudden she realizes you
• 28:30
  forgot her name. You never recover from that.
• 28:33
  It's a bad look and I never do bad luck.
• 28:36
  I never do bad luck. That's why I always remember
• 28:38
  their name as well. As I'm walking through the
• 28:40
  building, getting the new guy to drop me at Jack's desk, I'm
• 28:43
  like, hey Bob, hey Sally, hey George.
• 28:45
  And this guy, holy shit, this guy knows everybody.
• 28:48
  And again, it's another layer of social proof and it and it and
• 28:52
  they're like, oh, I love that Glenn guy.
• 28:53
  He always, he always remembers my name, right.
• 28:55
  People love that. And in the end of the day, you
• 28:58
  become a pleasure to do business with.
• 29:01
  Yeah, the last point I want to hit on, and you talk about this
• 29:03
  a lot is how you present yourself, right?
• 29:06
  Your energy, your posture, verbal style, just it's
• 29:09
  important and we'd love for you to just elaborate on how people
• 29:13
  can do that. What what are the most important
• 29:15
  pieces to get right as they are presenting themselves to
• 29:19
  potential clients? The first thing I want to say is
• 29:21
  like how to think about presenting yourself, getting
• 29:24
  ready to make a call, organizing calls.
• 29:28
  None of that's fun, right? For some reason, while you're
• 29:31
  doing all that stuff that you hate doing, you dread making the
• 29:35
  call for some reason. But when you get there, it's the
• 29:38
  best part of your day. So when you finally get in front
• 29:41
  of a customer, it's like being on stage, right?
• 29:44
  It's like being on a Broadway play or whatever.
• 29:46
  It doesn't matter what you're like in the dressing room.
• 29:47
  You might be a curmudgeon or you might be a nice person, or you
• 29:50
  might be whatever. It doesn't matter.
• 29:52
  But when you're on the stage performing Les Mis, your Jean
• 29:57
  Valjean or whatever his name is, right, like that's your role.
• 30:01
  Like your, your role is to be in in, in character.
• 30:05
  You want to be presenting A genuine positive nature about it
• 30:09
  that you don't want to be phony, but you, you want to have your
• 30:13
  in front of customers character that you play right, which can
• 30:16
  be different than how you are at home.
• 30:18
  You need to learn how to present.
• 30:19
  You know, you need how to how to be conversational and not
• 30:22
  scripted. A lot of it comes from learning
• 30:25
  the skills of conversation, which is like active listening
• 30:29
  and building rapport and things like that.
• 30:31
  Because where the really lousy parts come from is when you're
• 30:35
  not doing that. Like when you all of a sudden
• 30:37
  starting this like dialogue of like, oh, I'm here from such and
• 30:40
  such. And we're so and so and we're 20
• 30:41
  lbs big and we're 10 feet long and we're this and we're that
• 30:44
  and whatever. Like nobody cares about it.
• 30:45
  It's like if if you want a magic bullet, one of my favorite
• 30:49
  things, it's not in the book. It's when you're, you know, you
• 30:51
  sort of bump into someone at either a networking event,
• 30:54
  you're at a customer visit or some kind of a situation and
• 30:57
  you're kind of stuck, right? And So what you do is you follow
• 31:00
  the watch your weekend problem modality or whatever, right?
• 31:04
  And so it's called watch your weekend problem.
• 31:07
  And you say it that way so you can remember it.
• 31:09
  Watch your weekend problem. It's actually three different
• 31:12
  things. OK, The watch is you look at
• 31:15
  their watch and you say nice watch.
• 31:17
  What's the story behind the watch, right?
• 31:19
  And if you don't have a nice watch, it's just an Apple Watch
• 31:22
  or whatever. You could say cool Apple Watch,
• 31:25
  Is that the new one or whatever? And you know, or maybe they have
• 31:28
  a bracelet or a brooch or a necklace or something, right?
• 31:32
  So you say that and it definitely puts people off
• 31:36
  guard, like for like they're not, they're not used to that,
• 31:39
  right? And usually if it's not an Apple
• 31:41
  Watch and it's a regular watch, there's usually a story behind
• 31:44
  it. I got it for my graduation.
• 31:46
  I got it for 40 years of work. I got it, my wife gave it, my
• 31:48
  husband gave it, whatever this that the other right.
• 31:50
  And then you say, you say, you know what, when you're not at
• 31:54
  work, the weekend rolls around. What do you do?
• 31:57
  What do you got? What do you do for fun?
• 31:59
  You know, not everybody loves the question, but usually
• 32:01
  they'll tell you like, I either golf or I do nothing.
• 32:04
  I play video games. I you know, I play pickleball, I
• 32:08
  swim, I snorkel, I do whatever, right?
• 32:10
  But The thing is, is, you know, and then you ask genuine
• 32:13
  questions. You don't want to be harping on
• 32:15
  it or whatever. But now you've asked what?
• 32:17
  You asked about the watch, you asked about the weekend.
• 32:20
  So you've actually broken down a bunch of a whole bunch of
• 32:22
  internal barriers at this point. They don't realize it, but this
• 32:25
  works really well. And then you say to them, you
• 32:27
  know what? OK, so you've spent the weekend
• 32:30
  as a four point O pickleball player.
• 32:32
  You dominated the courts. Monday morning rolls around.
• 32:36
  Share with me what the biggest problem you face at work is.
• 32:38
  What's the biggest challenge you're facing this week or this
• 32:41
  month or this year at your company or whatever?
• 32:43
  What's the biggest problem? What's the biggest challenge?
• 32:45
  What keeps you up at night? And he's like, you know, too
• 32:49
  much headcount, not enough headcount, poor quality.
• 32:52
  Can't you know, low, low productivity, lousy throughput,
• 32:56
  test results such suck. You know, whatever doesn't mean
• 32:59
  a million things, whatever it is, right?
• 33:01
  Obviously they're talking to a manager of something, right?
• 33:04
  And he's going to tell you something related to that thing.
• 33:06
  And you're a fractional guy selling fractional stuff to
• 33:09
  solve that guy's problems, right?
• 33:11
  That's the that's kind of like a, a way of getting that
• 33:14
  information from him. And then, you know, your
• 33:17
  instinct would be, you know, when he says my biggest problem,
• 33:21
  like because you said a marketing fractional guy, right,
• 33:23
  He says my biggest problem is like my, my SEO or whatever,
• 33:27
  right? I'm just making this up.
• 33:28
  But and you don't say we do amazing SEO, like don't say
• 33:33
  that, right? Say, Oh, like, tell me more,
• 33:36
  right. Like it keep asking questions.
• 33:38
  And so, and there's a chapter on active listening.
• 33:41
  It's a, it's an exercise to play with your, with your partner,
• 33:44
  your spouse or whatever on how to learn how to listen actively.
• 33:50
  When you read it, when you try it the first time, it's like
• 33:52
  painful, it's like torture doing it.
• 33:54
  And you're like, this would never work, never work, right?
• 33:57
  But they go home and I say, just do it, just try it.
• 33:59
  And they do it. And then their wife says, Oh,
• 34:02
  wow, like you haven't, we haven't talked like this, you
• 34:04
  know, in years. I challenge people try it and
• 34:08
  and see what active listening can do for you because it's
• 34:12
  you're never saying anything. You're only inquiring.
• 34:14
  You're echoing back and you're and you're, you're relaying off
• 34:17
  what they say, right? The blueprint on how to do it is
• 34:20
  in there. Reminds me of that Chris Voss.
• 34:22
  Never split the difference. Have you read that book?
• 34:25
  Yes, yeah. Cool.
• 34:29
  Well, we're about out of time. Where can people find you?
• 34:33
  I I'm sure LinkedIn is a good place.
• 34:35
  Yeah. That's really the best place.
• 34:37
  I'm I'm there every day and I'll, you know, if they reach
• 34:40
  out to me, I'll answer them and you know, they can go to my
• 34:43
  website to download the punch perfect pitch and close.
• 34:46
  You know, obviously if they want to buy the book, they can.
• 34:48
  There's no pressure, but I'll gladly let them buy it if they
• 34:51
  want it. And you can get that anywhere.
• 34:53
  Books are sold in any format they're sold in.
• 34:55
  I have an audio book I narrated and you know, ebooks,
• 34:58
  audiobooks, everything, whatever you need, Hardcover, softcover
• 35:01
  and yeah. Cool.
• 35:02
  Alright, we'll put all the links as well in the show notes.
• 35:05
  We'll grab your website, LinkedIn and all that so
• 35:08
  everyone can access it easily. And Glenn, just really
• 35:11
  appreciate you being on the show and sharing the wisdom all
• 35:14
  around sales with us. Yeah.
• 35:16
  Thanks for having me, Bradley.