Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 55. Fractional CSO Secrets from Chief Outsiders with Aaron Gutowski

Transcript

55. Fractional CSO Secrets from Chief Outsiders with Aaron Gutowski · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:11
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:15
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data driven. Fun
• 0:20
  fact of the day, New York City for our guest. New York City's known for
• 0:24
  many, many things, but you rarely think about the coastline. So it turns out there's
• 0:28
  over five hundred and twenty miles of coastline, which is more than Miami, Boston, LA,
• 0:33
  and San Francisco combine. But that's neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by my
• 0:37
  friend, Aaron Gutowski. He's a partner and chief sales officer at Chief Outsiders. It's basically
• 0:41
  like executives as a service type firm that provides fractional CMO and CSOs to mid-market
• 0:46
  companies. You need a lot of experience to get in. And let me tell you,
• 0:50
  Aaron's got it. We're talking more than 20 years of selling expertise across a variety
• 0:54
  of different industries and business sizes. For joining Chief Outsiders as one of its first
• 0:59
  CSOs. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. We know that you are successful.
• 1:03
  The question we have for you today, do you think you fall more on the
• 1:07
  sophisticated side, more on the scrappy side?
• 1:10
  Definitely scrappy. All the way.
• 1:14
  All the way scrappy. Okay, I love it.
• 1:16
  No zero sophistication.
• 1:19
  There's some New York and some sales already coming through. Take us back to the
• 1:21
  beginning. Where'd you grow up? Did you have any entrepreneurs in the
• 1:24
  Actually, yeah, I I'm not from New York originally. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan,
• 1:30
  Detroit
• 1:31
  Okay.
• 1:32
  area. So, yeah, that was kind of formative years. grew up in the the decline
• 1:40
  of the automotive industry in the
• 1:44
  Okay.
• 1:45
  in the eighties. So yeah, it was Yeah, at time I I definitely knew I
• 1:51
  wanted to get out of New York. Or I'm sorry, get out of Detroit.
• 1:57
  Yeah. That makes sense. Did y was your family in the auto business?
• 2:03
  actually no, sort of a related industry. My dad was he was kind of a
• 2:14
  sales guy selling advertising for for industrial equipment. So it was all related to automotive.
• 2:25
  Okay. Did you get a lot of that sales experience from him? Like, were you
• 2:29
  bartering with friends as a kid? Were you selling candy at school?
• 2:33
  yeah, I did some of I I did that stuff, and it it was for
• 2:39
  fundraising, like the Boy Scouts and things like that.
• 2:43
  Okay.
• 2:44
  I remember they had a really lame fundraising thing. It was you you could sell
• 2:50
  you could go door to door selling wrapping paper and ribbon during the holidays. And
• 2:56
  it was just the most awful thing ever. And I yeah, I smarten up eventually
• 3:02
  and said, Okay, so I'm raising money for these organizations. That's great, but I want
• 3:08
  my own money. So I
• 3:11
  Yeah.
• 3:13
  I I ended up getting a paper out the w when there were still paper
• 3:19
  outs. So I I delivered the the afternoon paper. This is when they're morning and
• 3:26
  afternoon papers I delivered the afternoon paper. That was the Detroit News. So that was
• 3:33
  Nice.
• 3:34
  sort of like having your own business. It really was, because you you not only
• 3:39
  had to sell, you had to get new customers, but then you had to perform
• 3:45
  the accounts receivable. You had to go collect
• 3:48
  Yeah.
• 3:49
  the money. So people would pay you weekly. It was the most inefficient system. I
• 3:54
  mean, I wish You know, I could have had what is I suppose there wouldn't
• 4:00
  be paper. There's no more paper routes. I know I see people driving around in
• 4:07
  cars throwing New York Times out their windows onto people's doorsteps, but it it it's
• 4:13
  a different world these days, so
• 4:16
  But still the principles apply. You gotta go sell, you gotta go deliver something, you
• 4:17
  gotta collect money for it.
• 4:18
  Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
• 4:23
  How were you at selling, getting new customers in that paper route?
• 4:27
  I was pretty good when there was incentives. So you could win like tickets to
• 4:33
  a Tigers game if you s got the most new customers or y you they
• 4:40
  they had two types of subscriptions. You could get daily and Sunday, or you could
• 4:47
  get Sunday only. and they always had incentives in in in play. You could get
• 4:54
  a a Detroit Tigers tickets or some kind of model car or something. It's definitely
• 5:01
  going after you know, adolescent boys you know, needs and wants. So usually when there
• 5:08
  was incentives, I I would go for it. And I and I was also I
• 5:15
  knew in in that regard I was competitive.
• 5:19
  Okay. Was there like a leaderboard or like were you stealing other paper boys' paper
• 5:22
  roots kind of thing?
• 5:24
  No. You you had you had assigned routes. Like you you would own a a
• 5:29
  quote route. It would be a certain couple of blocks or whatever. And you could
• 5:35
  if you wanted a bigger route, you could sell your route to somebody else and
• 5:41
  then buy a bigger route from somebody. It was it was just a whole whole
• 5:47
  system going on. But yeah, I w I I had fun. was pretty pretty competitive
• 5:53
  around it and you know won a few few of those contests. So
• 5:59
  Nice. Okay. All right. Give me give me like the the quick thirty seconds on
• 6:03
  today and then we'll build a brilli bit build the bridge from paper root to
• 6:08
  today.
• 6:09
  So what what am I doing these days with Chief Outsider? Sure, sure.
• 6:12
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 6:13
  So I'm I'm a fractional chief sales officer and that that's can mean a a
• 6:20
  lot of different things. Sometimes I will go into a company and be hired to
• 6:27
  be the chief growth officer, where sometimes I'll have marketing as well. But for the
• 6:34
  most part, I work with CEOs who Have an operationally well-run company, but for whatever
• 6:41
  reason, they can't seem to get beyond a certain size and they stop growing or
• 6:48
  their growth begins to to decline. So we go in, kind of assess the situation,
• 6:56
  make some recommendations, and then we actually implement those recommendations. We become part of their
• 7:03
  leadership. team and that is done on a on a temporary basis usually anywhere from
• 7:10
  ninety to maybe 120 days. those are kind of the general size of the engagement.
• 7:17
  Often we're we're putting in, we're fixing issues and then we're putting in a a
• 7:24
  process and hiring people. We actually hire our a replacement And then we go in
• 7:32
  and we maybe scale back the engagement and we're we're on a on an advisory
• 7:39
  at that point where we're just offering coaching to whoever we've we've recruited in. So
• 7:46
  but I I have had longer engagements that go for for more more than a
• 7:53
  hundred and twenty. They they can stretch, you know, almost close to a year sometimes.
• 8:00
  So it just depends on the client. I I happen to do a lot in
• 8:08
  the industrial service area, which is actually completely different from from my past life before
• 8:15
  joining Chief Outsiders, but I happen to get some early engagements with some industrial service
• 8:22
  providers, and I've kind of got that niche in in the company. But it really
• 8:29
  doesn't matter what type of company you your your your viewers may have, because there's
• 8:36
  there's not just me, there's another hundred and ten of us that can across a
• 8:44
  variety of industries that we can help help them out. So if anybody does have
• 8:51
  sales needs or marketing needs, they they can get a hold of me and I
• 8:58
  can inter, you know, identify what their challenges are and then match the best person
• 9:05
  to solve those challenges. Sometimes it'll be me, sometimes it'll be my colleagues, or maybe
• 9:12
  me and a a colleague. So we do sometimes there's more than one of us
• 9:19
  that go into a company. Often that'll be I would be on the sales side
• 9:27
  and the other person would be on market.
• 9:31
  Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. We're gonna we're gonna jump through out the timeline a
• 9:34
  little bit, but taking me back to the beginning, your first clients at Chief Outsiders,
• 9:37
  this is a c this is a classic scrappy versus sophisticated. How do you actually
• 9:40
  land your
• 9:41
  Sure.
• 9:42
  first clients?
• 9:43
  Yeah, the one of the the most notable ones, there's a client called HBS Solutions.
• 9:50
  They're an energy efficiency provider for commercial companies, commercial properties. So what they'll do is
• 9:57
  they will assess let's say it's a an office building. They'll come in and say,
• 10:05
  okay, if you if you do these three things, put in LED lighting, I'm just
• 10:12
  giving very simple examples, thermostats and clean all of your your your air conditioning and
• 10:20
  heating systems, you're going to bring your energy consumption down by X percentage. So they
• 10:27
  go in and provide those those types of services. And I met the the CEO,
• 10:34
  a g a guy by the name of Harry Haywood. And he's like, I was
• 10:42
  talking, was like, Well, tell me how about how you sell. And he goes, Well,
• 10:49
  I I do this, I do that, I do these three he he's doing all
• 10:57
  the selling.
• 10:58
  Founder led, yep.
• 10:59
  Yep. And he's I'm like, Well, how's that going? He goes, Well You know, I
• 11:03
  have to get up like at three thirty in the morning so I can respond
• 11:07
  to RFPs. And I was like, wait a minute, what? He's like,
• 11:11
  Yeah.
• 11:12
  No, I get I I get up so I can stay on top of all
• 11:16
  these RFPs. I'm like, Well, why don't you put a sales team in place to
• 11:20
  do those kinds of things? And if they close them, they can get paid and
• 11:24
  so forth. He goes, Well, that's why we need your help. So
• 11:28
  Okay.
• 11:29
  but but here's the key key point. And this goes more scrappy than sophisticated. I
• 11:35
  said, Well, so what if you hired me and I'll be your salesperson so you
• 11:41
  can go to sleep. The you know, the initial goal is to get you more
• 11:47
  sleep. I'll do the selling while I understand, I learned the product, the value proposition,
• 11:53
  how to pitch it, how to improve it, and then we'll put a sales team
• 11:59
  in behind. So that was a a a different approach than most he had heard.
• 12:05
  He had actually had a Chief Outsiders competitor in there, and I'm not going to
• 12:11
  name them, but they really messed up and didn't do things properly, and they never
• 12:17
  they never did what they said they were going to do. So that was an
• 12:23
  opportunity for Chief Outsiders. And if if you go to my Chief Outsiders profile, There's
• 12:29
  actually a video testimonial from Harry on what we did for him. And
• 12:35
  Nice.
• 12:36
  that and that's that's really valuable to have as a as a reference. So he
• 12:42
  he's been great. He's actu actually referred me to other potential clients, and you know,
• 12:49
  c I've gotten those clients. So thanks to him, it's it's it's been it's been
• 12:56
  a great recommendation. He's down in HBS Solutions is down in the the DMV area
• 13:03
  and they they're pri they're out of Edgewater, Maryland.
• 13:08
  Okay. Okay, very nice. So how do you get connected with Harry? Because this is
• 13:12
  an industry that you're not historically like you haven't worked in the industry very much,
• 13:16
  right? How do you actually get connected to him in the first place?
• 13:20
  yeah, it well I w I wanna point something out though, because of because of
• 13:26
  that industry, it it really doesn't matter. Sales challenges are sales challenges across a variety
• 13:33
  of industries and if you focus on that and I didn't necessarily have I had
• 13:40
  s I had understanding of his business because they they do a lot of partnering
• 13:47
  with utilities and I actually sold power and utility research to financial services firms in
• 13:53
  my quote last real job. my my team actually sold it. So I knew a
• 14:00
  lot about the energy industry and I knew how utilities worked. So that kind of
• 14:07
  got me in the door. But I was introduced to him through another chief outsider
• 14:14
  colleague because he met him at There's a group called Vistage, which is a CEO
• 14:20
  group. And you your your viewers are probably familiar with it. But he was part
• 14:27
  of that Vistage group down in in Baltimore area. And that is that is how
• 14:34
  I got introduced to to Harry.
• 14:37
  Okay. The power of being in a in a good partnership, making those intros for
• 14:41
  you. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.
• 14:43
  Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 14:45
  All right. So how do you get into this selling world in the first place?
• 14:48
  You got the paper root as a kid, dad's got a sales job. Do you
• 14:52
  go to school and say, All right, I'm gonna go sell the crap out of
• 14:56
  some stuff, or how does that come about?
• 14:59
  so I'm in school. I'm I'm in the business school at at Wayne State University.
• 15:05
  I I think I'm in I think I'm a a sophomore or something. And I
• 15:11
  couldn't afford to not work through college. So I had a job putting putting tires
• 15:18
  on cars, and and and doing oil changes and so forth. It was actually a
• 15:24
  Firestone dealer. in West Detroit. And because it was Detroit, it was a union shop.
• 15:31
  So I I was a Teamster.
• 15:34
  Of course.
• 15:36
  And I made a every Saturday, it didn't matter. I worked in the wintertime, I
• 15:42
  worked in the summertime. It's it's hot and dirty in the summer, and it's worse
• 15:49
  in the winter because it's cold and dirty and wet in the wintertime.
• 15:56
  Yeah.
• 15:57
  imagine s a a a a a Lincoln town car pulls into a lift and
• 16:00
  it's got all this snow on it and you put it up on the lift
• 16:05
  and that then because of the heat inside the garage all the snow starts melting.
• 16:10
  So it's like you're putting you're taking tires off of cars and they're just you
• 16:15
  covered in slush and it's like raining under the car. Anyway
• 16:19
  Yeah. Gotta hit my icicles.
• 16:24
  What do people do in Detroit on Saturdays that go and get new tires because
• 16:29
  Firestone is having a sale? So
• 16:31
  Okay.
• 16:32
  my boss, who was also the sales manager, he's inside the showroom. Nice, dry, heated.
• 16:38
  He's in there drinking coffee. look at here. You want to buy these tires? Sure,
• 16:45
  okay.
• 16:46
  Yeah.
• 16:47
  And then he he he sells it, writes up the paperwork, he sticks it in
• 16:51
  a clear plastic envelope. And there were hooks outside the door. And he comes out,
• 16:56
  he goes, Sold another one, Gotowski. And he keeps putting them out there. So I'm
• 17:01
  I'm seeing my entire day being mapped out for the rest of until till after
• 17:06
  close. I gotta put
• 17:08
  Yeah.
• 17:09
  all these, I gotta install everything he's selling. And I said, Okay. He's out there,
• 17:14
  he's making more money than me. He's definitely warm and dry, and he's got plenty
• 17:20
  of coffee. And it looks like he's having fun. And what am I doing? I'm
• 17:25
  putting tires on cars.
• 17:27
  Ha ha ha
• 17:29
  I said, I want his job. So I didn't go and become a fireston. I
• 17:34
  didn't become a tire salesman. I just knew that's what it I eventually wanted to
• 17:39
  do. I I I eventually got a job in at I went to Wayne State
• 17:44
  in Detroit. I got a job at the student union doing accounting work because I
• 17:50
  was in the business school, so I knew how to I knew how to add
• 17:55
  tract into accounting. So I I got a I got
• 17:59
  Sounds an in-board too.
• 18:00
  an office job. I got off the the the out of the garage
• 18:06
  Yep.
• 18:07
  and into a nice office where I counted money for cash operations at the student
• 18:11
  union.
• 18:12
  Nice.
• 18:13
  So so that that was and that was through a connection. I got that job
• 18:20
  through I was in a business fraternity and I got that job.
• 18:26
  Nice. Okay.
• 18:27
  Delta Sigma Pi, Gamma Theta chap.
• 18:30
  Okay. Okay. What's the what's the first sales job? Is it out of college?
• 18:38
  I first first jail's job was I was I was working as an intern at
• 18:43
  a company called Unisys. They're still around, they're a large IT outsourcer. They used to
• 18:49
  be a a prior to becoming Unisys, they they sold a lot of banking equipment,
• 18:54
  banking computers for check sorting and and things like that. And I had an internship
• 19:00
  there where it was just in this corporate department pushing paper around and you know
• 19:05
  it was it was a fine job, but I needed to get I wanted to
• 19:11
  get a sales job. So I actually tried to get a sales job there, selling
• 19:16
  these bank machines and it's just they they wanted people with ex experience. And one
• 19:22
  of the guys in my department went you know, we were all interviewing trying to
• 19:27
  f line up our first jobs before we graduated. And he came back from from
• 19:33
  an interview and he's like, Yeah, that it's an interesting company. I don't I don't
• 19:38
  know if I'd be in I'd want to do it 'cause it's a sales job
• 19:44
  and it's it's you know, it's a low salary. And I was like, Well, you
• 19:49
  know, how much how much is a salary? And it's like, this is I'm gonna
• 19:55
  date myself, but he's like, It's fifteen thousand a year. And I said, he goes,
• 20:00
  but you can make commission. I'm like, how much commission can you make? Well you
• 20:06
  can make it like almost like sixty or seventy K in commissions. I'm like, really?
• 20:11
  So
• 20:12
  Okay.
• 20:13
  I was like, can I can I talk to the you know, can you line
• 20:18
  me up in interview? And he's like, Yeah, I'll I'll tell him you're I'll tell
• 20:24
  him I'm not interested, but I'm I'll introduce you. So I went in and met
• 20:30
  the the branch manager and this is a company to sell computers and the company
• 20:35
  was called Ninex, which is now Verizon. And
• 20:39
  Okay.
• 20:40
  they what they had done is they had they had bought all the IBM product
• 20:44
  centers from IBM and they were gonna sell IBM, Apple, and Compaq computers and they're
• 20:50
  gonna sell networks to tie them all together. So this is this is what was
• 20:56
  happening. So I meet the branch manager. He says, I see you're a Delta Sig.
• 21:02
  I'm like, Yeah. He's like, I see you were president there. And I'm like, Yeah,
• 21:08
  I was president of Delta SIG, Gamma Theta Chapter. He goes, he goes, I was
• 21:14
  president of Gamma Theta Chapter in 1975.
• 21:17
  Ha ha ha.
• 21:19
  So do you want a job? So again, connections are very important in leveraging those
• 21:27
  connections. But because I had that desire to wanna wanna make more than just a
• 21:35
  salary, it led me to that opportunity. And really I've been in sales roles ever
• 21:44
  since.
• 21:45
  Okay. So you're not intimidated by the commission. It's effectively a commission only if it's,
• 21:49
  you know, eighty percent commission kind of thing, right? But a small base, but
• 21:53
  Yeah.
• 21:54
  you're not intimidated by that. You're actually looking forward to that.
• 21:57
  Yeah, because it's like having your own company.
• 22:00
  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How are the grades in college?
• 22:06
  solid seas.
• 22:08
  Okay. how much of the selling went
• 22:13
  I in you know, when people did the resume they always put their their GPA.
• 22:18
  I left
• 22:19
  Better to leave it to mystery. Yep.
• 22:22
  Exactly.
• 22:23
  That's the scrappy way for sure of hey.
• 22:24
  Now everybody knows.
• 22:26
  Yeah. How much of the selling was relationship based once you got into that first
• 22:34
  sales role?
• 22:36
  it some of it is a bit of luck,
• 22:39
  Okay.
• 22:40
  but then then you kind of learn how you can develop certain relationships and one
• 22:45
  of the Where I eventually f found a lot of success was was selling Apple
• 22:51
  computers because in my branch everybody was like, IBM and you know, this is a
• 22:57
  time when people are like, you know, IBM, this is the best computer or whatever.
• 23:04
  And and
• 23:05
  It was yeah, it was the biggest bet.
• 23:06
  it was also off the you know, was precursor to kind of Windows operating system
• 23:12
  versus the the Macintosh operating system. And that at the time I there I I
• 23:18
  met a lot of the corporate Apple reps. So there used to be guys who
• 23:25
  had who worked for Apple and they were like the the superstars that went out
• 23:31
  and sold you know a thousand max to General Motors, right? And all of them
• 23:38
  were going into the creative departments of of these companies. So I heard about an
• 23:44
  incentive Where if they sold through a dealer and Ninex was a dealer, they would
• 23:50
  they would get paid a bonus on their any of their sales as long as
• 23:57
  they sourced it through. So I said, hey, why don't you use me? Why don't
• 24:03
  you use our we've got and at the time there was an issue with with
• 24:10
  sourcing and getting inventory because these computers were popular and also the printers were popular.
• 24:16
  They were called laser writers. So they were the first Postscript printer to to ever
• 24:23
  come out. And he said, sure. He goes, I got this client at you know
• 24:29
  this this company is Michigan Bell, which is what used to be the telephone company
• 24:35
  in Michigan. And they want
• 24:38
  Okay.
• 24:39
  these, they want 200 max. And can you get them? And I'm like, sure, get
• 24:44
  Get me with you know, who do I need to talk to over there? We
• 24:50
  need to have them cut a PO or So I I ended up meeting this
• 24:55
  procurement guy and he kept promising me, you know, he had to put it out
• 25:01
  for bid and blah blah blah. And mean meanwhile, the Apple guy saying you gotta
• 25:06
  use Gutowski at 9x, blah, blah, blah. And finally they you know, I had to
• 25:12
  kind of secure the inventory. And this is another s scrappy example. They were like,
• 25:17
  Well, do you in order to secure the inventory? I needed a PO, but I
• 25:23
  didn't have a PO. So it's a catch 22. What can I do?
• 25:28
  Yep.
• 25:29
  So I I put in a PO number of my birth date,
• 25:33
  Yeah.
• 25:35
  got all this inventory shipped to our branch, and literally a truck pulled up with
• 25:40
  all these boxes of Apple computers and and our inventory guys like Kotowski, your orders
• 25:45
  here. So all this inventory came in. I still don't even have the PO yet
• 25:50
  from the club.
• 25:51
  Yeah.
• 25:54
  Ultimately I got it. Sale went through and it was a a big it was
• 25:59
  like one of the largest sales we had had as a as a branch and
• 26:04
  won all kinds of wards in it. But I I actually secured the inventory with
• 26:10
  my birthday.
• 26:11
  That's awesome. That is a hustle story if I've ever heard. It's hey, I know
• 26:14
  this is gonna work, but we gotta fudge a couple numbers to start and then
• 26:18
  it'll all be fine.
• 26:20
  I I won a trip, an all expense paid trip for my wife and I
• 26:25
  to go
• 26:26
  Wow.
• 26:27
  to to Europe for two weeks. We had to go with all our our colleagues.
• 26:32
  but I took third in the country for for Apple sales that year.
• 26:37
  Wow. Wow. That's awesome. So did the deal
• 26:39
  So anyway.
• 26:41
  start flowing in after that or did he have to make up VOs?
• 26:43
  Yeah, it was more that was so and and then what happened was Apple they
• 26:49
  they wanted to do more business in at Ninex, so they had what they call
• 26:55
  these funded roles. So I I became an Apple business development manager and I
• 27:01
  Perfect.
• 27:02
  went and kind of evangelized other salespeople on how you how you sell Apple to
• 27:09
  large companies. And I had this great territory. It was Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.
• 27:17
  And boy, what a great territory in the middle of
• 27:23
  Yeah.
• 27:25
  middle of the Midwest and anyway.
• 27:30
  baseball stadiums there, maybe good wine and dine some clients.
• 27:32
  Yeah, there it it was still it was great experience.
• 27:36
  That's awesome. Okay. All right, very cool. any clients early on that you thought were,
• 27:41
  you know, hands down, this is gonna be super easy. And then they ended up,
• 27:46
  you know, losing money or being a heck of a lot more work than you
• 27:51
  expected.
• 27:52
  yeah, I mean s there were there were those types. yeah, I can remember one
• 27:57
  was a there was a a pharma company and they I'm not gonna name who
• 28:02
  they were, but they they bought and they were in Cleveland area and they ordered
• 28:08
  a bunch of apple and then w they weren't willing to pay for the installation.
• 28:13
  They're like, we can install it ourselves. And they didn't know how because you you
• 28:19
  needed an engineer at the time. You needed people to come out and know how
• 28:24
  to install all these. And they didn't want to pay for it. So they got
• 28:30
  they got really upset at at me because they're like, Well, you said we would
• 28:35
  have all these computers and this would be great. I was Yeah, but we told
• 28:41
  you you had to get the the installation. And, you know, so they they we
• 28:46
  had a It w it was a it was a bad deal after I think
• 28:52
  we we ended up giving them the installation just so they wouldn't return all these
• 28:57
  computers. So it doesn't
• 28:59
  Geez.
• 29:00
  always go but it it it goes to show you that you you really need
• 29:05
  to even when the client may not want to hear it, you've gotta be able
• 29:11
  to tell them, you know, frankly, like if you don't do this, you're going to
• 29:16
  have all these computers show. And your guys aren't capable of doing this, you're gonna
• 29:22
  need our help and we're not going to be able to provide it. And really
• 29:27
  I didn't paint that picture clear. And it actually wasn't my sale. I I was
• 29:33
  actually supporting one of the sales reps at in the Cleveland office. Ultimately we got
• 29:39
  it sorted out and you know, like I said, I think we we ended up
• 29:44
  losing money on the deal, but
• 29:47
  Is that so I think a lot of people, listeners, other guests, et cetera, have
• 29:50
  been in that situation of, Hey, I know that I can help with the full
• 29:54
  solution and I'm not trying to upsell, but if you buy A, you really should
• 29:58
  buy B as well. How do you actually get through that as a as a
• 30:02
  sales advisor, as a sales leader? How do you coach them through that?
• 30:06
  Sure. and and a lot of you know, it's it's just having that frank and
• 30:11
  honest conversation where you can you can kind of had I leveled with this with
• 30:17
  this decision maker at the time, and I was sort of like, you don't want
• 30:23
  it? Okay, fine, it's gonna be your problem. Whereas it turned out to be my
• 30:29
  problem later. Had I been honest with this person, it would have had we would
• 30:35
  have had a better result. And I and I will tell you that those same
• 30:41
  principles I apply them today at Chief Outsiders around being and if they I believe
• 30:47
  that's one of my strengths is I can have an honest conversation with a CEO
• 30:53
  either about certain people or how they're doing something that they need to change in
• 30:59
  order to be successful. So it just having having them trust you enough when you
• 31:05
  do say something, you know they know it's that it's not you're not just saying
• 31:11
  it. It it is important and they do listen.
• 31:15
  Okay. Take me to the other side of that. So there's the trust side, there's
• 31:20
  the partnership side. Let's talk data side. What are the main KPIs that you're looking
• 31:25
  for when you're working with a client? What what indicates success?
• 31:29
  often the we're going in to fix a growth problem. And growth is attributed to
• 31:35
  lack of s if if you don't have growth, that means you don't have enough
• 31:41
  sales and you're not getting enough new sales from new customers or more sales from
• 31:48
  existing customers. So the first thing I look at is okay. What what do you
• 31:54
  want to do? Do you want it to be do you want all your your
• 32:01
  growth to come from new customers or do you want to get more out of
• 32:07
  existing or is it a a combination of the two? So after we figure that
• 32:14
  out, then it's a matter of understanding how the sales team is currently being successful
• 32:20
  in the deals they do win, what happened? Let's pick it apart. What Where did
• 32:27
  the sale come from? How did it come in? Did it come from a web
• 32:33
  lead? Did it come from sales outbound cold call? how did we get that? That
• 32:40
  was it a client referral. So understanding how they're doing things currently well, because they're
• 32:46
  always doing something well. And then so looking at that data is is really important
• 32:53
  and understanding. Where we have one, why did we win it? And let's break it
• 32:59
  down. And then measuring the number of new first meetings with those types of opportunities.
• 33:06
  And and that is the data. That that that is the most critical piece of
• 33:12
  information and understanding and assessing a sales team is the number of new first meetings,
• 33:19
  not the number of meetings that a salesperson is having. Because they could have 10
• 33:25
  meetings with the same account that's not going to buy from them anyway. Or
• 33:32
  Yeah.
• 33:33
  they could have 10 meetings with 10 new opportunities, and not all of them are
• 33:40
  going to close, but a certain percentage will get through. And then start to measure
• 33:47
  those those Breakpoints of okay, here's a number of new first meetings. How many of
• 33:54
  those turn into presentations that explain the product? Maybe there's a proof of concept or
• 34:01
  or beta test of the product, and then a proposal, and then a close. So
• 34:08
  you're going to have those fracture points all throughout. It's your typical sales funnel, but
• 34:15
  understanding what's at the top of the funnel. And how many do you need at
• 34:22
  the top to get down to the to the close? So just manner mana understanding
• 34:29
  those those fracture points and knowing how many each salesperson needs to have on a
• 34:37
  a weekly basis of new first meetings. So generally it can be anywhere from five
• 34:44
  to ten new first meetings a week. That could be twenty to forty a month.
• 34:51
  And that kind of equates to a quarterly number and so forth.
• 34:57
  Love the data-driven approach. As you know, I'm a huge fan of that. And net
• 35:02
  new meetings. All right. We've got our takeaway, folks. All right, Aaron, let me hit
• 35:07
  you with some lightning round, scrappy verse sophisticated questions.
• 35:10
  Okay.
• 35:11
  as a kid, did you ever have a garage sale? Be a part of a
• 35:16
  garage sale.
• 35:17
  I remember my family doing one, but I never I never did one on my
• 35:23
  own. But there were certain things I was selling that yes, so I participated in
• 35:29
  it, but I've never I've never said, Okay, I'm gonna have my own garage sale.
• 35:35
  Okay, how were you as a negotiator at a garage sale as a kid selling
• 35:41
  something?
• 35:42
  I was I was pretty good around knowing that, you know, if if this person
• 35:48
  is express interest and they'll say, I'll give you X, and I'll say, Well, sorry,
• 35:55
  that's that's not enough. We're gonna we'll
• 35:59
  Yeah.
• 36:00
  just put it back over here. And it and it's I think I learned early
• 36:05
  on that you have to be able to walk away from the deal in order
• 36:10
  to Not just because people think they could go, I'll give you I'll give you
• 36:15
  a nickel for this thing, for this this Rawlings baseball glove. and you know, actually
• 36:21
  I need five bucks. so
• 36:23
  Right. Okay. A true man of value. I like it. Take me to some of
• 36:27
  the lean years. Maybe you're just starting out or maybe the commissions aren't flowing in
• 36:32
  or something like that. What was your version of like a ramen noodle dinner? Like
• 36:37
  a you know, a PB and J over the sink? What were you doing for
• 36:42
  some cheap dinners?
• 36:43
  I think it was I think it was just pasta and and and sauce and
• 36:49
  and some ground hamburger mixed in it it a jar a jar of ragu with
• 36:55
  some some hamburger in it.
• 36:58
  Okay, okay, I like it. I like it. have you do you always call it
• 37:03
  hamburger meat or was it ever ground beef?
• 37:06
  I hamburger. It was always hamburger. It it's the Midwest, it's the Detroit thing.
• 37:12
  Okay, very nice, very nice. anything still in those lean years maybe. Have you ever
• 37:19
  used two previously used dryer sheets instead of using one brand new dryer sheet?
• 37:27
  Fire sheets.
• 37:28
  Yeah. Or none at all.
• 37:32
  What a dryer sheets.
• 37:35
  It's like fabric softer but in sheet form. It's a clothesline out back.
• 37:40
  Yeah. And what's a dryer? Well, I mean in New York say okay, I I'll
• 37:45
  I'll say there's a a shift in in moving from kind of the Midwest to
• 37:51
  where you have a a house or an apartment with laundry and so forth, to
• 37:57
  moving to an apartment where you probably don't even have laundry. So you're taking your
• 38:03
  laundry to a laundromat and you know putting quarters in a machine or just dropping
• 38:09
  it off and picking it up later. So
• 38:13
  Okay.
• 38:15
  it there there was a shift there in and really space as a premium. And
• 38:22
  I do remember getting buying a a when I actually bought my first apartment or
• 38:29
  our first apartment when we got married, we we actually purchased a a unit you
• 38:37
  could plug into your kitchen sink and it went under a counter and it it
• 38:44
  washed and it dried through heat so
• 38:48
  interesting, the two and one. Okay.
• 38:49
  Anyone. Yeah.
• 38:51
  Pretty scrappy. I like it. take me inside the office today. how many monitors do
• 38:57
  you use on your desk?
• 38:59
  I just have this this MacBook, just
• 39:03
  Okay.
• 39:04
  one. I when I my last real job I actually had three monitors and you
• 39:11
  Yeah.
• 39:12
  know, so when I tried to get that setup going in a work from home
• 39:19
  situation, my wife's like, nope, you can't have that monitor. It looks ugly.
• 39:26
  Fair enough. Okay. if the dog
• 39:29
  I was like, I got it free. They were gonna pitch it. I got I
• 39:31
  got it from the no, get that out of here.
• 39:33
  Right. Apple got you a trip to Europe. You gotta pay the pay it back,
• 39:38
  you know? if the dog pops up in the background of a zoom call, do
• 39:43
  you introduce it as a coworker or introduce it as the dog?
• 39:48
  Yeah, I he he gets introduced. He he would get introduced here, but he's he's
• 39:52
  sleeping. I don't wanna
• 39:54
  Okay.
• 39:55
  wake him up. But yeah, he he gets an introduction. He's an adorable Yorkshire Terrier
• 40:02
  named Johnny. He's
• 40:04
  Nice, that's a great name.
• 40:06
  always a big hit with on on Zoom calls, so
• 40:09
  Good. Good. As he should be, as he should be. any business cards currently on
• 40:14
  the desk? Okay.
• 40:15
  No, I've got I in fact I could show you I got a I got
• 40:22
  a box of business cards of my business cards
• 40:27
  Okay.
• 40:28
  that don't get used and I've gone to
• 40:30
  Yeah.
• 40:31
  I've gone to conferences and nobody uses business cards. It's you know it's it's do
• 40:38
  you have a a code
• 40:41
  Yep.
• 40:42
  You know, to or or let's tap phones and exchange information.
• 40:47
  Yep. Yep. That's how it works these days. what is the most unique thing in
• 40:52
  your office? Any trinkets, any any medals, any sales, competition awards?
• 40:56
  I got a I got an award this year at our our con we have
• 41:03
  a national meeting once a year in Texas and this year I got a a
• 41:11
  an award for top revenue producer as a CSO at Chief Outsiders. So that was
• 41:18
  that that is sitting over here. I I I'm not gonna show it so.
• 41:26
  It's pretty good though. Being the top sales
• 41:27
  Yeah.
• 41:28
  guy in a fractional sales organization's pretty good.
• 41:31
  I was a top CSO, so they have an award for CMO, CSO, they have
• 41:35
  another
• 41:36
  Okay.
• 41:37
  one for most deals, but mine was revenue, so revenue is key.
• 41:43
  Yeah, that brings in more money than number of deals for sure. does your phone
• 41:47
  currently have any cracks in it or screen issues? Okay.
• 41:50
  No, no.
• 41:53
  All right. have you ever if a meeting's going long, have you ever faked a
• 41:59
  meeting after it to get out of it?
• 42:03
  yes. In fact, I got a hard stop.
• 42:06
  Right.
• 42:09
  No. No. I I have done that just because there I I have some c
• 42:17
  I have had some clients that do like to go on and talk
• 42:25
  Yep.
• 42:26
  and talk, so
• 42:26
  Yep. All right, maybe the last one here. take me inside the inbox. How many
• 42:35
  emails unread is too many.
• 42:38
  one. I
• 42:39
  wow.
• 42:41
  clear it out all the time. in in fact I I look at my wife's
• 42:45
  phone sometimes. She she's she'll be I as she's using it. I don't go and
• 42:50
  take her phone and look at it. but I look at her just her text
• 42:55
  message and it'll say like three hundred twenty three unread.
• 42:59
  Yeah.
• 43:01
  And and I'm just like, I gotta clear it out. I always gotta clear it
• 43:05
  out.
• 43:06
  It's too funny. I gotta say, there's there's some dashes and some doses of sophistication,
• 43:11
  but a hundred percent scrappy, Aaron. I love it, man. This is great. what a
• 43:16
  fun one. I appreciate you coming on. What do you want the folks out there
• 43:21
  to know? Anything you want to promote?
• 43:24
  right now at Chief Outsiders we have an AI acceleration for sales program going on.
• 43:31
  So it it takes a look at okay, how are you leveraging AI with your
• 43:38
  sales team? Because it can mean a a lot of different things because there is
• 43:45
  AI that is built into a lot of current sales tools and and I've used
• 43:52
  them and We we we actually go in and assess that and come up with
• 43:59
  an ROI and and so forth before you start just spending all kinds of money
• 44:06
  on tools. So that's that's one initiative. But overall, the the commercial for chief outsiders
• 44:14
  is if you're a CEO or you know of a CEO who's struggling with growth
• 44:21
  or even you're experiencing a decline. and you've reached a point where you need some
• 44:28
  help from the outside to help you sort it out, we'll go in, help you
• 44:35
  sort it out, and then we'll actually roll up our sleeves and implement a strategy
• 44:42
  that we develop. So that's a big difference between us and a lot of consultants.
• 44:49
  A lot of consultants really just give you a strategy and then it's up to
• 44:56
  you to to implement it. We actually implemented and that's that's why we we've been
• 45:04
  successful as a company.
• 45:06
  Nice. Yeah, that's pretty big. It goes beyond strategy. It goes to a a true
• 45:10
  kind of ongoing partnership. And then you hire your replacement too.
• 45:14
  Yes.
• 45:15
  which is awesome. Chief Outsiders, Aaron Gutowski, give a look on LinkedIn, folks. It's a
• 45:20
  good t time c talking with them, as you could tell. a hundred percent scrappy
• 45:25
  again. Aaron, thank you so much for coming up.
• 45:29
  Yeah, and if you are scrappy, that that helps too because you know at the
• 45:31
  end of when
• 45:32
  Yeah you gotta be.
• 45:36
  it comes down to it, you you've gotta you've gotta, you know, have that kind
• 45:40
  of scrappy drive to be successful.
• 45:42
  Exactly. Exactly. Yep. You gotta fake your own PO with your birthday. Thanks so much
• 45:47
  for coming on, Aaron, and stay data driven, everybody.
• 45:51
  All right. Thanks, Jack. Take it easy.
• 45:54
  Ex