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What’s Old is New: Timeless Sales Fundamentals at Work in 2024 · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt: Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  I am your host, Matt Heinz.
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  So excited to have you here.
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  Thank you for downloading and subscribing.
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  Every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, always available at
• 0:27
  www.salespipelineradio.com
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  very excited today to have with us the Chief Sales Officer for
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  World Emblem, Tony Morando.
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  Tony, thanks for joining us today.
• 0:37
  Tony: Thanks, Matt.
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  Pleasure to be here.
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  Matt: We feature a number of sales authors, subject matter
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  experts, talking to a lot of marketers about what they're doing.
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  I love having folks like yourself on that can just share your knowledge of what
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  you have learned over a life of sales.
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  What works, what doesn't work, everything from best practices to
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  dumpster fires and cautionary tales.
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  If you could just quick introduce yourself, like who
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  you are and where you're from.
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  Tony: Yeah, awesome.
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  My name is Tony Morando.
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  You nailed it right off the bat, the Chief Sales Officer, World Emblem
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  originally from Boston, Massachusetts.
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  Grew up in Boston, went to school in Boston, post college.
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  I got transferred out to San Diego, California.
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  And I've been out in San Diego now for the past 19 years heavily involved
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  in the apparel decoration space.
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  I've spent literally the past 19 years working my career from
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  a outside sales rep up to CSO.
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  So it's been a whirlwind of success, adventures, and learning experiences.
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  Matt: That's awesome.
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  So you recently celebrated 17 years at World Emblem.
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  In today's day and age, that is an incredible amount of time.
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  Talk about the value of longevity in a role in really diving deep.
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  And then I want to talk about career progression as well, from where
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  you started to where you are today.
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  Tony: Yeah, it's funny.
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  You're the you're the second person that found it odd to
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  be with the company 17 years.
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  So it seems like that's not the norm these days, but I think there is a
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  lot to be said; even when I look at my team, our tenure is about nine years.
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  So the reps that have come aboard have stayed.
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  And honestly, it is extremely impactful for the fact that one, it really kind of
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  develops and builds the culture that we're trying to establish within the business.
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  And that starts top down.
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  So our CEO has done an unbelievably fantastic job of making sure that that
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  culture runs from our executive team, all the way to our entry level folks.
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  And particularly when we hire, that is the number one thing
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  we hire to is cultural fit.
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  Like we want to make sure that whoever we bring on board is going to
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  fit you know, the World Emblem way.
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  And also I think it helps with the continuous learning, right?
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  So the tenure really kind of feeds off off of everybody.
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  Everybody gets to learn something.
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  Everybody's willing to share.
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  And we're able to drive kind of that best practice principle because of it.
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  Matt: Well, it's rare, but I think it's wonderful, right?
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  I mean, it speaks to not only a great company and a great
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  culture, but a great opportunity.
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  And, you just look at LinkedIn and where you have evolved just in the last
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  17 years from, like you said, like, you know, having a territory to now
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  running all those sales, talk about like the value of doing that in a company
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  that you believe in versus a lot of people will hop around at different
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  places and have those different roles.
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  There's pros and cons to that, but I think being able to do that in one place and
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  help, not just appreciate and benefit from the culture, but really be and enable and
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  build the culture as part of the role.
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  Tony: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think there's a couple couple
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  different ways to look at this.
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  So I think it was like a stock market, right?
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  Everybody wants to get a quick win.
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  They want to make some money and get out.
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  And for me, it's been just kind of the opposite.
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  I like the long play.
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  I like to learn kind of every different level within the organization.
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  And you know, it's, it's been wild.
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  So the first couple of years coming on board, I was brought out to open up a new
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  market, which was the West coast for us.
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  We had zero presence.
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  We didn't have any manufacturing out here.
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  I think we had one client at the time in kind of the mountain group,
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  which is Salt Lake City or Denver.
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  And honestly it took some time.
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  There was a lot of learning.
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  You know, we learned a lot from our mistakes which has been part of the reason
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  why I think I've had the success I have because you're going to make mistakes.
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  I think a lot of times people quit too early, and they don't have the
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  opportunity to move up within the business because they want to get that quick win.
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  They get offered another position where maybe they get a little more salary.
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  But for me, it's been about, you know, pay your dues, learning the business, learning
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  the products, building the relationships.
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  And that's kind of led to step by step growth over the past 17 years.
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  Matt: It's awesome.
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  We're talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Tony Morando, he's the
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  Chief Sales Officer at World Emblem.
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  And I want to talk about the importance of really getting to
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  know your customer, your industry.
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  And I want to use an example from your past.
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  You spent three, almost four years as VP of sales in the
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  industrial laundry division.
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  And I'm guessing there's a lot of people listening to here that don't really
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  know the industrial laundry industry.
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  So as an example of what it takes to get to know your industry and to
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  customize a selling solution, can you talk a little bit about what the
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  hell is industrial laundry and how can you use that as a case study for
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  more personalized, customized selling?
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  Tony: Yeah, so industrial laundry geez, I'll try to make
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  the simplest way to explain it.
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  You know, you go to a gas station and you see somebody wearing a uniform
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  with a name tag, Tony, Bob, and it says the name of the company on the side.
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  Our company manufactures all those name badges.
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  Whether it be imported, sublimated, we sell them back into the industrial
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  laundry world, which, I won't mention the names, but there's some very
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  large fortune 500 companies out there.
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  And they service everybody from food industry to healthcare,
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  auto, manufacturing, union, everything in between.
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  So it is a very unique industry where they basically provide uniforms
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  for manufacturing companies so they don't have to bring home their own
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  personal clothes and get them dirty and then they rotate them every week.
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  They basically pick up the dirties and drop off brand new
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  uniforms to their customers.
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  Now selling into the industry, it's really unique because you're
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  not selling to a specific buyer.
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  You're selling to multiple buyers within each individual location.
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  So as an example, let's just use the state of California.
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  I could have a hundred different locations out here and each
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  location may have anywhere from four to 10 buyers at the location.
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  You need to get the trust of each buyer to be able to win that business.
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  So we're pretty methodological in terms of how we approach this.
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  We've developed systems internally that basically guide our reps who to
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  contact, what conversations to have, what to listen for, how to react to it.
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  And then we've used that to kind of share that experience
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  amongst the rest of the team.
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  So everybody again, goes back to that shared best practices, shared learning.
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  It's a much different industry than some of the others, that I've talked
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  to with some friends that are selling into, medical devices or technology,
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  this one really is based on developing hardcore relationships and earning
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  the trust of multiple buyers.
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  Matt: Love that.
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  There is a commonality between what.
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  someone that may be in the tech space and what you just described is this
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  concept of the buying committee, right?
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  The multiple people in the organization, different buyers that
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  may have different needs, different perspectives, different approaches.
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  Building a relationship is super important, but, Rolodex is a limit if
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  you can't connect on the need, right?
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  So can you talk a little bit about having a relationship, building
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  trust, and then there's understanding a need that the prospect may or may
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  not understand themselves, right?
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  Like I think of this in terms of sort of need signals and evidence of need signals.
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  How do you help connect the dots and be that trusted advisor as part of the role
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  to build the trust, but then to build consensus amongst those multiple buyers?
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  Tony: Excellent question.
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  So we talked about kind of some of the best practices just previously, but also
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  I think it's being able to solve problems.
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  So outside of just a cultural fit, that we hire to, we also look for
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  people that are able to solve problems.
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  And we incorporate that into our interviews just to see how the
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  mind works and how the individual can respond to certain scenarios.
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  The way that we've seen at least the success on our side of work is those
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  who are able to solve the problems for the buyers, not just pushing product,
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  not pushing what we want the buyer to actually take, but more so what we
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  can help them fix and make better has delivered a better long term relationship.
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  And this goes back to early days.
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  I've made other shifts with some of these clients that, 17 years later,
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  we're friends outside of work.
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  We talk continuously on the weekends.
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  And honestly, it's because we've delivered the value.
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  We brought something.
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  We've helped identify what the true issue was.
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  We solved it with one of our solutions.
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  And I think that is the quickest way to build trust and respect
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  within any group you're selling to.
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  Matt: So we get a good mix of sales and marketing folks that
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  will listen to and watch the show.
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  So I'm curious for you as a sales leader, what would you say
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  to marketing leaders listening?
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  Like what's the best way to not just support, but really to partner with
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  sales to drive revenue objectives?
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  Tony: Yeah, I think it would really be to understand what the pain points are.
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  What are the sales reps experiencing when they're meeting with prospects?
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  What are they hearing?
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  What have they done in the past that have worked?
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  We always talk about how often our marketing team should be campaigning
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  and contacting our prospects and customers, and that's something that I
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  think has to be continually evolving.
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  We're seeing it now with some of the technology coming out, AI, and
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  I've had a lot of conversations with different leaders about how AI
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  is influencing the sales industry and impacting the marketing side.
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  And honestly, I think it's just a continually evolving door, right?
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  You got to make sure that you are listening and making adjustments
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  based on what you're seeing.
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  Matt: Let's say you have an audience with someone who's new in their career
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  in sales, starting from scratch, what's advice that you would give them?
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  What's something you wish you would have known or wish you would have
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  done earlier in your sales career?
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  Tony: Couple different things.
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  One is be coachable.
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  I think there's a lot of younger generation sales folks that are starting
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  out that ...nobody knows it all.
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  Right?
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  And I think that's a great saying.
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  Nobody knows everything.
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  If you know everything, then you're in the wrong business because I think
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  you need to come in with an open mind that you're going to make mistakes.
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  You're not going to know everything.
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  There are people that have been there a long time.
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  You know, we talked about tenure.
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  There's a reason why people have been successful to last that long.
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  And most of them have done it because they've been coachable.
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  They've been open to feedback.
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  They've been willing to listen and learn.
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  So to me, being coachable is definitely the most important for any new sales
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  rep to come in and also to understand you're going to make mistakes.
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  You're going to fail.
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  And that's part of the process.
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  And that's also something that pushes people out the door pretty quickly.
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  Somebody fails and they get discouraged and they go right away
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  looking for the next best thing.
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  So just be willing to make mistakes, be willing to be coached and
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  learn and get better every day.
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  Matt: If you're in sales, you got to be like a baseball hitter, right?
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  You're a hall of fame batter if you fail 7 out of 10 times.
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  And in sales, we celebrate the wins and ring the bell and this is great, but
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  behind every win is countless losses.
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  It's doors closed in your face.
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  It's phones not answered.
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  It's hot prospects that ghost you.
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  And so I think there's a level of tenacity that goes along with that
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  as well in any role, but I think especially in sales, do you find that
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  that is a learned skill to be able to have that resilience in selling?
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  Tony: It is for sure.
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  When we first started, I used to take it so personally every time I get rejected or
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  every time I get the phone hung up on me.
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  I was telling somebody the other day that a quote that I heard Gordon
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  Ramsey saying it stuck with me: "Take it professionally, not personally".
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  And that is so on the spot when we talk about sales, because people really take
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  it personally and their feelings get hurt and then they tend to shut down.
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  But if you learn, look, just because somebody saying no.
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  Doesn't mean no forever.
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  It just means no today, right?
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  Obviously there's more work that has to be done.
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  So the biggest advice would be, take it professionally, not personally.
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  And a no isn't something that you should you should shut the door for.
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  Matt: I agree with that.
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  We so even inside of our own business, we have two different stages of closed loss.
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  One is closed loss, meaning we lost them to a competitor.
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  But the majority of the time a business is lost to what we call closed nurture.
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  It means they had a different priority.
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  They had something else that came up.
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  They decided not to invest in right now, whether or not we were
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  able to communicate the value of what we were offering different.
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  But every time you have those conversations, you're planting
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  seeds for the future, right?
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  And the way that you treat and the way you handle that
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  conversation with professionalism, with care to build trust...
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  yeah, you want that deal to close now.
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  Yeah, you want to hit your number this month, this quarter, whatever, but you
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  are building future pipeline with the majority of the no's that you get is--
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  in 15 years of running my own business, before this I was lifelong marketer, but
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  inherently when you own your own business, you're carrying a bag the whole time.
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  And I've learned that a no, to your point, is a potential pipeline,
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  a potential yes down the road.
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  Tony: Well, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.
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  Matt: Yeah.
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  Awesome.
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  Well Tony, thank you so much for joining us today.
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  Tony Morando, Chief Sales Officer at World Emblem.
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  Just really appreciate your time and insights.
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  Thank you everyone so much for listening and watching.
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  We'll be back next week.
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  Another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  Until then, take care.
• 13:43
  Thanks, Matt.