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29. Why More Leads Won't Fix Your Sales Problem with Paul Pompeo · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:05
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy What's Successful? The show where I sit down with
• 0:11
  your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or
• 0:17
  because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting
• 0:23
  Firm, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of the day, we've got
• 0:26
  a New York City guest on, so we've got a New York City fun fact.
• 0:27
  The first ever pizzeria was in New York City in 1895. I am extremely biased,
• 0:27
  but I'm betting that Pineapple came on that pizza pretty soon after.
• 0:28
  Hmm
• 0:35
  But that's neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend, Pompeo. He runs
• 0:41
  ProLan Consulting. He's a revenue generator. He's a strategic growth specialist. Basically he's a professional
• 0:47
  problem solver, especially when that problem is sales. man, thank you for coming on. We
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  know you're successful today. Question we have for you though. Do think you fall more
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  on the sophisticated side, more on the scrappy side?
• 1:00
  Well, first of all, just want to say, Jack, thanks for inviting me onto this.
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  My pleasure to be here. And do I fall on the sophisticated or the scrappy
• 1:12
  side? I'm from New York, so I'm the scrappy side, that's for sure.
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  I love it. Are you from New York originally?
• 1:16
  yeah, born and bred, never lived anywhere else.
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  Okay, New York's through and through man. I love it. I got my Yankees bat
• 1:24
  up in the background here for this.
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  I see that there, I noticed your bats, I was like, I guess he likes
• 1:28
  baseball.
• 1:29
  Yeah, only the best team though. Did you have entrepreneurs in the family growing up
• 1:31
  in the city?
• 1:32
  Yes, exactly. No, didn't. had my dad, my grandfather, weren't entrepreneurs, but they were the
• 1:38
  most extremely hard, dedicated, filled with integrity workers. That's what I learned from.
• 1:49
  Nice. Blue collar workers, white, what were the kind of the work that they did?
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  My grandfather actually built grand piano casings. So he was a carpenter by trade. He
• 1:58
  was able to take wood and bend it without the tools that we have today.
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  He was an incredible carpenter. And my father was in the plumbing trade. worked, he
• 2:10
  did a plumbing for big buildings in Manhattan. He wasn't like the guy to go
• 2:16
  fix your sink or your toilet. Although he could do that, but he... He was
• 2:22
  his team, his company built all the large pipes that went into the buildings. And
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  I guess you could say he was an entrepreneur at a time. He owned the
• 2:34
  company for a while. And then he turned into an employee and he worked for
• 2:40
  one of the guys that started the place. So yeah, so it was kind of
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  hybrid.
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  Okay. Okay. But so the integrity is what gets passed down. now you're a sales
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  guy. Are you, do you have a lemonade sand as a kid? Are you bartering
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  with friends? Like when does that sales entrepreneurial come in?
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  Well, I bartered with friends, as far as I didn't have a lemonade stand, I'll
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  tell you a quick story. I started out and I'll tell you why. think one
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  of your questions might be, you know, how did I get into what, you know,
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  about being interested in making money? My mother used to give me an allowance. And
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  then finally what happened was the well ran dry. She didn't have the income that
• 3:23
  I wanted. which was the best thing that happened to me. Cause I said, all
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  right, she's not going to give me another $10 a week. I had to go
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  work. So I went and got a paper route. back then when I was growing
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  up, you know, the kids would just get their bikes and you throw a bag
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  on the front of your, your, your, your bike and you would just start delivering
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  the papers. So I got a route, like a hundred papers I got, and I
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  would do that by myself. I'd, I'd have to collect the money. I'd have to
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  make sure the customers were happy, make sure they were getting their paper. I had
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  to keep track of that in a little notebook. There was no Excel spreadsheets back
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  then. So you had to put everything in a pen and a paper. But what
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  I started realizing is like, know, I'm only making a hundred dollar, you know, only
• 4:29
  making what a hundred papers could provide for me. So I said, you know, I
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  went down to the distributor and I said, I want 500 papers. And the guy,
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  added to my route and I said, you know what? I can't do all of
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  these by myself from five in the morning to six 30 in the morning. So
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  I hired some guys to, some friends of mine, went to the local schoolyard. I
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  said, Hey Joe, Anthony, come on, let's go. want you to, I need, let's make
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  some money. And I got, and I had them deliver it. And I told him,
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  here was my pitch. You don't have to worry about collecting the money. You don't
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  have to worry about making sure they're happy. You don't have to keep track of
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  anything. I just pay you at the end of the week. I'll do all the
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  rest. So I had them all do the papers and I had my own little
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  business going there at that point. And I mean, I was the richest kid in
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  the neighborhood. had a roll of $1 bills in my gold money holder. So it
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  tells you I was pretty arrogant as little kids. But hopefully I've, I've chilled out
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  as I got older. But anyway, that's how I got my start in the, the
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  thinking about generating income world.
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  How old were you at that time? 11. And you're already running a shop with
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  four or five guys.
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  Eleven. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I started at eleven.
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  Wow, that's awesome. Okay. How are the grades in school? Are you more focused on
• 5:19
  making money than grades?
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  No, actually I was a CB student. never, you know, I wasn't a 4-0 nerd
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  kind of. I could have been, but I was eclectic, so I spread out my
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  talents equally almost, you know?
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  Okay, I like it. Do you sell any candy at school? I know that's a
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  big thing for a lot of folks. Any candy you're possible.
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  You know, I never really did that. There wasn't enough money in it. I didn't
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  have any interest in it, so.
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  Hahaha. Okay, nice. I love it, man. Did you collect anything as a kid that
• 5:52
  you thought would make you rich?
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  Did I collect? I used to collect where I lived. I lived probably five blocks,
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  six blocks, big long blocks away from Shea Stadium, which is now City Fields. And
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  they had a lot of construction going on over there. So what I used to
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  do, this is crazy. A lot of times these guys would dig up a lot
• 6:24
  of dirt and I would go into these holes in the pits there and. and
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  I'd find old Coke bottles, you know, from like 19, the early 1900s. And I
• 6:36
  would collect it and I used to tell my father, Pop, maybe these would be
• 6:42
  worth something someday. So I used to hang on to them. But at the end
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  of the day, all that came was stuff that I put in my shelf. That's
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  about it. But so I had the monetary sense behind it, but after a while
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  they just became decorations.
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  Okay. Always an angle though. love it. It's Hey, these are cool and they might
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  be worth something. Okay. So you're, you're born and Are you still in Queens today?
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  Yeah. Yeah, exactly, yeah. No, no, I live out in the eastern Long Island. in
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  the Rock Conchamara area. I don't know if you ever heard of it, but it's,
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  yeah, it's one of the, it's just into Suffolk County. It's two counties, Nassau County,
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  which is closer to the city. And then you got Suffolk County, which is more
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  suburban. So I have a lot of trees and stuff around me.
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  Okay, okay, very nice. Nice, nice. And you can still get into the city and
• 7:16
  live the city life if you need to. Yep. Okay. That's not bad. All right.
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  Tell us a little about the background. high school grades are okay, but you're making
• 7:28
  money on the side. Are you running the paper route throughout high school, by the
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  way?
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  Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Up until about I started doing different things believe it or not
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  when I was 16 17 years old I was I was bartending already so I
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  I also just to do mean that we I worked for a caterer and It
• 7:47
  was a mobile caterer. So, know if you had a party in your office We'd
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  come there and set it up and then me and a buddy of mine when
• 7:51
  we were still underage drinking had our own Roll it we would use the caterer
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  for food
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  guy.
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  And then we would find our, we advertised it in the yellow pages and we
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  would go, you know, bring a rolling bar into people's houses and if they're in
• 8:22
  their backyard. So that's, you know, and I did that during high school and whatnot.
• 8:23
  Whoa, that's become big. Like I live in Charlotte now and when I live in
• 8:29
  Connecticut, I didn't, that was maybe a thing. I've seen it come up a little
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  bit in Charlotte and it's kind of like a new somewhat trendy city. I thought
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  that was a new business. You're doing this in high school years and years and
• 8:38
  years ago. Wow. Okay. So you're bartending just in the mobile bartending or you had
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  a bar too.
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  A long time ago, Yep, exactly. I used to go into the bars too, you
• 8:44
  know, and sometimes with these parties for the caterer, would mix, you know, actually I
• 8:50
  did, I would mix drinks for them. I would, yeah, we had fun. We had
• 8:56
  a lot of fun doing it. We worked our butts off. It was a bunch,
• 9:02
  it was a crew. All my buddies, used to hang out. We all worked for
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  the same place. And it was really funny. It was an Irish catering. It was
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  all Irish owned. And... My friends and I were all Italian. So there was always
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  this thing going on. You know, you could make fun of yourself back in those
• 9:26
  days or bust each other's horn because you're a nationality, but now forget it. You'll
• 9:28
  get a lawsuit in five seconds. But we had fun. We enjoyed it.
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  Yeah. Yeah. At an Irish bar in the city, there's almost nothing better than it.
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  dad, both my parents grew up in the city and both 100 % Irish. So
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  we always had the Irish jokes and there's not Irish verse Italian, but to your
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  point, plenty of, you know, friendly jabs back and forth and having fun with it.
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  No. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah. And you know, it was, there was never any, any
• 9:44
  hostility. Some, most times there wasn't any hostility, but even if there was, next day
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  you were friends again, you know, it was, it's the story at work.
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  you Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's always funny. Whenever I talk to somebody who's from New
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  York or like lives in New York or just New York through and through, and
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  I meet him in small business, they'll say, you know, how the F are you?
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  And I'm like, all right, cool. That's I know, I know exactly how to talk
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  to you now. Right? Sounds like home. Okay, so take us college, do you go
• 10:14
  to college? Okay, are the grades there? What do you end up majoring in?
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  Yeah, I feel comfortable. Yeah, exactly. C and B again, I may believe it or
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  not. I majored in engineering electrical engineering electrical engineering electronics I majored I got a
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  bachelor's they called it a B degree B E E and I graduated and Again
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  during that whole time I worked I would take on full credit 18 credits and
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  work 40 hours a week, too Like I said my grandfather my father Built into
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  me hostile. That's what they did hostile and don't don't slow down
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  Whoa.
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  In fact, one time, it was one summer, I'll tell you a quick story. One
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  summer, my grandfather was Italian, he had broken English. So he, you know, he always
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  had an accent. And there was summertime, or spring, actually it was spring. So I
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  should have been in school. But I had, the way I designed my curriculum, would,
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  you know, eight, nine, 10, I'd have classes and then I had the rest of
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  the day to do whatever I wanted. So my cousins lived with my grandfather and
• 11:07
  grandmother. You know, they had a big house there.
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  Yeah.
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  I remember one day in the spring I said, let me go see my cousin
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  Richie, see what he's up to. So I went to go sing and we were
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  hanging out with him and I went down to the basement and say hello to
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  my grandfather and give him a kiss hello and he looks at me he goes,
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  what do you do? I said, what do mean grandpa? Why you no work? Why
• 12:02
  you no school? I says, I'm finished school. And why you no work? And I'm
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  like, don't, I'm not working. You know, I saved some money. He goes, you go
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  work. You go to school and you go to work. You know what I did?
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  I listened to him and I went and got a job. now I, and I
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  was glad I did because by the time I got out of school, I had
• 12:29
  like thousands and thousands of dollars saved. I bought my own car. You know, I,
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  you know, I, I was able to take care of it. That was the best.
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  And he, it wasn't advice. It was like, it was a whipple. It was a
• 12:31
  beaten, you know, a verbal. And that's the way he was. That's how I learned
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  my work ethic is from my father and him.
• 12:32
  That's awesome. How many, how many like odd jobs? Give me some stories on some
• 12:34
  of the ridiculous jobs that you picked up.
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  When I was in college, I had six part-time jobs in the summer. I had
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  six, I worked at a pinball gallery. I worked in doing refurbishing houses. would, me
• 12:41
  and nobody in mind would go in if the people needed like their rugs ripped
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  up or the walls broken. We were good at demolishing. never, had the other guys
• 12:42
  would come and do that. I did that. did, I worked, like I said, I
• 12:43
  did some bartaming work. I worked for the catering hall.
• 12:43
  You
• 13:03
  what else did, I also worked at a, a beer and soda distributor and I
• 13:09
  would, we would unload the trucks. My friend's father also had this, mail order company
• 13:15
  that he worked for. So, and this was just, in the winter time, we do
• 13:21
  this in the middle of the winter. We'd look, they, you know, take off, they'd
• 13:27
  pack all these, all this junk mail in these big mail bags, like 80, a
• 13:33
  hundred pounds. There would be in there and what me and my buddy, his father.
• 13:39
  We would load up 18 wheeler trucks with these bags. And in the middle, and
• 13:45
  the truck would be outside, you still had to go outside. And we used to
• 13:51
  take these bags and fill that truck up to the top of the ceiling with
• 13:57
  all of this junk mail. And I remember it was so cold out, because it
• 14:03
  was like in February, like 10 degrees out, and we'd be blowing like... ice out
• 14:09
  of our mouths practically. It's amazing what you can do when you're 18 years old,
• 14:15
  you know, and I remember his father was not, he would give us a break.
• 14:21
  We'd load up the truck and he didn't want any space between the bags and
• 14:27
  the ceiling of the truck. We'd go, hey, hey, get popped, we're finished. He goes,
• 14:29
  no, you're not. You gotta fill that space up there. And we had to climb
• 14:30
  up there and throw all this, my goodness. So yeah, so that's one of my,
• 14:30
  that was one of the toughest. Part-time jobs I had.
• 14:31
  I can totally picture that. This is, I'm assuming another Italian New York City dead.
• 14:37
  Of course, that's all, yeah, absolutely. In my neighborhood there was Italian, Irish, and German,
• 14:43
  and where we lived was predominantly Italian. And you go a couple blocks away, was
• 14:49
  the Irish, and a couple more blocks. So, yeah, that was the mixture we had
• 14:52
  there at the time.
• 14:53
  How many these businesses are you going in and it's just like it's your buddy
• 14:59
  or your buddy's dad or something like that. It's all like connections, all family based,
• 15:01
  I'm assuming. Okay.
• 15:02
  Yeah, lot of it is, yep. All my jobs, we're not working whether we realize
• 15:08
  it or not, you know?
• 15:10
  And so none of this is technically sales yet, but I imagine doing a lot
• 15:16
  of like the bartending stuff specifically, there are some sales tactics that you're using and
• 15:19
  stuff.
• 15:20
  Customer service, customer service. I remembered everybody's drink. They would come up to me and
• 15:23
  they'd say, yep, I know. And I would make it for them. And I remembered
• 15:24
  everybody's drink. And believe me, that gave, that got you tips. That was the motivator.
• 15:24
  Remember those drinks, because the tips are big.
• 15:25
  Okay. Yeah. That's my dad's test for a bartender is do they say hi? Do
• 15:30
  they remember your drink? Do they serve you fast?
• 15:47
  I did all of those. Serve fast and remember to drink.
• 15:53
  Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. All right. So you're learning kind of like inadvertently really like
• 15:59
  you're going after money at this point, but you're doing a bunch of things. You're
• 16:05
  kind of learning some sales inadvertently. When do you get into the sales, the true
• 16:10
  kind of more classic sales role.
• 16:11
  okay. When I was actually, when I got out of college, like I said, I
• 16:17
  graduated as an engineer. I got it. I became a aeronautical military aircraft engineer, you
• 16:23
  know, electronics wise. And I did that for six years and during, and again, once
• 16:29
  again, during that time that I was, I got, went out and became, got licensed
• 16:34
  to be professional bartender. And I would, yeah. And I would, I would, my ambition
• 16:35
  was at that time,
• 16:35
  Yeah
• 16:41
  was to open up my own club. I didn't want to open up a bar.
• 16:47
  I wanted to open up a club. And I actually started putting the pedal to
• 16:53
  the metal to get that to happen. Never actually materialized. But I knew how to
• 16:59
  make a lot of different drinks, that's for sure. And I used to hire myself
• 17:05
  out at parties. So to people that I worked with. And that's how, you know,
• 17:11
  so I made some more money. This is while being, making a very well-paid engineer,
• 17:17
  but I didn't care. wanted it, you know, I enjoyed, you know, I enjoyed seeing,
• 17:23
  working with people and seeing them have fun. and, that's, and I, and I, that's
• 17:29
  what I did. So I, I, so I, I did that for six years as
• 17:35
  an engineer. and, when I, there was big, at the time there were, they, and
• 17:41
  I'd worked for military provider and At the time they cut the military budget drastically.
• 17:47
  They just cut it and to down to nothing. So there was some huge layoffs
• 17:53
  and I was, I was part of the layoffs. And, um, I also had a
• 17:59
  lot of friends of mine that were in business from themselves. had friends that were
• 18:05
  sales reps and I always admired that, you know, how they, you know, that they
• 18:11
  did, they were in sales and they're in, and they were entrepreneurs. And, um, I,
• 18:17
  when I got laid off, I talked to one of my mentors, I guess you
• 18:23
  could say. I want to get into sales. What do think I should do? And
• 18:29
  I tried a bunch of different things. I did the ad carts, know, the ads
• 18:35
  on the back of the, I did that. I did, that was all full commission.
• 18:41
  did, I did, what you call it? I did, I got into the copier business,
• 18:47
  fax machines at the time. So I sold that for a while and that's, that
• 18:53
  was my real break into sales. That's when That's where I learned that I would
• 18:57
  knock, I learned how to knock on 70, 80 doors a day, making phone calls.
• 18:58
  would, I would go all, they'd kick us out of the office at 8.30 after
• 18:58
  sales meeting. I'd spend the whole day in the field knocking on doors and then,
• 18:59
  and we'd get back to the office around 3.30, four o'clock and we were supposed
• 18:59
  to call the cards that we got for that day. So I'd be on the
• 19:00
  phone making call setting appointments. So I got, I got really good at that. was,
• 19:00
  I was closing like one deal a day.
• 19:01
  Whoa.
• 19:01
  You know, I was selling one small copy or one fax machine a day. And
• 19:04
  it was like a total manic behavior, man, because these guys are like, eh, you
• 19:10
  know, the boiler room kind of atmosphere, know, ooh-rah type stuff. yeah, so that's where
• 19:16
  I, there I learned, I really grinded my teeth on really hardcore sales, you know,
• 19:22
  and that's how I got started.
• 19:23
  Okay. That's, mean, that's, that's literally hitting the streets and learning. What's the answer rate
• 19:29
  knocking on doors at like 20 % of the people when you're doing this that
• 19:32
  actually open the door for you.
• 19:33
  Oh, when I was doing this, I used to go into where the warehouses and
• 19:39
  factories were. So I would just walk in. I would just walk in and right
• 19:45
  into the middle of the office and I'd do my pitch. And most times I
• 19:51
  would deal with the owners or partners or whatnot. And that's how I was able
• 19:57
  to get one call closed sales is because I would go in there with blank
• 20:01
  paper and come out with a check and a filled out paperwork. When I did
• 20:02
  that, you know, I did the copy thing for a while.
• 20:02
  and then, a friend of mine says, you got to check this telecommunications industry out,
• 20:08
  man. It's great. And, he goes, you don't have to get any money upfront or
• 20:14
  anything like that. And I'm like, okay, cool. And, I worked for this one company,
• 20:20
  it's called teleglobe. It was a Canadian company that built offices here in Manhattan and
• 20:26
  in the city in the United States. And, I wind up, working there and I
• 20:32
  loved it, man. I was doing like three. Again, was going I would keep I
• 20:38
  would love one of my friends We work together and we stick it around about
• 20:44
  this but we would get we were such so good at what we did That
• 20:50
  we'd get people to sign paperwork without even filling out the rest of the form
• 20:56
  We'd get their tax ID. They put the taxi. Yeah, just sign over here next
• 21:02
  month Just start saving money and then before you know it we go back to
• 21:02
  do I go back to the office with a stack of orders that are signed
• 21:03
  with tax IDs that I that I filled out, I filled out the rest. You
• 21:03
  can't get away with that today because the doc is signed and all that other
• 21:04
  stuff. But back then that's what we used to do, know, and, you know, and
• 21:04
  then that first company I worked for went bankrupt within four months. And I was
• 21:05
  like the top guy there and it went bad. I walked into the office, had
• 21:05
  no manager, no VP. It was just all the reps. were like, what are we
• 21:06
  doing here? There's no, yeah, they let everybody go. And within a couple of weeks
• 21:06
  we were gone.
• 21:07
  Yeah. Okay.
• 21:31
  Yeah, was just one telecom in the heyday telecom. was get started, make a billion
• 21:37
  dollars and go out of business. You know, that that's how it was. And then
• 21:43
  I and after that, I went into another company until until the communications and I
• 21:49
  was there about a year and they went out of business. So you think I
• 21:55
  would get the message and say, maybe it's to try a different industry, you know?
• 22:01
  And yeah, so then I, but I finally, hit a con a couple others that
• 22:07
  I stayed for a while. Got a lot of experience in that industry in my,
• 22:10
  my sales life here. So yeah, that's, that's, that's essentially how I got started.
• 22:11
  How do you go into a warehouse and just give the pitch? Like, is there
• 22:17
  a reception area that you're just, are you knocking on the boss's door? Like, how
• 22:23
  do you actually make that pitch in that environment?
• 22:25
  Well, a lot of times, like when I would work in Brooklyn, you'd have these
• 22:31
  sugar factories or candy factories. Another thing too, in Brooklyn, it smelled great in the
• 22:33
  summertime. It was just crazy. But anyway, they got these big garage doors. A lot
• 22:34
  of times you walk into the factory, they have places where they put the truck.
• 22:34
  They got places where they're doing their whatever they're doing. And then you got these
• 22:35
  little offices built out.
• 22:35
  Thank
• 22:53
  that have, they have all windows on them. So you can see right in there
• 22:59
  and, and, know, you just go, I would just go knock on the door and
• 23:05
  sometimes it might be receptionist there. the funny thing, a lot of times these places
• 23:11
  you'd walk in there and the owner would be sitting at the desk, the front
• 23:17
  desk, cause they're doing whatever they're doing. And, you know, it became a joke. It's
• 23:23
  like, you know, I was named, my name is Paul, I'm with XYZ company. I'm
• 23:29
  looking to see, and so the owner of the company and The guy would look
• 23:29
  up and he wouldn't tell you to not that he would lie, but he would.
• 23:30
  Oh yeah. Who's who's what? What do you want to talk to him about? Then
• 23:30
  I go, you're the owner, aren't you, man? And then. You know, so a lot
• 23:31
  of that time, a lot of that would happen a lot. Then then I also
• 23:31
  saw I had worked in Manhattan. You know, I did a lot of the buildings
• 23:32
  there, so there there are a lot of buildings. You know, we'd go up and
• 23:32
  down, up and down in the buildings there. And, know, you could spend the whole
• 23:33
  day just in one building, you know, and there was even.
• 23:33
  You
• 23:51
  At the time I did it, was, you could sell three, four deals in a
• 23:57
  day, man, sometimes, you know, and, you know, that's how I would do it. Just
• 24:03
  walk in, man, just walk in, have an idea what you're going to say, and
• 24:09
  just roll with it. A lot of times, Manhattan was interesting. I've walked into offices
• 24:15
  and they, I one time walked in and it was this owner that he... He
• 24:21
  got up behind his desk and he started running at me. says, get out of
• 24:26
  here. So that's the kind of stuff we would run into. And I was like,
• 24:27
  okay, I'm going, I'm leaving. Didn't wanna ruin your day.
• 24:27
  Right. Wow. Okay. So go in with an idea, not a script, but an idea
• 24:33
  of what you want to say. Have a little bit of confidence and be willing
• 24:34
  to walk away if they're going to start charging at you.
• 24:35
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, yeah.
• 24:43
  Okay. Translate this to today for me. So obviously you do some sales coaching now
• 24:48
  and stuff. And for the average small business owner, obviously, you know, people aren't really
• 24:49
  knocking on doors so much anymore, but maybe people are cold calling me with people
• 24:49
  who are LinkedIn messaging or something like that. Like what's the equivalent for today? Is
• 24:50
  it using AI? it, is it, you know, using referral connections and stuff like that?
• 24:50
  Like, how do you, how do you make an initial pitch? How do you recommend
• 24:51
  small business owners make an initial pitch today?
• 24:51
  Right. Quality above. Yeah, a little bit of everything. Because even today, well, not for
• 24:55
  the sales coaching, but I'll go knocking a couple of doors. You'll be surprised how
• 25:01
  receptive people are, because no one does that really that much anymore. It's the perfect
• 25:07
  time to do it. I mean, the only guy walking in there. And using the
• 25:13
  phone, I've always been a big phone caller. I'm good on the phone. I've dialed
• 25:13
  fire on your calls a week.
• 25:14
  Okay. Yeah.
• 25:43
  to get appointments and whatnot. Yeah, even though it's a little bit more challenging today,
• 25:49
  it still works. I'm sorry, it still works. Actually, I'm not gonna apologize for it.
• 25:51
  It still works. It still works. Am I gonna say to make that the only
• 25:52
  thing you do? No, not at all. But LinkedIn messaging is great. I do a
• 25:52
  lot of direct messaging too that works. Right now, what I am doing though, I'm
• 25:53
  a closer. I work for a...
• 25:53
  fifth
• 26:12
  I work with another coach that I actually help close their business. And I also
• 26:18
  work with some of their clients to help them in the sales process. So I
• 26:24
  essentially am the closer. And that's what I hire myself out to people who get
• 26:30
  leads just to can't close them. just, whatever, they don't know what they're doing or
• 26:36
  they're afraid to do what they do, to ask for the business. I mean, you're
• 26:42
  in business, ask for the business. And a lot of people feel... afraid to do
• 26:48
  that, you know? Some of the concepts from back in the day still work. I'd
• 26:54
  ask for the business too soon than not. Wait a minute, I gotta ask you
• 27:00
  this question. Oh, that was too soon, you said, so what? That's good, now you
• 27:06
  know what's going on. So I essentially, like I said, I help other coaches, I
• 27:12
  help other business owners, I help consultants, sales reps. You know, I was doing some
• 27:18
  fractional work. You familiar with fractional work? Do know what fractional work is? Yes, I
• 27:18
  was doing some fractional work. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think you have that in
• 27:19
  your title in your LinkedIn profile. But yeah, so I was doing some, I was
• 27:19
  acting like a CRO or a sales manager and I was doing that for a
• 27:20
  little while. know, essentially that's what I got to say about that question.
• 27:20
  Very, yeah. Yeah, very much so. That's what we do. Okay. How do you, sort
• 27:25
  of phrase, how do you get the conversation off of price? So let's say it's
• 27:31
  not necessarily a price sensitive buyer, but you have a, you have a high ticket.
• 27:37
  I don't want to say expensive. You have a high ticket item. How do you
• 27:43
  morph the conversation into more of a value based conversation? How do you make it
• 27:49
  not just like a sticker shock kind of on the recipient's end?
• 28:09
  Yeah, what I usually do is I say, well look, aside from the price, let's
• 28:15
  just say this price wasn't a concern, Jack. Let's just say it wasn't a concern.
• 28:21
  What I showed you, do you see any value in it? Oh yeah, I said,
• 28:27
  well tell me what you like about it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
• 28:33
  boom. I like this, I like that. How do you see that working in your
• 28:39
  organization? Do you see a benefit to that or do you see a problem with
• 28:45
  that? I get them to sell themselves. on the product. I said then this, what
• 28:51
  I'm showing you here, matches what we're offering you. In fact, what we're offering you
• 28:55
  is much higher than what we're asking for. So what would stop you from doing
• 28:56
  business with us today? You just told me all these great things that we're gonna
• 28:56
  do. What would stop you from doing business with us today? You know, and I
• 28:57
  can't tell you, I worked in the hospitality industry for a while.
• 28:57
  Okay. Okay.
• 29:09
  And they're all that you could they're all about saving money. You would all the
• 29:15
  money they make, they still they they want to save money. I've had I've been
• 29:21
  in rooms with the owner, the general manager, the property manager, the the technical guy.
• 29:27
  I've been making presentations to them. And what I just said to you, I did
• 29:32
  with them and they bought.
• 29:33
  Tried and true. works. Okay. All right. That's interesting. So the sort of the order
• 29:33
  of the operation for the listener and Canley for myself too, is you present what
• 29:34
  you do and you present it probably in a benefits focused way, not necessarily a
• 29:34
  here's, you know, in my world, here's the cool data stuff we're doing in the
• 29:35
  backend. It's more, here's the benefits. And then let's take price off the table for
• 29:35
  a second. You know, do you see any value in this? What do you like
• 29:36
  about it? And then you kind of morph it into.
• 29:36
  Yeah.
• 30:03
  All right. Well, there's so much value there. Who cares what the price is. You're
• 30:05
  going to get a huge return. Okay. Okay. Very cool. Um, how do you, is
• 30:06
  one of my favorite examples. So like I'll do, I'll do presentations and stuff. And,
• 30:06
  um, a lot of times the, the thing that we're trying to measure some sort
• 30:07
  of impact, right? So for marketers, it's probably how much new business for finance people
• 30:07
  it's, it's can you see into the future a little bit, right?
• 30:08
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:29
  Sales is the example that I use all the time, because it's how do you
• 30:35
  continuously prove value? Well, sales are up, right? So that's an easy way to do
• 30:41
  it. How do you continuously prove value as a coach to these companies that you're
• 30:47
  working with? as you know, Hey, keep me on for this, or you're getting this
• 30:52
  much value out of it. Like, how do you have that conversation as a sales
• 30:53
  guy doing sales?
• 30:53
  For the stuff I'm working with the coach is saying, for example, you know how
• 30:55
  to.
• 30:56
  If you are the coach and you're working with a business, how do you continuously
• 31:00
  prove your value as a coach?
• 31:01
  I see. Yeah. what I typically do is, is if, if they, if they have
• 31:07
  the same team in place and they're doing well after I'm working with them, then
• 31:13
  I'll come in as like, instead of going in, you know, once a week, I'll
• 31:19
  come in once a month, you know I'm saying? As opposed to, if they get
• 31:25
  some new folks in, you know, when they get a pool of them in, I'll
• 31:31
  work directly with them to give them. So that's how I stay. I'll, know, let
• 31:37
  me, I'll, I'll let's keep this going, you know. Because bottom line, I even need
• 31:43
  help to stay in the flow. Sometimes you're doing the same thing over and over
• 31:49
  and over again. Not so much over and over, but you're in that same vein
• 31:55
  and you kind of lose focus of when there's an opportunity here to the left
• 32:01
  or the right or above you below you. So we all need to stay tuned
• 32:07
  up with each other. That's why I have groups that I'm a part of. We
• 32:13
  do master classes together that I even have my own coach. You know what I'm
• 32:13
  saying? you know, we all try to stay tuned up. So I tell you, you're
• 32:14
  gonna need constant assistance here. You might not need as much in the beginning, but
• 32:14
  as time goes on, maybe once a month, once every two months, that type of
• 32:15
  thing, you know.
• 32:15
  Okay. Okay. Very nice. one more tactical question for you. So you have a short
• 32:20
  sales call, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, something like that. Where do you stand on the
• 32:26
  concept of leaving them kind of wanting more of, this all sounds great in this
• 32:32
  kind of short blurb. And I want them to reach back out and I want
• 32:38
  them to be very interested. So leave them wanting more versus having maybe a longer
• 32:43
  conversation of making sure they have every answer they could possibly have. Where do you
• 32:44
  stand on that balance?
• 32:44
  My favorite thing is to do is, Jack, not everybody qualifies for me right now.
• 32:48
  We have to be in alignment, Jack, because if we're not, you know what? I'll
• 32:49
  give you some recommendations from other folks, but we have to be in alignment. That's
• 32:49
  how I do it. And I also give them scarcity. It's scarcity. Hey, listen, my
• 32:50
  schedule is getting really booked up. If we can't do anything right now, I don't
• 32:50
  know when the next time is I'm to be able to help you out.
• 32:51
  Hahaha Okay.
• 33:14
  You know, so scarcity, scarcity is a big thing. The other thing is, do you
• 33:20
  align with what I have? Because I'm not going to work with, I'm serious. I'm
• 33:26
  not going to work with somebody who has a real nasty negative attitude or they
• 33:32
  just not, you know, I'm not going to work with you. Recognizing I need help
• 33:38
  is one thing, but recognizing I have to be really motivated to get that help.
• 33:44
  There a lot of people that need help, but they're not motivated enough to get
• 33:50
  it, because they're afraid for whatever reason. They're not sure they can pull it off.
• 33:56
  Your program sounds great, sounds awesome, we love it. In the back of their head
• 34:02
  they're saying, I suck, I'm not gonna be able to do this. All those other
• 34:08
  people we talked about that were able to get some success out of it, that's
• 34:14
  them. I suck though, and I'm not gonna be able to pull it off. So
• 34:20
  that's, know, and you know, it's okay to think like that. I'm not saying anything
• 34:20
  wrong, and I know sometimes I do, but at the end of the day, are
• 34:21
  you motivated to get un-sucked? You know?
• 34:21
  Yeah. Okay. I like it. I like it a lot, man. This is great. This
• 34:24
  is a mini masterclass. I appreciate it. Let me hit you with some some scrappy
• 34:25
  or sophisticated questions. Well, all right. We'll start with a maybe just an adjacent one.
• 34:25
  How often are you meeting in person these days? You're a New York guy through
• 34:26
  and through. I imagine a handshake goes a long way. How much are you meeting
• 34:26
  in person these days?
• 34:27
  Yeah boy, that's a loaded question. Yeah. Well, maybe not loaded, but I hardly ever
• 34:31
  meet face to face with anybody. The only time I do face to face is
• 34:37
  if I'm going to a networking group. I have, there's a couple of groups that
• 34:43
  belong to that, local here in Long Island I'm able to go to, you know,
• 34:47
  and I love that. That's, that's where I've got, I can't believe when I go
• 34:48
  face to face, forget it. The leads come in like, you know, all over the
• 34:48
  place because everybody I meet is a potential.
• 34:49
  Yeah. Okay.
• 35:14
  either networking partner or referral partner or what, but sometimes you lose something on the
• 35:20
  calls and whatnot, but it is what it is. You gotta do more calls on
• 35:26
  Zoom than you do if you go face to face.
• 35:27
  Exactly, yeah, so the balance of efficiency versus higher conversion rate, so to speak. Yeah,
• 35:30
  okay, okay. If you're in person and you're at a networking event, conversations pretty much
• 35:31
  run its course with somebody that you're talking to. How do you get out of
• 35:31
  that conversation?
• 35:32
  Exactly. you mean like after we've done with I usually the way I ended is
• 35:37
  a listen, know what? Let's get together. What's your calendar look back for next week
• 35:43
  or whatever and we book a follow-up? That's on a spot was a great man.
• 35:49
  Nice talking to you. you later. So the the we're closing I close for an
• 35:55
  appointment, you know Kind of move on. Yeah
• 36:02
  Yeah. Okay. if you're, if you're doing a lunch meeting, are you setting a reservation
• 36:08
  every time?
• 36:16
  not always, but it depends on where I'm going. If it's one of these tire-ended
• 36:22
  places, yeah, I'll set a reservation. But if it's just your basic restaurant, diner, I
• 36:28
  won't set a reservation.
• 36:34
  Okay. Okay. What's the lunch order for you as a going out in the city
• 36:40
  or going out in Long Island? Are you getting a consistent meal every time you
• 36:46
  have a standard thing that you're doing?
• 36:49
  I try to keep it light, because I don't want to look like a gavoon
• 36:53
  having lunch with a customer. So I usually keep it, you know, a, what do
• 36:54
  call it, a Caesar salad with chicken, you know what I'm saying? I keep it
• 36:54
  pretty consistent that way. I'm not going to get a sloppy hamburger or whatever.
• 36:55
  you Okay. Okay. All right. Let me change gears a little bit here. Take me
• 37:00
  inside of the office. How many monitors do you work with?
• 37:22
  me? I work with one right now. I've been thinking about getting two or three,
• 37:28
  but right now I'm working with one. And I don't know, I've been thinking about
• 37:34
  it, but I just haven't done anything, you
• 37:36
  Any business cards currently on the desk? How many we talking?
• 37:39
  Oh yeah, absolutely. I have a stack of them right here. still, that's just, you
• 37:45
  know, that's just, uh, I even got some loose ones up here too. Yeah. So
• 37:51
  I still count. I think business cards are still good. They might, might be a
• 37:57
  day when they're never good, but I still think they're good because, uh, I've had
• 38:03
  people tell me, uh, you know, I found your card on my desk and that's
• 38:09
  why I called, you know, I'm like, okay. You know, we could do the whole.
• 38:12
  LinkedIn, Scan, and all that stuff there, that's fine, but you're gonna get a business
• 38:13
  card from me. You know?
• 38:13
  It's, I've seen a lot of people, I heard a lot of people say that
• 38:19
  I want the digital connection because I want to be connected on LinkedIn. That's the
• 38:25
  easy way to keep the connection going. But the physical reminder of a physical business
• 38:30
  card on the desk is so much harder to forget than a LinkedIn connection.
• 38:31
  Yep. can't tell you how many times I've had it where they'd go, you'd have
• 38:37
  some purchaser going through their cards and they find my card. Now, if people don't
• 38:43
  give them your card, don't, I'll give them my card. Mine will be the only
• 38:49
  one on the desk, you know, or only a couple.
• 38:50
  Yeah, there you go. Okay. all right. Take me inside the inbox a little bit.
• 38:56
  How many emails unread is too many.
• 39:00
  Bad guy to ask man. I probably got like a thousand unread emails in the
• 39:03
  buy and it hurts me though when to do that. I only will read I
• 39:04
  read emails when I know when somebody who's really Whether it's a partner network or
• 39:04
  whatever or a customer Those are the only ones that I look for so I
• 39:05
  have a lot of unread me in definitely a lot of unread emails well over
• 39:05
  a hundred
• 39:06
  Yeah. . Okay, okay. Do you thank people for quick replies ever? Do you thank
• 39:10
  people for quick replies? Yeah.
• 39:37
  I'm sorry, say that again. Thank him. yeah, absolutely. thanks for replying so quickly. Yeah,
• 39:42
  absolutely.
• 39:43
  Okay. Okay. It seems like a very like polite, even New York, even sales guy
• 39:48
  kind of thing. Um, okay. Do you also have any of those sayings that like
• 39:49
  there's version one where it's, sorry for the delay in that same context versus you
• 39:49
  could say basically the same message, but say, appreciate your patients. Do you have any,
• 39:50
  do have any words of wisdom or any phrases you use like that?
• 39:50
  yeah. Yeah, I lean towards that. I appreciate your patience. Yeah, that's where I would
• 39:55
  lean towards.
• 40:13
  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. all right, let's see. Have you ever, sold anything where, it's
• 40:19
  like, you're confident that you can do it. You haven't technically done it before, but
• 40:25
  it's near where it's kind of adjacent to what you've been doing is you're saying,
• 40:31
  yeah, like we could totally do this for you knowing that you've actually never truly
• 40:37
  done the thing.
• 40:39
  I mean, to the end user, you know, yeah, basically. Yeah. My first beginning of
• 40:40
  my career was like, I know this is not going to go well, but you
• 40:41
  know, I got to sell it and I'll just be there for all of them.
• 40:41
  I've had, I, when I first started at telecom, I was selling maybe 15, 16
• 40:42
  deals a month, maybe sometimes more, sometimes a little less. And after six months of
• 40:42
  doing that, I would spend half my morning fixing all the broken deals.
• 40:43
  Yeah.
• 41:09
  Like to 12 o'clock, I would be in the office begging customers not to come
• 41:15
  and shoot me at my house. You know, cause you gotta remember telecom back then,
• 41:21
  it was very serious. There were times where I'd sell someplace that have six locations
• 41:27
  and the company I worked for would just drop the ball and they'd all be
• 41:33
  out with no service. I had one lady, it was. When I first met them
• 41:39
  it was like the theme to love story this woman just loved me she was
• 41:45
  a lot older than me She just loved me and oh, yeah, I'll give you
• 41:51
  my other play Oh blah blah blah and after we go end up screwing her
• 41:57
  and drop an old drop in the ball And I remember her calling me up
• 42:03
  on her cell and telling me if you were in front of me I would
• 42:09
  strangle you to death, you know, so I was I'm sorry. I'm sorry And I
• 42:15
  actually went down there and I got on the phone. I got on with it,
• 42:21
  you know I was talking to the technical people, it's not doing this, it's doing
• 42:27
  that. You know, so I, you know, I, were times I had to actually go
• 42:29
  into the, uh, the server room or the telco room and get on the phone
• 42:30
  just to be a good customer service kind of guy. I have to go in
• 42:30
  a room and I'd have the technician at corporate or wherever he was walk me
• 42:31
  through, press that button, hold it down for 10 seconds. Now press that button. What
• 42:31
  are you seeing to display? I had, I was playing technician, man. So whatever it
• 42:32
  took. don't know if I answered your question, but you keep drumming up these memories
• 42:32
  there, Jack. You keep drumming these up, man.
• 42:33
  Yeah. It's what happens on this podcast man, it's the most fun thing for me.
• 42:36
  All right, you're a hustler. Give me some scrappy budget moves when you had zero
• 42:40
  marketing budget or anything like that. How are you still making sales? How are you
• 42:41
  going out and still closing deals?
• 42:41
  Hehehehe yeah, yeah, I've, you know, I've started my own thing many times. you got
• 42:47
  to, I have a printer and a laptop or a computer and I would make
• 42:53
  up my own flyers and print out the flyers and then go and knock on
• 42:59
  doors with them and let people know that I'm around. I've done that plenty of
• 43:05
  times and, you know, business cards were, yeah, I'd get a hundred, you know, as
• 43:11
  much as I could, you know. But yeah, that's what I would do. Just make
• 43:17
  my own flyers up. I'd do all my own email blasts, you know, just use
• 43:23
  Outlook or something like that. You know, nothing fancy, all free. So that's how I
• 43:29
  would work on a zero budget.
• 43:36
  Yeah, it's, gets the job done. And there's, there's a lot of authenticity to that
• 43:41
  these days, especially to, it's not some really well thought out campaign that's got 18
• 43:42
  different steps and it's in HubSpot and it's automated. just, Hey, this is an email
• 43:42
  from me to you and I'd like to chat.
• 43:43
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I tell people that I get all caught up in the bogged
• 43:48
  down in technology that I have appointed. They're all, I gotta do, my website's gotta
• 43:54
  be this, this has gotta be that, and that's gotta be that. that's, whoa, whoa,
• 44:00
  time out. Here's what you need. You need a laptop and you need a cell
• 44:06
  phone and you need to get on the phone and make calls and tell people
• 44:12
  you're alive and you have something for them. That's it.
• 44:18
  There you go. There you go. There you go. I love man as we're kind
• 44:24
  of landing the plane here. What's the next 12 months look like for you? Anything
• 44:28
  big coming up?
• 44:29
  Anything big coming up? Yeah, I plan on a couple of people that I'm coaching
• 44:35
  for right now. mean closing for I plan on having may have making some big
• 44:41
  inroads big impact on people's lives because they're gonna have tools they're gonna have Way,
• 44:47
  they're gonna have the mindset. They're gonna improve their their sales revenue. I see I
• 44:52
  see that happen in a big way in the next 12 months
• 44:53
  Okay, very cool man, that's awesome. Anything you want the folks out there to know,
• 44:59
  anything you wanna promote, ways to connect to the world, we'll have your LinkedIn, the
• 45:03
  share notes, anything else you want the folks out there to know.
• 45:04
  Sure. You know, I'm also, I have, I have Proline consulting. was more geared towards
• 45:10
  cloud and IT, but now I have another website, which is called breakthrough selling with
• 45:16
  Paul.com. If you want to check me out there, you can check me out there
• 45:22
  and you can book an appointment there with me. And, know, essentially that's, that's, know,
• 45:28
  if you have my LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile there, they could check me out over
• 45:34
  there. give you an opportunity to set an appointment there too. So anybody that wants
• 45:40
  to jump on a 30 minute complimentary call, I'll be glad to do it, you
• 45:46
  know, and typically if I jump on there with my partner, associate, we can help
• 45:52
  you in the next 30 to 60 days increase your revenue stream by about 30%.
• 45:57
  And jump on the first few people that did it will be complimentary, say the
• 45:58
  first five.
• 45:58
  There you go. Spots are limited folks. Get on it. I like it. Oh man.
• 45:59
  100 % scrappy through and through. 100 % New York through and through. I love
• 46:00
  it, man. Thank you so much for coming on.
• 46:00
  Thanks. I appreciate you asking me again. Thanks a lot, Jack.
• 46:12
  Thanks, Paul. Take care, everybody.