🗺️ fixing the travelling salesman problem with steve benson

Welcome to another CEO Wisdom podcast. We have Steve Benson with us. He's CEO at Badger Maps. He's automating busy work for outside sales rep to save 10 hours a week, which is a lot. Steve has an interesting background. He started at IBM, then Google, then HP. Basically started his own LinkedIn course in 2019. He's part of the Sells hall of fame, he's president of that and has two podcasts nowadays runs Badger, sells university and Badger Maps on a daily basis. He's in Granada, Spain. Typically he's spent time in California or in Salt Lake City as well in Utah. So we're going to talk about sales today. We're going to talk about podcasting, we're going to talk about sales strategies and everything about outside sales talk. So Steve, welcome to Bond. Tell me a bit more about yourself and what you're up to nowadays.

Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit about me. Most interesting thing about me lately I guess is that I moved to Spain about a year ago. The basically half my company is based out of here and so I wanted to get closer to this side of the company. I had been with the American side of the company which, and it was founded in San Francisco and then we have offices in Salt Lake and so I've lived there too. But yeah, so I guess that's probably the most interesting thing is that I, that I've become an expat for a few years over here. But I guess the, the, the, the, the, the laundry list of stuff that I, that I have been a part of that you rattled off there. The important one is Badger Maps that's like the decent sized company that everything else is kind of other, other projects that I've been a part of or started but that there's only one of them is a real company really so, and that's Badger Maps and, and what that does is help field sales people use all their CRM information in a, in a routing and mapping environment on their mobile phone. It's an app. And so that's the, that's the thing people actually pay me for. Everything else is just, is just for fun.

And what's your life story? How did you first found out that you were made for sale, quote unquote. And how did you get recruited by these gigantic tech companies?

Well, let's see. I guess I, I started at IBM, so that was the first, that was the first tech job I had. How did I get hooked up with them? Well I, I guess they had recruited at my business school. They have like a MBA training Program, sales training program that they, that they used to and I think still have basically where they grab MBAs and teach them their method of, of selling and kind of to be IBM IBM Lifers is their goal is to have you work there forever. They, they failed in that with me though. I was only there about a year, so I was, I failed to be an IBM lifer, but I, I switched from them to a company called Autonomy. And I guess the lesson there was I was, I was working with their hardware, their software and their services and I was kind of the point of contact for two large customers of theirs. And I would then kind of bring in the appropriate hardware salesperson or software salesperson, etc. Based on what was going on at the customer. And the lesson there was it was a lot better to be selling software than services or hardware. It was, hardware was pretty low margin, the services were hard work and low margin and, and the software seemed like the best place to be. So then I moved to a software company next and that was kind of right at the beginning of cloud computing and, and, and the SaaS business, you know, switching from buying a CD for a million dollars to you know, paying for a service. And that's, and this company that I went to, Autonomy was, was one of the early players in that space. You know, they, they were selling million dollar CDs but they were switching to providing a service that was just, you know, delivered through a browser. And so that was a, I was there at kind of at an interesting time and get some, some cool experiences around that transition and that I part, that parlayed into my job at Google where they were, I was working on their cloud computing software. So their enterprise software which was just getting going in those days, they were just starting to sell like Google Maps API and, and Google Docs and Go and Gmail and all these things. The, their cloud computing services were just getting started too. So that was an interesting time to be there. And an area that I specialized in was the mapping API. When I was there my last year, I there maybe two years there, I was just focused on the mapping API. And then that's when I kind of encountered this opportunity, you know, basically in a nutshell, bringing the Google Maps API to sales teams and using it on their data so that, so that when they're out in the field they can interact with their information on a map which is super useful to them. And you know, I wasn't a creative genius or anything. I was just, you know, I was literally selling and working with Google Maps at Google. And then people were asking, people wanted this, right? They wanted this concept. And I, I brought it to go, I brought it to Google first internally. And I was like, hey, we should do this. And then this is another important lesson. They really, everyone's always worried that like, you know, Microsoft or Google or Amazon is going to do your, is going to create your software company. But they were like, oh, that's a cool little idea. You know, people are, we probably, it's probably only to make like $50 million a year in revenue though. Like, and it's, it's going to be hard. And that's not really what we do. We, we don't really do anything that's less than like a billion a year in revenue. So important lesson there, like, almost anything you can think of is too small for those guys. So they're never gonna, they're never gonna copy you. They have way more important things to do.

Right? And why leave the corporate world, quote unquote, to start your own stuff?

Arrogance and stupidity mostly. Maybe a little, little over a little too much optimism. No, I mean I would not recommend that everyone leave a great job to start a business. If you really, really believe that there, that it's, that you cannot fail, it's such a good idea, you love it, you really know the customers, you know it's going to create a tremendous amount of value for them and you're willing to take a big risk, then it's, it might, it's then that, that's when you start doing it. But don't just leave because you would like to run a, run a thing. It's, I think a lot more people start businesses than should. It's, it's very challenging. It's very, and, and frankly, great jobs are great to have and there's a lot of great tech jobs. So I, I certainly don't recommend that the entrepreneurship path to everyone. For me, I, I, I, I knew the customer well, I knew the, I knew, I understood the problem really well and I felt like I was really well positioned to solve the problem and no one else was solving it at the time. And so I thought there was a material, a material chance that it would be a decent, a decent business, you know, but there's also a lot of luck involved there, you know, a lot of, a lot of timing things that worked really well. It was too early to start the business really because it needed to run on a mobile device and mobile devices at the time weren't strong enough to run a piece of software of this nature. Now, I mean, every cell phone can. But we, we, we needed the new iPad. It only worked on the new iPad at the time. This is like, you know, 20, 2012. It wouldn't work on phones yet because they just weren't strong enough. And the Internet really wasn't fast enough, the mobile Internet. So on people's cell phones, you know, that it, it was, it, it was not fast enough. But we could see where the, we were skating to where the puck was going. And we knew, you know, by the time we actually got any traction, we'd be well positioned because, and, and, and these phones would be able to handle the stuff which, which is what ended up, ended up happening. But that was a great, that made it, that was a great moat for us. That really the thing that we were started out doing was impossible to do at the time. It made it a lot less attractive for many people to do it. But Google used to have these big signs everywhere, up on the walls, you know, in the, in the lunchroom and stuff like, imagine what you can do when the Internet is, is a hundred times faster. Imagine what you can do when computers are 100 times faster. Imagine what, when browsers are 100 times faster. Think about the world. Then what will you be able to do? Now's the time to do it, because that's right around the corner. And, and that advice is probably still absolutely true.

Yeah, you're literally tracking the traveling salesman problem. Is there any AI behind that?

We do use some AI and some, some ML. I wouldn't say it's the most important part of what we do by any means, because salespeople really know their territories and you're giving them a tool to leverage what they know just in an environment where they can actually piece it all together. Like, meaning you imagine being a field Salesperson. You've got 400 customers and you sell to. Let's just say you sell stuff to dentists and you've got 400 dentists. And in the area that you cover, you already know who the best deals are and where you know, kind of where they are, which, you know, this guy's in that suburb and this guy's in that suburb. But it's hard for the human mind to like envision those 400 points on a map and, you know, decide which six you're going to see on Thursday. Given the constraints of I have to be here at 10 o' clock and here at 2 o'. Clock. So who are the other important ones that I need to see? You kind of need to see that on a map. And we do make suggestions to people. So like once they, once they put, well, even just one point on the map and they, they've told us where they, where they're starting and finishing, generally their house, sometimes their office. And even once there's one point on a map, we can start suggesting, hey, based on your activity and what you do and what it appear appears to be your good customers, we would recommend that you see this person if you're going in that area. But it's not, it's not nearly as important as just the basic thing we do, which is giving them that mapping and routing and optimization environment in the first place. Because they, they tend to know already who they want to see if they're going over there. And it's more just a matter of them being like, oh, yeah, yeah, them. Okay, yeah, yeah. And that's kind of what we're doing anyway. We're just like, here's a list of people we think are smart and they might be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy, that guy, not that guy because of this, not that guy because of this. But yes to that one. But they can also just look at the list of who's kind of over there and be like, yes, yes, yes, no, or oh, what's that point? I'm driving right by it. Yes, I want to see it. So I, you know, I guess there are, there are a lot of products where AI is, is the, is the, the sandwich. It is the meat between the, the bread. And that's the important part. But for us, it's, it's really kind of a garnish. You know, it's not the most important thing we're doing.

Right. So I'm on your website and that here is beautiful, that, that ROI calculator and I want to pitch you a business idea. So what about an agency that designs these ROI calculators? I charge you, I don't know, 25k to build this whole thing. The back end and the front end and 500amonth for maintenance costs. What do you think about that?

I think that's, I don't think we built that. I, I'm not, I think that that's, I think that's just available and I'm not sure if it's a good one. So maybe someone else. If someone, if someone made it their business. And I don't even know if we're paying somebody. I, I guess I would know if it was more than like 100 bucks a month, but that I, I remember them when the marketing team added that. But I, I, I don't know, I don't know that ROI calculator if, how much we're paying for it exactly. But it's, but yeah, I mean I think that'd be, I think that would be good unless it's already really easy to do with, you know, for free or for a very small amount of money.

So I, I'd like Legion to it. So like when the person would click it would be like, oh congrats, you saved this, now just fill that and we can put it into action or something like that.

Yeah, I think, I think that's, I think that's cool. I mean I, I, I, and all the, all the stuff around it, I think there's, there's a lot of businesses that, that I think there are great opportunities for helping move people through the funnel. Once they're already on the website, you know, they've already in, you know, someone who's looking at our, our ROI page that means they're really interested in the product. Right? That's a great, that's a huge buy signal. So like I think there's a lot of stuff like that you can have on the website have occur or show them like on the pricing page or something that, that engages them in a more deep way or gets them to sign up for a newsletter or gets them to give their phone number. So many people visit our site and never seem to engage or maybe they engage later, we don't know but there's a lot of opportunity there if we could just engage a small additional percentage and hook them in and really it's, you have a short amount of time to show the value that you bring and you know, most software is valuable or no one would have built it. Right. So, so, and they, they clearly are close to thinking it's valuable if they're there. So if you've got this, you know, couple minute window where they're actually squinting at the stuff and being like, is this going to be, is this worth the brain damage to me to actually go through the effort of doing this that, so I should make a project out of this and actually do it and implement it. Anything that can help them, say yes to that. There's, there's a business model around.

How do you split your time nowadays? You had your LinkedIn courses for a while. Is it 80% the startup, you have side projects. How do you manage your time?

Now it's pretty much all just badger professionally. I mean like the, the LinkedIn courses that, that was A short term thing I did, you know, I had a, I don't have a ton of areas of expertise, but there, there were a couple and so my marketing team pitched them to the LinkedIn folks and they were like hey, do you want to teach these courses? But like, you know, it's like I'm actually a professor so I could teach a hundred courses. It was just, I think it was two. So I don't, I don't know enough about enough about enough to do it regularly but I had a few things I could really speak to and so those were the, the things that I, that I taught. But so, but that was just that and that was a cool experience. I, I would recommend to people if they have an area of expertise to do that. I mean I, I, I still get like 1500 bucks a month or something sent to me on a, in a check for doing those two courses. Years, I mean that must have been six years ago or something. I did those and it was pleasant to do them. Right. Like I wrote up what I was going to say and then flew down to Santa Barbara where they do the recordings and then I said it and I think I stayed there for two nights. I might have made a weekend of was fun and, and still pays. So it's, and I think it was like a five thousand dollar check to begin with and they kept paying. So if you, if you know how to do something, teach other people at one of these platforms and it's worth, it's worth everybody's time, you know. And the thing, the thing's been viewed like 300,000 times or something crazy. And so it's like been very valuable to people which I, which I think is awesome and I'm glad I, it's, yeah, if you've got some expertise, share it.

So you need to have the credentials right. And then you need to create the full course, have them approve and then you fly there and you record the full.

Yeah, they have to approve you like and, and, but I mean I think that wasn't that crazy a process. Right? Like the stuff I was teaching isn't related to this. You know what I do on a regular basis. It was like how to, how to do follow ups and how, how to follow up on in sales interactions in a more effective way. And the other one was like how to be a great sales manager basically. I forget what the exact titles are, they're on my LinkedIn page but they're, they're, you know, it was just kind of, it was, I think I needed to Give them an outline of what I was going to teach and what the value, what the students would, what value the students would get out of it. And like when you give them the outline I think it's pretty obvious to them that you, whether you know what you're talking about or not. And so they, and maybe they looked at some of the other stuff I had done like things I'd written or something. I don't know. Maybe I, I don't know if I put together a resume on this stuff or what. But what we sent them across they were like yeah, yeah you should this, you'll make a good course. And we, I think I already had some, some videos where like that just like through the company we had made like 10 sales training type videos that are on LinkedIn just for free. And, and I think they looked at those and they were like yeah, yeah, you can talk to people and get in front of the camera, it's fine. So they definitely recommend and. But there was a, it was approved and once, once it's approved you just show up and record it. I think they do a lot of their stuff remotely now too. I think they do like remote recordings. I don't think you have to like go in and stand there and you know, they had the whole, the whole professional setup. But like today like this, for 300 bucks you can have a just fine setup like I have here talking to you. Right? Like it sounds fine.

Right? Let's see if I can make it happen on my end amongst my list of 50 priorities. I want to know about your sales funnels at Badgers. Do you do cold outreach? Is it converting the visitors on the website and do you actually visit physically places by car to pitch your own software?

I Ironically we don't, we don't do much field sales work. We IT and software generally doesn't like the, the industries that, that use our stuff are like if you go up and down main street anywhere the businesses that you see there often there are field salespeople selling to those businesses. So like the guy that sells the kegs to bars, the, the med device rep that sells the, the medical device to, to a doctor or a hospital, pharmaceuticals, tires to tire stores, that kind of thing. But it's not really our stuff is too inexpensive, it doesn't really support software in general is too inexpensive, it doesn't support a field sales motion. And like when you're meeting with like a CIO or something it's, it's very appointment driven and often in a totally different place. Like all of our sales reps are in Utah. Well, I guess one in England and a couple in Spain. But like the, in general like there if, if we were going to set. When we sell our software to someone in New York, like no one has to fly to New York. We just meet with them. We, it's just, it's more over the phone and it's more just proving the stuff out. I guess occasionally for a larger deal I, or one of the, one of the sales people will fly in and meet with people. But that's, that's right.

Rarer. So what are your goals this year? I'm seeing here that you're around five mil a year. So you have a bunch of clients. You have that, that takes you to approximately 100k users. Like where do you want to take this?

Well, we have, yeah, we're doing sick. Just over 6 million a year in, in revenue. I think last year we're at six and a half but like yeah, we're just over six in ARR. So yeah, we have 4200 logos customers now. And you know, the goal is. Well, I guess the near term goal is to take it, to take it to 10,000 but after that we'll have to figure it out. But that's, that's the next, the, the near term goal is to bring the, get the business to $10 million or 10,000 customers which will happen at a similar time. But that's kind of the goal. The, the next goal. But there's, you know, I guess we're, we're looking to hire more engineers and grow the sales team, that sort of thing. Those are the near term goals anyway.

Right. 10 million a year. That'll pay you a nice villa in Mallorca.

Yeah, that, my, my work is a little more expensive than where I live in Granada, but yeah, you could, you could live in Mallorca if you're making 10 mil a year for sure. I, I don't, I don't make $10 million a year though. I mean I, I have a whole team to pay so there's but a lot of engineers and they, they make good money.

So yeah, 50ish employees right now. I would guess like more like 35. The, the overall team. How do you split the team in sales and product?

We, we've got about 75 employees and probably mid-90s if you included like interns and contractors etc. And it's about half on the business side. Like you know, sales, marketing, customer success, customer service and then half product engineers kind of that, that that sort of product motion side. So I kind of, in my mind, I kind of split things into business motions and engineering and product motions and

to reach the 10 mil, like, how. How much is marketing, how much it sells, like, what are your top growth tactics for this year?

Well, we're fortunate in that a lot of what we make just, they're. They're leads that come to us. Right. The. The great thing about selling to field salespeople is they're excellent communicators. And if you create value for them, they are excellent at communicating to other field salespeople that you are creating value for them. They also, they also switch jobs a lot. So, like, you know, this medical device company that sells lasers, they'll poach the sales rep from that medical device company that sells lasers. They move around all the time. Like, and when they do move around, once, once they've been using our stuff, you know, they don't want to do it by hand again. Right. This is so much. It just saves them a ton of time. And it's. It's better. It's just one of those things, like, if you have a tool for this, it's just better. And so when they switch. When they switch companies, they're like, oh, well, I got to get this. Can I get an approval to buy this stuff? And then the new company finds out about it. And so we often get sold to a new company because some guy switched from this company to that company. So that's our biggest way. Just word of mouth and movement of these guys. And that is a real advantage to selling stuff to salespeople or marketing people. It's probably a similar concept, but salespeople are also pushy enough to get what they want. They're like, no, I'm not doing this by hand. I need. You have to buy this for me.

Like, you must.

He must buy this. So that's our best thing. We do do a lot of SEO stuff, SEM, cold outreach, cold calls. We do. And we just try to be, you know, try to really figure out who's. Who's a good fit for us. And then. And we reach out to companies that are kind of competitors or in the same industry as our existing custom companies. And some of these industries are. Are tricky because they're. They're a big industry like medical device. But not everyone's a good fit for us because, like, you know, this medical device has a field sales team, but then that medical device is sold on the Internet, and that medical device is sold with inside salespeople. And so it's, there's no like one perfect vertical for us. That would be much if I, that would be another learning in life is if you can build a piece of software that's just going out to, to one vertical that is a little easier than having to chase everybody down.

How do you keep your energy levels up as SEO, what's your daily routine?

Well, these days I start work pretty late, so I, I sleep in and then I work late because I'm in Europe. But I basically work American hours. So try to hang out with my baby a little bit in the morning. Like she's not a baby anymore. She's almost 2. But I try to hang out with her a bit in the morning and then, then I, and then I try to get home before in time to feed her dinner and put her to bed. So I kind of juggle. It's true. That's, that's the one downside to moving to Europe has been the time zone problem. But I, I, I'm pretty much juggling that, I guess. How do I keep my energy high? I mean, I think coffee is very important. I, I think good coffee, good coffee isn't super important. I'll take bad though, if I have to. Steak bad. I'll take that. I, I think it's, it's really important to do things sustainably. It's really easy to sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint. But it's important to be a rested racehorse when, meaning you can go really fast if you need to go really fast, but, and you're rested so you're ready to go really fast if you need to, but you're not always going really fast because you'll burn out. So you kind of need to, need to shift gears and, and sprint when you need to sprint and, and relax when you relax.

And the European way of life is quite relaxed as well. So I mean I live that in Mexico, you know, like my world in this computer is really intense. But when I close the computer, it's easy life, it's beautiful life. It's sun and it's, people are just chilled around you. Not like if you're in New York. Right. Steve, thanks for today. Where can people find out more about you in the company?

Best place to learn about what Badger maps does is just our website, badgermapping.com it's badger like the animal B A D G E R. And then best way to find me is probably on LinkedIn. Just look up Steve Benson badger B A D G E R. And I'm pretty easy to find out there, but that's probably the best way to get in touch with me.