S4E33 - It's not all about A-Players with Mark A Smith

Hey everybody, Richard Harris here. Recycling, recirculating and resharing. A great episode from season three called It's Not About a Players with Mark Smith. If you don't know Mark Mark America Smith on LinkedIn, you should follow him. Great insights, great leadership and just so practical and fun. He talks a lot about, you know, as a sales VP of multiple times that he's dabbled in politics. If you didn't know, he's done consulting, done advising and investing. And we asked him for the definition of success. So when you get to the beginning of this episode, we think you're really going to enjoy it as well as the entire episode. First, a quick word from our sponsor, HubSpot. If you're anything like us, we love having summer vacations. It's August of 2023 and it's not too late. My family and I did an amazing vacation in Africa. That being said, I was still able to do some work, believe it or not. And that's where HubSpot CRM can really come in and help you. They have some integrated AI tech that's helping teams automate the tedious parts of the job. Yes, we all have those tedious parts. It's got research, pull reports, summarize info, craft content, help write copy, which then you can use to send out in your touches to your prospects and customers while you're on vacation. In fact, it saves you about at least a half hour a day. So imagine five days a week, two and a half hours a week. Gosh, that's roughly 10ish hours a month. What could you do to grow your revenue with an extra 10 hours? What would you do with that? Amazing. Now put that out over the course of a year. What could you do with all that extra time? So please check out our sponsors, HubSpot.com we appreciate them. And by all means be sure you click, follow and subscribe to this podcast.

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Surf and Sales podcast. We are in season three, episode 32 or so, something like that. Surfing sails. We have got a couple open spots left, three open spots left in November for session two. Session one is sold out. Check us out@surfandsales.com I'm here with my good friend and partner Richard Harris and he's going to give you the lowdown of who's helping us get this show and episode produced. Talk about our sponsors, Richard.

Yes, our sponsors this month are Outreach IO, so please go to QLIK Outreach IO Surface for some kind of special that they won't Tell us about. So they do, but they have a special landing page, so we're happy to promote them. Cause they're promoting us. We also want to thank Scratch Pad and Sendoso for sponsoring us not only for the podcast, but also for the events. And we look forward to continuing all these sponsorships and working with them. So as people are going through these new, troubled times.

Right.

We want to make sure that your team does have the things they need. So please support our sponsors for all they do. To the sales community. I'm going to give it back to Scott to introduce the most elusive guest Scott's ever had to hunt down.

Yes. The most difficult man to track down of all time. This is a podcast that one would argue is about six, seven years in the making. And there's a little bit of a funny story here. Our guest is Mark Smith, who, many of you know he's a sales leader based in Utah, has been an advisor to Lord knows how many companies, and he recently went on sabbatical and packed up his whole life and moved overseas. Welcome to the show, Mark.

How's it going, guys?

If you can't see his face right now, he's a little bit proud and a little bit embarrassed. Tell everybody the story in your own words.

I'm not even sure what I know the story is. I just. I think.

I don't know. I could remember it completely wrong, but I just. I followed you for a long time. I know your work. And for years, when people have asked me for. For certain type of advice, I've just sort of sent them your way. And then.

I think. I think we, you know, we shared some messages or whatnot and talked about talking and. And then Amy.

She and I were talking one time and she had. She's like, oh, you. I'm sure you talked to Scott all the time. Like, no, we've never talked.

Amy, by the way, for people.

Yeah, Amy Bullis. Sorry. And I, I said, no, no, we've never talked. She's like, what are you talking about? You always recommend him and you always talk highly. I'm like, yeah, just, you know, I think it's kind of funny that.

That I've never spoken with them and now it's kind of a game. It's because, like, I'm an avid golfer who's never seen Caddyshack, and I, I. I intend to never see it, you know, because it makes for a nice little, you know, cocktail party story or something. But.

Yeah, I just. I don't know. I have weird little eccentricities and One of them was, I thought that I would playfully dodge ever meeting you in person, Scott.

But, you know, yes, I am Mark's human form. Caddyshack, Richard. Yeah, that's what I am.

You are not anymore.

That's true.

Because Caddyshack. I, I've. I've. I. The movie's generally about, like, you know, I've seen. I've seen clips like. I get it. I know what it is. I think.

I think that might be the title. An avid golfer who refuses to see Caddyshack with Mark Smith. That might be the title of the episode.

I want to name my new band.

You got a lot of interesting things that you've done and that you're doing right now. I got a few things that I want to touch upon. The first thing I want to touch upon is you've had an interest in politics and dabbled a little bit. I remember reading about it. How do you think that the sales world and everything that you've done prepared you at all, if at all, to go that route and that interest in politics and running for office and all.

That kind of stuff?

Oh, man, I'm not sure there's much correlation at all. I think I grew up kind of being interested in it. I studied politics in college, and.

I used to be pretty passionately political, and now I'm.

I'm not really passionate about it at all. I think that's why I actually decided to run for office, was that I.

Over many years, I've. Maybe this does relate to sales, because when I started out in sales, I thought there was one way to do it and.

And I ran into some trouble early on because I, frankly, wasn't being taught properly and I wasn't developing very well, and I was very rigid in things. And it wasn't until I really expanded my horizons and sales that I started to have a lot of success. And I think the same was within my political thinking. I was very dogged and very.

Very dogmatic about things. And then I don't know when it was, but I just started to realize.

How much little interest I had in polarization and, and.

And ideology and. And.

I. I just think there are so many solutions that are sitting right in front of us. And that's how I've always been in my career as well. It's, you know, aside from doing something unethical, which is always a no to me, it's always been, you know, yes, yes. If, you know, there's always a way to get something done, there's always a way to hit a revenue number. There's always a way to grow something, to build something, to recruit. So there's always a way to get something done. And I think I decided I might want to jump into politics because I thought maybe there was room for somebody who was.

Just wanted to, just wanted to help and.

Turns out maybe there isn't room for that.

Super successful.

So what are those? So just, I mean.

Because you know, for me the comparison of sales is okay, this is objection handling right. Like these are the objections and you know, it's hard to, you know, you can try as hard as you might on the build versus buy right. But at some point if this, you know, if, if they're just like nope, we're smarter than you, you kind of have to just close up and go to the next opportunity.

Right?

Like that is getting something done. Which is means I'm not going to waste my time with you. What kind of things did you run into that were so disappointing? Like I think it's a, we don't talk about this stuff. So I want to dive in a little.

I'll tell you the most disappointing thing and that is that I.

I did it on a whim. So I, for those who don't know, I ran for governor of Utah. One of the, there's a number of reasons why I did. One is that, is that it's not that hard to actually get on a ballot and run and because I had enough of a presence and because there's certain ways you can get your message across that if you do a little bit of guerrilla marketing you can, you can get out there pretty quickly. This is not like running for governor of California or New York. So I was able to sort of unannounced go out and just you know, get 20 something billboards and, and but it started I was, I was getting my car serviced and I was like sitting in the service center of Jaguar Salt Lake City and.

Thought I got an hour. So I started to write my platform. I built a website and I launched it an hour later and then did know put up 20 something digital billboards but I did not declare any, any.

Any political affiliation. And what was, was really great was almost universal support. I mean I, I, I really, I rarely had anybody who messaged me and said this is a stupid idea, this is dumb. In fact most of them said this is the best platform I've seen in a very long time. But partially as well because I put a few things in there just for humor's sake. So I think I was Relatable to people. Well, when I actually declared a political party, it's amazing how many of those same people immediately thought that I was an idiot who.

Had the worst ideas they'd ever heard. That's what I think bothered me is.

It'S. It's very difficult to. In at least American politics, it's very difficult to be an independent. And if you declare a party, even if you are, you know, 1% on that side versus the other side, in some places, you got half of the people who instantly hate you and don't want to. Don't even want to listen to what you have to say. I didn't think it was that polarized, but it turns out it is. But I have. I have hope.

I think there. There are a lot of opportunities for us to affect positive change for a large group of people. I think we have to take away.

Sorry, that's a really bad way of saying it. But I think we need to build the voice of the. Of.

The rational, reasonable moderates. And by the way, I don't mean moderates like they have to be in the middle on every issue. I just mean moderate in that they don't have to have their way on everything. You know, you can champion some causes, you can. You can relent on some others. I just don't understand why.

Why it's so black and white right now.

Has this. Has this experience.

Changed your definition of what success means or what a top performer looks like or means at all? Or have you always had this.

Kind.

Of approach and vision of things? You mentioned kind of earlier in your career, you maybe weren't leading the same way as now, so I would imagine that it's evolved. And so I'm just wondering if the definition of success and top performance has changed for you as well.

Yeah, it really has. That's probably one of the major ways that I've evolved. My first management job was on a lark, honestly. I got lucky and was smart enough to jump at the right time. And I wasn't a terribly good manager. I was, you know, one of these.

You know, people would have thought I was a type A personality. And, you know, I was the guy that wanted to give Winston Churchill speeches at, you know, morning meetings and then talk about Glengarry. I mean, I was just like, you know, I was just the. I was just a caricature of what a sales manager should be. And I used to just think, you know, if you're not the best, you're the worst. And just this war of attrition to get to the top. And now, by now, I mean, the last, say, 10 years of like really good success. My definition of success is completely different. You know, I'll set goals and standards for what I want people to achieve at the company. And yeah, while there are those who excel and go above quota and whatnot, really anybody who hits what I need them to do, I treat the exact same way as I would treat anyone else.

And.

I'll work with companies all the time where all they want to talk about is A players. A players. They have a tough time defining what that is. But when I ask them, if we just say replace your bottom quartile with the skill of the middle person, would you do it? And they'd say, oh my gosh, we'd be printing money if we did that. Yeah. So let's focus on developing people. Let's focus on.

On moving quartiles and leveling everyone up. I focus a lot less on top producers than I ever, than I ever have.

I actually kind of ascribed it. I don't leave them alone.

But.

I do not spend a lot of my time trying to develop top producers.

I want to talk about that for a couple of minutes and then come back to some of this politics stuff too.

I had this conversation yesterday. Specifically, we always talk about the A, the B and the C players.

Right.

And do you spend time with the B's to get them to A's and then for the C's, what do you do with the C's? Right. So my, my question for you is, I also think people don't know what to do with their A players, so they try to leave them alone until it's, until something blows up. So how to your point, you know, you don't spend a ton of time with them, but you don't leave them alone. What's that battle?

No, well, first, I mean, let me just like, you know, for lack of.

You know, we can talk about lots of different organizations, but you know, let's say we've got 100 sales reps. I, I might call like the eight players, maybe the top, you know, six or eight the top 10. Right. And those, those are those who are pretty unconsciously competent.

They are highly skilled.

On their own, with their own.

With their own general sales ability. And what I try to do is make sure there are processes, support how they sell. And I don't try to change them, but I try to make sure that we have processes that support what they do and make sure that they can just be let loose.

Take a lot of Things off their plate just knock a lot of obstacles out of the way. I'm essentially just trying to free them up to do their best work and to. And to add zero stress to their plate whatsoever. In fact, I generally don't even try to add pressure to them because they do it for themselves.

But those are, you know, those are a select few. If I talk like, let's call them the A minus players or the, you know, the 8.2 players.

Those I try to break down on. It really depends on the company. But because some companies, every deal is a transactional deal. And so you have a lot of data to work with and you can really determine where your bands are between your A's and B's and C's. Other times it could depend on just the size of the deal. And you can have somebody who is wildly talented at prospecting, doesn't close very well. You can have others that don't prospect very well, that are incredible closers. And I'm really trying to augment and try to fill in those gaps with them. Again, with anything we can do with sales operations, anything we can do with helping them to structure their day or to focus on developing some of the talents that they don't naturally have. That's really important. But then when we get.

I think, the most interesting group, when someone tells me, ask me what do I do when I started a company, I think a lot of people say, oh, go find the top producer and go shadow them. I don't ascribe to that at all, actually. What I do is I tell people.

Here'S a group, they're probably the 78th percentile and they're skilled, but they've developed their skills and they have a very specific process that allows them to be super dependable and super consistent. So it's not just their skills, their natural skills that have, that have gotten them into a really solid, you know, upper middle class, like always exceeding quota. It's an adherence to a process because if I have, I'm most likely to recruit a lot of those people.

If I'm right, then I, I can go and, and use those processes to replicate a lot of reps that might start out in the C or D range because they're new.

Yeah. So I want to. So this is the part I really like and I'm going to move to the C players for a second. But you don't try to clone the person, you try to clone the process.

Yes.

That's so much what's missed because, like, oh, who Are they like. And it's almost like, well, can they follow the process now? Sometimes the challenge and Mark, tell me if you think I'm, if I'm on point is that those a people sometimes don't even know what their process is. Right. Because they don't stop to think about it. Right. So it's sometimes it's a little bit like having to. Some cases you kind of know anyway because we've been around long enough. In other cases, you know, it's, they couldn't even tell you, you know, so.

So, so I'll take that even a step further. I agree completely and.

I, I tell people, if you want to destroy your A players, go ask them to document their, how they do it.

That's a great.

So, so if, so if you're on a golf, if you're on a golf course and you're, you know, and you've got a money game going against the players much better than you, but the handicap system kind of evens you out and they, and you're halfway through the round, they're playing really well and they just hit an amazing shot. They just had a 5 iron, 225 yards, 3 yard, right to left draw, lands softly on the green, spins back a little bit. If you want to win that match. I just don't.

Yesterday I totally did.

Exactly, I see that. But you don't, you don't get in their head by, by trying to, to talk down to them. You don't, you don't trash talk them. What you say is.

Lord Richard, that was, that was an amazing shot. How do you set yourself up for that shot? What are you thinking when you hit that shot? And I'm telling you the next time they have to hit it, they're not hit.

It's just, it's the truth. There's something like as soon as we take unconscious success and we force consciousness upon it, it starts to doubt itself and it's one of the worst things you can do. I will not let the eager rep go and talk to the unconsciously successful people because not only are they not going to learn much from it, but they're probably going to mess them up. That's not because they're too special. It's because they aren't. They are working an unconscious process. There's elements, by the way, you can observe and you can say, listen, I don't want you to go talk to them, but I can tell you what they do. I can tell you generally what they do, but what I want them to do is I want to go, I'm going to say, I'm assuming you have above average talent and intelligence and work ethic. Here's 20 people. Here's 30 people that started out the same way. Above average talent and intelligence and work ethic, below average experience. We hired them, we taught them this process. They adhere to this process, and virtually all of them have been successful. This is your roadmap, and if you happen to be unconsciously amazing, that's going to reveal itself anyway.

All right, I want to flip it and then I'll let Scott ask a question, but what do you do with the C players?

Do you coach them on skills? Do you have to have a life conversation? What do you think?

So with the C players, first thing I need to do is. It's partly selfish, but this might sound like management spin it. It isn't. I, I have to, I have, I have to help them see whether they have the work ethic and the determination to get better. So what I do is I, I call it, you know, I motivate them up or out. I don't, I don't ride them. I'm not negative. What I do is I make sure that they have a tremendous amount of one on one development time with great coaches. And.

We micromanage. That's a horrible word. But what I mean is we adhere to the process and we segment our time and we make sure that we focus on proper activities.

If I sit with somebody for two, three straight days and I make phone calls with them, meaning I take a call, they take a call, I take a call, they take a call, and we do this over and over and they don't quit. They're going to be fine if they quit.

And by the way, this happens a lot. It's because all we really did was just reveal that.

They don't like what we're selling, they don't like our process, they don't like what they're going to need to do to achieve that. So what I try to do is a bit of a fleshing out.

And we do that. By the way, I've done that a lot. Just in the initial onboarding and coaching. Years ago, I was offering people money to quit.

I put them through a rigorous two, three weeks. And I'd be honest and say, I see that you're struggling. We go through this long conversation and offer them a couple thousand dollars to, to move on their way.

Many, many took it and everything was fine. The ones who didn't, they're almost always successful because they look at you and say, you know, I don't, I don't want the money. I can do this. I'll follow the process. I will get better. And I, I'd like to think that I, I don't run operations, that if somebody, you know, should be able to give somebody 60, 90 days to, to prove themselves in the process before you have to let them go.

But.

It'S uncommon that somebody really applies themselves to what they're being taught, that they can't make it. If they can't, they usually feel justified that it's not. They didn't get screwed. We just revealed through training and coaching and a lot of one on one process engagement that it just wasn't the right fit and they move on and everything's fine and we're fine and life goes on.

Yeah, you have been a VP of sales or whatever the title is at all these places. A bunch of different times now. The first time I think you were there for a little over four years, and then subsequent roles.

You lasted a little under two years all the time.

What do you think?

What do you think changed? Was it the, was it you that changed? Was it the market pressures and the working conditions, the products? What do you think changed? Because that's very similar to sort of like the stereotypical, like, oh, the head of sales lasts, you know, 18 months type of thing. And I've been very outspoken about this, you know, for a long, long time about, you know, how, how people in our profession are treated and the pressures of it. So I'm just curious, like, what, if anything, changed?

Hey everybody, just taking a quick break here. Want to tell you about our good friend Mr. Mark Roberge, who was the founding CRO at HubSpot. He's now a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and co founder of Stage 2 Capital. He's got his own podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network that we think you should pay attention to. It's called the Science of Scaling. And he brings amazing guests who have scaled their revenue and has them come and talk to you to help you prevent the mistakes that maybe you've made or help avoid so that you don't make those mistakes. So again, check out our friend Mark Robert. She's actually been a guest on our podcast. His podcast is called the Science of Scaling.

Well, I can answer that now, looking back, because I have a lot of perspective on it. At the time, I honestly couldn't have told you. But looking back, I cut my teeth in a place that was very loyal to me and I was Loyal back to them. And we did amazing things.

I then left on great terms. It was just time. It was time for me to move on to something else. And I went to another company that was phenomenal and truly appreciated everything that I had done for them. Both these companies are privately owned, and so I was essentially reporting directly to the owners. There were boards and whatnot, but we were printing money and life was fine. And then I think what I did is I chased some paychecks and didn't quite understand what getting into a VC bag, private equity, back, whatever even a publicly traded type of scenario is. And I know you've talked a lot about this, but it's different. It's a different beast. And.

I'm not saying actually I would do it differently because I don't really have a ton of regrets there, but.

It is. It's a thankless gig. I mean, I've gone in and.

Multiple times skyrocketed, you know, revenue and.

Yeah.

Killed Churn and retained employees and.

Yeah. Done the things that you're supposed to do.

Everything that's asked me and then.

And then shown the door.

Yeah. Because then on that. Because then what happens is on the back of that, they say, oh, my gosh, look at how much potential we have.

I'm like the.

I'm like the most honest sales leader there is, by the way. I think sales leaders are on. But what I mean is when someone says, hey, you just, like, you know, quintipled sales last year. Can we do it again this year? I'll say, no. These are the reasons, like FP and A loves me because I always get my numbers right. And we all always laugh because then we're just told the number three times higher, but very, very honest about where things go. I'll tell them, you know, the first. This is what's going to happen the first year. We're going to skyrocket and. And then after that, we're gonna, we're gonna level off a little bit. We're gonna put in some planned plateaus to make sure that these new processes are repeatable and dependable. And then what happens is they end up telling the board that you're going to do an insane number. And.

It'S, It's. It's a very disturbing.

Very disturbing.

Feeling. The first time somebody sits in a room and tells you to your face that you've, you know, you've ruined the sales organization and you feel like you're taking crazy pills and it's really. Because what you found out is there's an internal plan, and there's a board plan or there's an investor plan and they're not even remotely close to each other.

Nor are they based in the.

Same reality that you're coming from. You're talking about how you're brutally honest with people like, no, we're not going to quintuple sales again. And you're coming from a place of reality. Yes, it's not sandbagging, it's just reality. This is what, this is what we will do. And here's the logic of why, here's the data that informs me as to why.

And yet this is why we shouldn't borrow more money than we need to. This is why we shouldn't go and hire 90 people this quarter. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of like, you know, cursed because I could do math in my head and so I can sit in meetings and quickly just look at spreadsheets and numbers and say, that doesn't make any sense. And one company, I remember sitting there and just, I actually had to get a calculator because I'm like, I have to be crazy right now. But the math in my said that in my head said that we were going to have to essentially contact 80% of all American businesses.

In a four month period. And.

In four months I'm like, who came up with this?

It was a new product leader. They brought up a new product leader and he had all these aspirations. And I was like, man, the math doesn't make a lot of sense. And.

You lived through the mortgage crash of 08 and that industry. Are there parallels that you see going through that to what's happening kind of right now in tech, in the markets?

Yeah, there's no question. In fact, I got to find it because I wrote a letter to the editor to this San Diego Union Tribune back when I was in the mortgage industry and I think the title of it was like, if the experts can spend a week in my office. And I just listed like, guys, I'm a nobody. But our last 100 mortgage applications and nobody has any savings, nobody has any equity, nobody has a credit score above 550. You know, there's no possible way this makes any sense. Can somebody explain to me? Because I'm told this is a always going to be a booming market, but this doesn't make any sense. And I see that absolutely in.

A lot of these startups, all these tech businesses.

Actually met with a head of a vc. He called me, we're all selling vaporware.

In some ways. But I mean I got called in by the head of a VC a couple of years ago and he said, you know, we've got 40 something companies, we'd like to have you run one of them. And I just half jokingly said, you know, so there's like what, a 90% chance that I'll pick one that's going to fail. Fail. And he just laughed and he's like, Ah, 95 chance. But that's kind of how it is. I mean there are, if you people are like, I'm proud to announce my network, I've just joined this company that has a $20 million Series B financing. I think statistically that means you just join a company that has like a 90% chance of doing a massive layoff in six to nine months. So.

I mean, not saying you shouldn't take the job, but raising series of financing is not what it used to be.

Yeah, I mean it means they're going to force a VP of sales. Normal things that don't make a lot of sense.

And if you don't agree to those things or you speak out.

About the fallacy of doing those things, they top you off under the guise of, well, Mark, we're going to have to find somebody who's gone from 50 to 100 million before. That's the fancy way of saying we're going to hire somebody who just says yes to all the things that we think are possible. And they have drank all the Kool Aid that you're unwilling to drink anymore.

I think what they're hiring is they don't realize it, but they want to hire someone who will say yes to all the things you've been telling them to do all along. But they're just tired of hearing you say it. Like that's what I think. I think because there's, I mean, Scott, there have been many times where you've gone through this and the person comes in behind you and they end up not doing what you suggested and it fails.

Yes.

And then they finally realize that, oh, we should have done this. And you know, because, you know, it is, you know, often because the board says we should do that.

It's one of the most painful things that you can witness. By the way, I'm sure Mark has gone through this exact thing. But you, you kill yourself, metaphorically for a few years, you build this thing up, it's worth X amount, which is a big amount. You have theoretically, you know, made seven figures plus for yourself. And then there's a parting of ways and Then you watch the next person or next two or three people come in to try to keep that growth going, and it doesn't happen and it goes the opposite direction. And you sit on the sidelines while the wealth that you have.

Sort of created for yourself disappears or dissipates or shrinks and there's nothing you can fucking do about it.

I think, you know, maybe this is what we should see, you know, because none of us have these real jobs anymore. But it's like you don't. If you don't think I'm the right guy, what do you care if I recruit away your best players? Because they're clearly don't think I'm the guy who's taught. Gotten them there and then, you know, just punch him in the face.

But anyway, no, I mean, so I had a. I had a. I'm sure we could share war stories forever, but I. I'll just tell one. There's. There's a company that.

We did phenomenal things. Honestly, we did phenomenal things. Company ran into an issue and I tried to flag it for several months just because they needed to know that we were going to come up against it. And I had a plan to get around it. That plan, of course, required, you know, really nice growth and not another exponential year. So I was, I was showing the door.

And. But my people, I, I think people like working for me. So they. A lot of people kept in touch over the next six months. And this is going to sound like an exaggeration, but it's not. Since after they let me go in six months later, their sales were down by more than 90%.

And that.

Sound familiar, Richard? How familiar does that sound?

So, and when they, when they, when they canned the COO and then the.

The next sales leader, I think, quit the same day I got a text message from multiple people saying that so. And so the CEO walked into the all hands meeting with the entire company, and the first thing he said was, does anyone else miss Mark Smith?

And as much as I smiled and thought, that's nice, it still hurts, though. Yeah, it hurts. It actually hurts badly because I care deeply for those people. And what you didn't say, but I know it's true, is you develop this. I hate the word brand, but you develop this brand. So when you go someplace great, people want to go with you 100% and you allow them to do so. And.

So you end up.

Getting shown the door you've helped build and also leaving behind people that you care deeply about, and you pray that they Find a way out in time or that works out.

Yeah. And part of your motivation in building the brand and going to find the next thing is to find a safe landing place for these people that you've cared so much about and you're sort of nurturing them along in their career. I don't know about you, but that piece was the reason I started building my brand and, and started being active on LinkedIn was for recruiting purposes, both for myself and so it was easier for me to help the folks that I cared about.

Right. Yeah.

And so you, you sounds like you kind of got started the same way. You've got like 92,000 plus followers on LinkedIn right now. Two part question for you.

Yeah.

At what point did you feel like it actually started to change your life in some kind of meaningful way? Business life, professional life, what have you, what size of network? And number two, because I struggle with this all the time.

Why even keep going? Like, what the fuck is there left to do? Even? So what point in time in the growth did it change your life and why do you keep going?

I don't know if it ever changed my son. The way I started was, was I one day was on LinkedIn and realized that you could do a post like a Facebook post. And I just gotten off a really bad.

Sales experience with a software company. I just posted about it. I didn't name anybody, but I basically the post is like, when the hell are salespeople going to learn when to shut up and just take the order? Because I had, I had, I just gone through a process to purchase software and they made me go through like four different levels of me. I mean, it's just ridiculous because they should have looked at me and said, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's, he's, this is it. Anyways, so I posted about that and then that went viral. So my first ever post went to like 2 million hits. And I realized it was just a nice cathartic way for me to write whenever I felt like it's, there wasn't really a purpose to it. It turned out when I started to meet people at companies I worked at that came and said, hey, I, I'm working here because of you. And I think, geez, do you work for me? And they said, oh no, I work on the product team I work with. That was really interesting. I thought, man, that's, that's really cool.

But where do I go from here? Same place if I feel like posting something, I do, I, I, Right now you Know you. I'm sitting in a farmhouse in Wales. My wife is reading a book on the couch. My son's up playing. Playing soccer with some kids.

In the field. And that's my priority.

My second priority, when I have time, other than hanging out with my family and having this great adventure, is if I can use my name and my influence to help out great people that I trust and that I love, then I do it. If I can help a young person get a raise, I take the call. If I can help.

A struggling CEO.

With some answers, I do. So there's no real agenda other than I keep posting because I have something to say or because it allows me to stay connected with people. And then if I really like them and I believe that they're trying to do the best for their employees or they're trying to get a leg up in their career. Yeah. I give them my calendar. They said they set up a time we talk.

There's no agenda unless it's Scott, because he wants.

Yeah. But now at this point, I guess, you know, like, I'm in now, though.

Now he has.

We've broken through.

He has to respond to every text I send now. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I want to. I want to ask you a question about, you know, this VP of Sales, because I love what you said when you talk to the VC, you know, 95%. So you are looking to be a VP of sales. Right. You know, part of the game, I think, and I've said this to people, is, you know, it kind of depends if you need the job. Number one and two, sometimes you just want it to check the box so you can go get the next VP of Sales gig. That being said, what are the things? If you were really going to go back and look at being a VP of Sales somewhere, what would be the things you're looking for to tell you it's a good place to be?

Right.

Like, how do you, you know, to the extent all these people who are listening, who are sales reps or AES or directors who want to just get promoted. Right. Or want to be promoted, I should say, what advice do you have them to. What kind of things tell you this one's worth the shot?

Oh, man, that's a tough question because there's so many opportunities that I think one of the first things, and I say this to sales reps as well, just make sure that you. You choose something that matches your personality, what you like to sell, your sales cycle, your win cycle. Because sales is not sales is not sales. There. There are Major differences. And you can be more successful if you, if you run sales at a place that is in your wheelhouse. I also would try to reveal in the interview process whether there's a lot of quick wins because a new vp sales are going to have a lot of doubts about themselves and they're, they're going to be doubted by others. And so what you want to do is make sure that you, there's two or three things that you can do.

Right away to be successful. Those are usually back end things. What are those things in your mind? Oh, it can be the simplest thing, like if they have the worst playbook on how to route leads and how to dial out and how to look at their data, that's that same vc. He said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, why don't you just, when you want to go invest in a company, why don't you just pay me 50 grand to go in there and I'll tell you how much meat there is in the bone to exploit through process and sales tools and looking at data differently. And he laughed and said, yeah, we don't want to know, we just want to place the money. We don't want to be told that it's not a good investment. But I, but I, I immediately just look, is there anything that I can do that doesn't require any soft skills, you know, doesn't require any script changes, doesn't require any management changes? Is there anything I can do from my computer with the rev ops person where we can make it mathematically almost guaranteed that everybody will do better? Those are the really nice wins because that also buys you time to build credibility with the team before you get into the soft stuff, before you assess management and make those changes if you have to, before you screw with scripts. So I love it when there's just basic table stakes, processes that aren't being properly done that we can go in and fix. That builds quick wins, builds a ton of confidence and allows you then to have a much better basis for judging of talent. That's the other thing. If I look at a company that has a lot of data but they've had a consultant, not, not like a you guys consult, I mean like, you know, a McKinsey guy. Look at it and they've, they've just done a bunch of spreadsheet management.

A lot of times if you look at it with the right context and the right set of eyeballs, there's actually way more that could be done than they even know.

I look for scenarios where there isn't a level of highly entrenched management that is going to be in the way of progress. So as much as I love those loyal directors that started as reps and they busted their ass and got their Director job after 5, 6 years of being treated like by the founders.

But they're gonna. But they're gonna be a little bit resistant or a little bit reluctant.

It can be their greatest ally. Like, I. I've worked with. With some that are. We became very close because. But I learned in the interview process they need me. This person needs me to save them, because they're about to break, and I know I can do that for them. There are others, though, that.

Man, it's tough to get past that. So I think you want to make sure that there's nothing. I don't like the word politics, but there's nothing political in the way that would keep you from making changes you need to make.

Other thing is, you know, if the company talks about Runway a lot, even say, oh, our Runway is three years, the fact that they know their Runway and they talk about it that much usually lets me know that their Runway is not that solid. And so I try to dig into the numbers a lot more because.

You know, growth. Growth costs money. And.

What you don't want is to have a great game plan for what you want to get accomplished and then find out that there's something hidden in the numbers that's going to take the Runway from 32 months to 7 months, when you've got a creation multiple of 10. Because that's another situation I've been in. When I say creation multiple, by the way, that's the number I use. That is essentially the CAC of creating the account divided by the MRR of the account. So if it costs $2,000 to create an account and the MRR is 500 bucks, that's four multiples. Well, there are companies that have a multiple of, say, 15, which is not bad. It can be great in their industry, but they only have 12 months of cash. You're essentially growing your way into insolvency. And so it's really important to see whether growth will actually break that company's balance sheet. I mean, Richard, you asked about first VP of Sales. I don't know if they're going to get that deep into it.

But I think once you've done it three, four, five, six times, you learn through painful experiences to dive in and ask these kinds of questions. And so I think when there's people out there like us who have actually done this exact thing a few times. It's upon us a little bit to, you know, put the word out there and speak it into existence. So that person is going after their first or second gig.

That's. It's a scary thing to think.

Maybe does a little better.

It is, yeah.

It's scary to ask.

Yeah. I mean, I would just say just call me like, you know, if you listen to this podcast and you. You like what I'm saying, just shoot me a message. If you're about to take your first VP of sales role, I can ask you five or six questions that might reveal whether or not, I mean, one of them is if VP of sales at a really young startup. Are their sales founder led? Are they? You know, there's one company I worked with where virtually all of the revenue in the first couple years was founder led. Or there was a. There was a head of BD who was a highly connected person. All of their sales had come from that. They had no track record of building any marketing to generate leads. By the way, awesome company. I recommended the person go there, but their conversations shifted into what they were going to be able to provide in the way of marketing support. Because honestly, they had never done a sale off marketing. It always been off of networking. So there's probably someone like me out there who can talk, who can talk you through it and is happy to give you a half an hour, hour of our time and help you see some red flags. But at some point, I don't know.

I think you got to take one of the best opportunities you can come up with and go for it. Because at some point, we all have to take the risk.

At the end of the day.

You'Re.

Betting on yourself a little bit as well. You learn as much as you can to put yourself and as opportune position as possible, but you're still gambling, you know, and you are truly betting on yourself that, okay, with these conditions and under these odds, I believe that I can make this a success, whatever that means to you, a success for at least a particular period of time. That's a bet that you're placing, you know, and if you don't, you don't feel confident in that, you should be saying no to that particular opportunity.

I think that's right. Yeah. A lot of people say, hey, I'm really nervous. I'm about to take this role. I'm just very anxious. Can you walk me through it? And I'll say, all right, we've talked before. You have a long history of making good decisions in your personal and professional life. You've gone through four or five interviews. I think you've asked all these great questions. At this point, you know, if there's something hiding, there's something hiding. But I think you've done your diligence. Next thing is, have you stopped being good? At what? At what you've been doing so well for the last five, ten years? No. Okay. Last thing is, have you stopped being willing to put in the work.

To make up?

Those are two great questions right there.

Well, because, by the way, the answer is always.

I've been doing this well for 10 years. I'm still good at it. Good. How about your work ethic? No, I'm still willing to put in the work, then take the job.

Yeah, yeah.

There are others that say, well, sometimes I wonder whether, you know, I've got one more. Well.

Maybe you shouldn't take the job then, because if you get in there and you're wrong about your assessment of the company, you're not willing to put the work in, that's sort of on you.

That's why you go become a consultant or an advisor or. Go on.

Right, yeah.

Pay you to piss them off. Like, that's the. You know, so. So, Mark, we gotta. We gotta wrap this up.

Yeah, you got it.

You know, as much as Scott hates to he. Because he feels like you owe him like six hours of your life, at least some tequila next time we hang out, so.

That's right.

Yeah. So.

But, you know, we always flip it to the end and, you know, to see what questions you have for us. But quickly want to give a shout out to Outreach, Sendoso and Scratch Pad for sponsoring us. We do appreciate it. Mark, any questions for us?

You know what? No. I follow you guys pretty closely.

I just appreciate what you do.

There is.

There's a risk in a lot of the honesty that you see from. From you guys and what I try to do as well and what others try to do. There's a risk that we. We come across as these jaded people that, you know, got wronged. And so we went off to be consultants. But that's. It's really not what it is. We.

Knowing what I know about you guys, we care deeply about people. We've been around the block. We want people to be successful and do well, and that's why we're trying to allow people behind the curtain just a little bit. You should take these roles. You should take these risks. But maybe with some of our experienced help and guidance, we can lessen some of the blow, and it can be, frankly, just a little bit less dramatic. That's right. When you eventually do come up, because it's going to happen. I think.

I think we're all just being controversial for the sake of, you know, the algorithm.

That's right, Richard.

Yeah, that's us. Right.

We're chasing with.

With the exception of me, who's just angry because I'm the oldest guy in the room.

Big clout chaser. That's what you are. Yeah.

Right, right.

Thanks so much for spending some time with us, Mark.

Awesome, Mark, thank you so much.

Appreciate it. I'll talk to you guys again.

All right, man.

Bye.

Bye.

See ya.