Less is More - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 001

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be. Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy. Welcome today's guest, uh, Valerie Cobb. So you've got 18 years of private vocal coaching. That is kind of interesting. I need to talk to you about that later. Uh, you're a director of a high-selling team, uh, at Tax Systems— sorry, TaxWare Systems at one point in time, uh, member of National Association of the Professional Women and the fractional chief sales officer at Lodestar. Um, Valerie, welcome. Thanks for coming. I'm super excited to talk to you today.

Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. And thanks for inviting me.

Yeah. So as we discussed, I want to ask you the first starting question, and then we'll take it from there. What is the one thing that you see C-suites are kind of missing out on today? Like, what's the opportunity that you see from your lens as a fractional sales leader that maybe they're not seeing?

Oh goodness. I feel like the C-suite misses out on opportunities, partially because they get very closed off. But in some cases, if— and this depends on the C-suite, obviously, because if we're talking about Fortune 500, 100, whatever, that's a whole different game. But when you and I were talking, a little while back, I had been on a recent podcast, believe it or not, for tax, and some of the stats for the smaller companies at 99% of them are small businesses in the United States. That's also in the UK because I'm international, and I was surprised to hear that it was the same stat. But the Fortune 100 and 500 companies make up— actually, Fortune 100s make up most of the bulk of the GDP for the United States. And so how do you create that kind of better revenue trajectory with some of these smaller businesses? Because there's 31 million of them. So I think there is a lot of opportunity right now for presidents and CEOs and COOs and CROs and CMOs. You've been a fractional CMO, correct? If I'm remembering right, to kind of work a little bit better on some of their processes and things like that with their companies to be able to keep cash flow going better throughout those smaller businesses. And when I'm saying smaller businesses, The Small Business Administration definitely has a definition for small business, but I would dare say let's talk between $1 million and $50 million right now. And some of the, some of the solopreneurs as well, but because they're solo, they don't typically have a C-suite, you know, right? So they are the C-suite. They're all of those things. Anyway, so right now what's happening in the industry with the great resignation which I, I have my own opinions on that, and I can get opinionated, so I'm not going to get it. Anyway, if you've got, what is it, 42 or 47% of the workforce just resigning? Yeah, do you remember?

Yeah, the, the 40, 40-plus percent, uh, have resigned. And I even saw recently that, um, there's another— I think I saw 60% of people are considering resigning or changing work in the next 6 months. It's just an amazing amount of people that are looking at changing what they're doing, changing up everything in their lives since the pandemic.

So there's a huge opportunity for, for the C-suite. And when I say that, it's creating a vacuum. Even, you know, if you think about the traditional way that they hire, they hire people, right?, right? And so some of them will just use like Indeed, and you've got all of the wonderful algorithms in the background and all of these things that miss half the good people to begin with. But, you know, it was easy because it was a, it was a market where you could pick from anybody. This is a market where you have so many people that are just walking off of jobs and you're trying to get them and track them into your into your company. And so how do you onboard all those people after you've hired them? How do you get best practices together when you're a small company? And one of the big opportunities is literally using fractional work because of it, or maybe rehiring some of those people as fractional work. I mean, you and I met because of fractional work, right?

So, so how would you describe fractional work? Because it's kind of a misnomer, I think, in the minds of many C-suite members, or means something maybe different to different people in the C-suite. What— how do you describe what a fractional worker is?

Well, you know, we talk about business process outsourcing, and we talk about outsourcing, period. So it's very interesting that they actually don't use more fractional, or they don't know they're using fractional, right? If they outsource an accountant, they're using somebody who's fractional. They're fractionally giving some of their time, even if it's an hour. And because of that, that it's like they're— I, I talk about singing. If you're a soprano, you're a soprano, you're not an alto, right? So they're, they're very adept at doing accounting because they've done it so much, and that's the one thing they do. And it almost goes back, and it basically streamlines things. It It's very efficient, right? If you're trying to train somebody to be an accountant in your firm or you're trying to build somebody up from the ground up, great. But how long does it take them to get to that proficient level, right? And so a lot of these small businesses, when we're talking about the term fractional, they do it already and they don't even realize they're doing it, right? And so describing that is obviously mathematically fraction of something, right? Or heaven forbid the word part-time. Yeah, right. But basically, I work as a chief sales officer for multiple companies, 25 years of experience versus trying to get people in there in these smaller companies that can't afford that, that full-time equivalent, you know. So sometimes I look at it this way too. A $50,000 sales manager does not equate to a $250,000 sales manager, right? Yet a lot of times we hire our nephew or our friend and we throw them in there and say, be a sales manager and manage that sales team. There are 3 3 core things that a business has to have. They have to have finance, they have to have operations, and they have to have inbound. They have to have revenue coming in. Right. So imagine a small company, they can afford $50,000, but they're just really throwing $50,000 away because it's going to take them 4 or 5 years. And I have statistically, I have taken statistics talking to people like, how long did it take you to ramp that position up? You know, oh, 4 years. Okay, what did you just do for 4 years? Not only did you lose revenue for those 4 years because it wasn't really great, right? But you also paid somebody $50,000+ benefits for 4 years, right? So, um, so in the fractional marketing world, we do it all the time. We outsource digital We outsource inbound lead generation from cold calling teams and things like that. And then I think that that's another opportunity. A lot of times in these small businesses, they feel like marketing is sales and sales is marketing, and there's a huge distinction between the two of them, right? They have to work together. So going into the fractional world, if you're a smaller company and you can fractionally have a marketer work for you, fractionally have the revenue side, like with the management of the sales team or those kinds of things, then you're, you're going to make much better headway quicker. And then I know that after a while they grow. And hopefully, if we've done our job fractionally, they had— they create a full-time position and they become one of the Fortune 2,500, you know, and they can afford the full-time position, you know. I mean, that's just kind of where that heads every time.

So yeah, so what we're, we're really talking about with the subject of fractional, it's about accessing a, um, a C-level strategic experienced person and getting a fraction of that time so that you get more instant access to that knowledge and expertise than having to develop it from scratch over time. And so that's where I think when I, when I talk to businesses about fractional leadership, it's that senior-level leadership that you can get access to that you don't have to pay the $250,000 a year salary to get. And frankly, you probably don't, correct? 40 hours of the senior leadership, you need, you need maybe 10 a week, or maybe 10 a month. It's just you need enough to get to the next level in your business. So as a fractional salesperson, fractional sales leader, what, what are some of the things that you do?

So in, in the past, my roles have been Chief Sales in manufacturing, chief revenue in software. So they, they, they're basically almost synonymous in those, you know, it just depends on what, what segment you're actually working in. Um, so in my career, I've been very adept at making sure that all the— anything that touches the revenue gets up and running in a very well-organized manner and exceeding goals. So you mentioned tax, which was years ago. I grew that company 600%, and it was great training ground for what I was doing. So I cover typically— I will not, and I say this very— I tread lightly. I do not consider myself a marketer, but I can create the end-to-end piece that knits those two things together to make sure that the hands-off from when it's a marketing qualified lead ends up being a sales qualified lead. But what I am kind of adept at is the content portion of it, which a lot of times that's the soft end of it, partially because if I don't have a good message, you can't sell. That product, right? And so I cover, typically for companies, they will hire me as a fractional sales manager at first to put their process in place, because with small businesses, sales process is usually the, the culprit for causing problems, right? And you can't really hire the people if you haven't got the process in play. What they're— what are they supposed to sell? What are they supposed to do? How are they supposed to report it so that it reports back to leadership on new product development or marketing for the next-gen kind of content messaging and all of those things. So they kind of knit together. And I'd usually take it from an aspect of new product development or product period, because when I used to sell myself and when I— now I'm selling myself because my business, but sell out, I actually sold quite a bit. I was always top sales. And It's a bit of a unicorn, I know, because usually sales management and the other side don't mesh very well. But when I was out on the floor, we call it on the floor, out selling or out in the field selling or whatever, I was always selling pre-emerging opportunities because I didn't like to sit in the feature-benefit vomit space. This is what we do space. So I have— I've had successful product launch. And done 2 startups, and I have also— that are successful. And then, um, so I will help with product and making sure it's a sellable product, all the way through business cases, all of those things. But in general, fractionally, in the small business realm, those are add-on. They usually need their sales team fixed first.

Okay, so how do you do that? As a— what's like, to help others understand, how's it different being a fractional sales leader doing that versus a full-time sales leader doing that in an org— inside an organization?

What's different? Well, really, it's, it's the amount of time that I donate to to or do is really the difference. I, you know, you can only do 4 to 8 hours a week at a company depending on how much time and how complex. Most of the time, if it's super complex and they really do need a full-time equivalent, I will tell them that first of all. And it depends on where it's at. But the difference is, After a while, hopefully, if I've done my job right, I leave a hole where they actually end up with a sales manager. So I've set up the entire thing for them so it can just kind of automate. And so there's not a lot— like right now I have some customers that I literally will do— I do their one-on-ones with their sales team. So I can tell you a little bit why I got into this and and it was because of that question. I was Chief Sales Officer full-time, and I was working 60, sometimes 70 hours a week because I was over new product development. I was over marketing. I had a great marketer, so that was fine. I had— I was over service and I was over sales, and it was in heavy equipment manufacturing, and it was global, and I remember sitting in a Vistage meeting and a Sandler sales group was teaching at Vistage and they talked about herd and that, that wasn't what was so interesting to me as the fact that I had all these sales team members that I was also directly managing because it was a smaller company. And they said the magic words we can come in and coach your sales team one-on-one, not training, coach them. And it took 15 hours off my plate, 15 hours just for that piece of it off my plate.

And as a full-time leader, you were thinking, I can get 15 hours a week of my time back by bringing in Sandler Sales as a fractional sales coach, and essentially Yeah, they came in and they'd meet with my—

I picked 6 of my team members that were struggling the most and said, here, and here's the reports, here's what they need to be at, and the goal setting, and here's their goals. And they would report to me, you know, twice a month. And it just took a huge burden off my back. And we grew that through That company, that was a very recent company. I grew that company 27% through COVID. And this is manufacturing. So software, 600%. Yeah, you're going to see stuff like that. Manufacturing, they're not— they 5%, 10% growth. Yay. Kind of thing. And so it definitely freed me up to do— and then we ended up with a success the little successful product launch that should open up an ocean of opportunity. So it helped me divert my efforts toward the next gen of products that could get sold.

So you were able to see the value of a fractional sales leader joining your team essentially. So then how did you make the switch to doing that on your own? Like, did you join Sandler or did you say, no, I'm gonna start my own and I'm gonna compete with Sandler now, I'm better than Sandler.

You know, it's really funny because that, that guy is my mentor. I would give him business. I max out at about— because I am hands-on, that's the difference. I am very hands-on. I'm not a trainer, remember? So I'm in actively working. I set hours with their sales team, actively working with them. And I— well, first of all, I don't tread on his territory ever. There's no need for me to do that. There's enough business out there. But, you know, it just kind of, as I was transitioning, it was just kind of like, I need to do this. And so I started to create curriculum because there were things that I did like and things that I didn't like. I'm an avid Challenger Sale person. I've deployed that several times at companies.

What's the Challenger Sale?

The Challenger Sale is Matt Dixon. It was by Corporate Executive Board at the time, back during the recession of 2008. They did a study on how people sell, how top— well, they noticed that there were some people like at IBM and different places like that that were selling hand over fist, and then there were others that just tanked during 2008, just tanked. And I got introduced to it because I was selling what some called an unsellable product at the time, but we were winning. And I had a friend who said, hey, this book, you're this book. And I went, what? And so I got introduced. So CEB is the Corporate Executive Council. I believe then Gartner bought Challenger after that, but it's a book. And they also wrote The Challenger Sale, which I recommend to every marketer out there. They have great use cases for marketers.

Don't like— marketers don't like sales. It's, it's not in our blood. I'm a salesperson, but you say sales to a marketer and sometimes they'll like deer in the headlights. So, but you say this is a good sales book for marketers to better understand?

The Challenger Sales, the first book, and then there's the Challenger Customer. And the Challenger Customer talked about it's really more marketing and product development. That's why I'm saying it's from that standpoint. And you're right, they don't. But see, that's the funny part. I love marketers. And you kind of said they don't like sales. And I kind of laughed because I was just on recently on a podcast that we talked about the bad rap that sales teams get, and they're the first ones that cause their own bad rap. They rank themselves slowly down at the bottom. And that kind of needs to change because they have to work symbiotically. Yeah, I think they really do. And so the Challenger customer is all about what we say spark, introduce, and confront. And it's all about the marketing perspective of how to market to it. And so it's, it's amazing book. If you ever, if you ever would like to, I get it.

I'm a salesperson turned marketer. So I definitely love my favorite sales book is SPIN Selling. I don't know if you read that. That's a really old book. Yeah, it's about need-based selling, consultative sales process. It was when I got thrown into the sales world. I have an undergraduate degree in engineering, and I went into technical sales, and I had no idea how to sell, got no training. I was just thrown into it. And I read that book and slowly but surely learned how to sell. And it was, it was informative for me.

You will want to read this book then, because guess who wrote the foreword to The Challenger Sale?

Neal Rickham. All right. And I will for sure.

And I have to give you kudos. You are an— okay, so I have my youngest brother, he's a chemical engineer, and he worked for Dow and several of these others. And I have to say that you are amazing because that's a hard leap to be an engineer and sales and marketing. That's amazing.

Oh yeah.

How'd you do that?

Oh, you know, I was probably not cut out to be an engineer to begin with. That's why I didn't last very long. And I've had to learn sales. And once you understand that sales isn't about what people think of sales being, it's not the used car pushy sales. Sales is about solving a problem, understanding a need, and providing a solution. And if it's not your solution that you provide, it's someone else's, that's also a sale. So once you understand that it's a very consultative, problem-solving process that, that is sales. It becomes natural because we're all— I mean, most people I know want to help other people. And that's also the backbone of a good salesperson is someone who's there to help. Marketing was an easy segue because with marketing, I look at marketing as connecting a person or a product or a person or a customer with a problem to a product or service. And it's that connection that marketing goes into. And sales is just closing that deal. So it's— they're very similar. They have to be aligned. Our approach to marketing is we believe marketing needs to drive sales, and that's its purpose. It's not about pretty pictures and fancy words. It's about marketing needs to sell, and that's what it needs to do for a small business owner. And so I love hearing what you talk about with aligning so much with sales and marketing, because that's how our approach is too. It's, it's got to be very well meshed in order for them to work properly together.

Yeah, the bad rep is usually the arrogant sales rep that is demanding the persona of I don't have enough leads and marketing is not doing their job. And it's like, well, I think I usually ask the question, so tell me a little bit about that. And tell me how you know that marketing is not doing their job.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. So how do you, when you go in and work with a client for the first time, how do you assess if they have sales challenges or marketing challenges or operational challenges, customer service challenges, cash flow challenges? What, what's your process?

Well, here's the cool little thing, because you did ask me how I— did I go out on my own? And did I— I did not align with Sandler. Love Sandler groups. I tend to merge 500 different methodologies, obviously, because of my own, right? So it didn't really make a lot of sense for me to license with one group. Or become a franchise of what they're doing. Plus they're very focused on training. And I don't think that the training itself changes behaviors. And that goes back to Oprah. And I'm not even going to get into that right now. We could go down a rabbit hole that you don't want me on. But anyways, I licensed with Sales QB. And the reason I licensed with Sales Quarterback is because first of all, I'm not a dummy. I'm not going to regurgitate process there's some great processes already that can be repeated. They just can't implement them. That's the problem. It's like speaking Chinese to someone who's never heard the language before and they're from Jamaica or whatever, right? It doesn't make any sense. So SalesQB, the guy who created that, also affiliates or had started— he wrote a book as well, something about business models. And everything. And so he was very about modeling things for the right repetitive process, right? And, um, in some cases, process always has to be in play before you're ever going to put a human over top of it, right? Because then you end up with the behaviors that you've got to deal with, right? So they need direction. Just like if you're getting in a car and you don't know where you're going, you might as well not get in the car, right? It's just how it is.

Unless you just want to go for a joyride.

Unless you're just— yeah, you're clearing your head, you're not going to get very far. And so I licensed with SalesQB, and they have a 6-step roadmap. And in the beginning of that 6-step process is a sales audit that we do. And it was basically the same questions I would ask somebody to determine what you just asked, if it's a problem here. And I will almost tell you 99.9% of the time it is a sales process problem in small businesses. Marketing can't even do its job. You're doing this great job and you're getting all these leads and they can't follow up on the leads because they don't know how to even talk to the customer about the product. Right. I mean, and in fact, my customers have come literally from marketers because they're like, hey, I'm getting all these leads and they're not following up on them and I'm looking dumb and I'm looking like it's my problem. And I'm a big avid fan of Jocko Willink and Extreme Ownership. Have you heard? Yeah, I've heard of that. I'm a very big fan and I tend to not like excuses. And so I typically will get to a root cause very quickly of where the breakdown is, and I don't blame other departments. And I'm very positive with people. Let's, let's sort of work this out here. Ask a lot of good questions, and they kind of come to it themselves. You know what? Yeah, you're right, I'm not getting this. And, and I, I'm laughing because I also a big fan of Chris Voss and Never Split the Difference, and he always says can't say you're right until some— someone's not agreeing unless they say that's right.

So, okay, I like that.

I gotta get to the point. That's right. Yeah, that means they own it. But yeah, I start with that sales audit every time. And it's funny because it spits out about 170-something pages. So I do an executive summary of it because no one's going to read 100-something pages. And it compares what the Fortune 500, 100 companies are doing in these areas. And it literally does talk about sales shouldn't be covering marketing and that there's 3 distinct functions between the 3. There's the inbound lead generation, there's the nurturing, and then there's the actual sales. And the problem with small businesses is they think a salesman is supposed to cover all 3 of those.

That's exactly right. And normally, in my experience, at least, it's the owner that has been the salesperson to get them where they're at today. And the owner's done all 3 of those things. He or she has gone out there and generated the leads, cold or otherwise. He or she is nurtured along the way. And then he or she's the closer. And when it's time to figure out how to delegate and elevate, I'm going to find somebody, a marketer to do the lead generation, I'm gonna find a salesperson to do it all again, because because that's what I did. Because I could do it. I can do it, you can do it. And most entrepreneurs and business owners are unicorns. They are very much unicorns. Most people can't do what they do.

No.

And so you have to, you have to split it up. You have to have a good sales team, you have a good marketing team, and you have to have systems and processes that can make them work.

So you brought something up— most can't do that. And then that brings up the question, okay, from your perspective, why can't they do— most can't do that? I can't talk. I wash my mouth, but I can't.

I think it's, it's a— it's very difficult to ask anybody that's a sales-focused person to take over and learn marketing, and someone who understands marketing in depth and necessary to generate good inbound leads to learn how to sell. When an owner— what they've done is they spent, or a business executive, probably 10, 20 years in that industry. Maybe they started in sales or started in marketing, they've worn all the hats. So they've, they've grown into a unicorn, maybe they weren't one when they started, but they are one now. But because that's where they are today, they think they can hire a unicorn. And that's where I think the fractional world makes perfectly good sense. Because you need to hire a fractional salesperson to lead your sales team and take that out of your brain, that 15 hours a week that you talked about.

Yeah.

Then you need a fractional marketing leader that's going to take that out of your head. So now you can focus as a business owner on the next big thing for your business. What's the other area that needs some focus, some, some good envisioning and continuous improvement, creativity? If you can fraction out those sales and marketing pieces, then you can go on to work on growing the business into other areas. But it's a hard concept for them to give up because It's hard to trust someone to do it the way you do it.

Yeah. And that trust aspect is why a little bit the fractional works better than what I would say trying to get somebody off of Indeed for $50,000 because the skill level hasn't been proven yet if you're getting that person from $50,000. Right. And, and so I would say, yeah, I would I 100% agree. They've gone through all the processes over time, and they've forgotten the time that it took to learn all those processes, right? And I think the other thing is, when you're talking, like, you know, even with, like, a startup, it goes from that new product development side of things, right? They've learned the business case. They've learned why this is important. That's why they started this, right? That's why they have this product. They've learned it and they have— they really struggle with translating that vision to somebody else, right? That, that's, that's the hard thing. And it's like, well, this is just a job for me. Well, that person was so passionate. That's why they started that business, right? They're passionate. They believe that it solves that challenge. They believe that. And with sales teams, quite often they get that head trash. And so one area that I love, love, love to cover as the chief sales is their 5-year forecast. And many don't— even business owners don't know where they're going after a while, you know. Oh, we'll just look at this year, right? Well, how does— how do you pull up marketing for something that you don't know what's coming next, right? And so That strategy helps solidify in a sales team member's mind. They can capture that vision because they know, well, maybe it's off of an ITR report that says economically things are moving in this direction and we're, you know, we have this percent of sum now, but this ocean of opportunity is opened up here. And now we can, that now we can really claim it and go after it and get excited about it. Right. So, yeah.

So if you have an owner that, or business team, C-suite that wants to hire a fractional sales coach or sales leader, Chief of Sales, what are the 3 criteria that you think are most important when they're out on their search?

Well, they're, they're going to have a hard time finding a fractional Chief of Sales. It's relatively new. You see fractional CFOs, chief financial officers, all the time. Marketing has been— not CMOs, but marketing itself has been fractional for a while, you know, and outsourcing. First of all, they've got to look for the distinguish— the, the line drawn in the sand between training and consulting. And an actual fractional chief sales, right? Or chief leadership of any kind, right? Because a lot of them misunderstand that. They think they're looking for a coach, or even like with a lot of the business books that are out right now that have the framework of sending integrators and implementers, right? The difference— what, what does that mean to a small business person? They have no clue what that means, right? So, um, they need to, they need to realize that it is an actual position that is hands-on, that does the one-on-ones and all that kind of stuff. There's 5,000 training programs out there. They all have repetitive themes. Um, so they need to make sure that it's not a training program because that's not what you're getting, you know. Um, and that's almost the easier way to explain it. It is not training. And it is not consulting. That's the— and then, you know, they should be looking at people who have had proven experience in doing it. And that's hard as well. And so referral bases, looking at the groups online like FPA, which is how you and I met. I love that group because it is fractional Fractional Professionals Association. Yeah, Fractional Professionals Association, because then it gives a repository of a bunch of people who are in that area. And so if people start looking for who's parts of that group on LinkedIn, or obviously a lot of referral business occurs because somebody's looking for that, um, as people start to see your podcasts on LinkedIn and stuff like that, that will help a lot as well. But they will need to— it won't be super easy to find a fractional chief sales. I'm just going to say there's just hardly any out there. And it's partially because we even have problems explaining what we do, even in like the short LinkedIn microscript at the top. I've had to re— oh, you're a consultant? No, I'm not a consultant. And so I've had to like, And then even on LinkedIn, they have you grouped as a consultant because there's nothing else there, you know.

It's as close to communicating what we do as, as can be consulting. But consultants are typically there to come in, diagnose a problem, give you a plan and walk away. And you're like, oh, that's great. And then there's no one there left to execute where fractional leaders are there to do the diagnosis, do the audits, understand the opportunities, put the plan together, and then oversee it getting executed. And I think that's the biggest difference.

Oh, I love that. I should talk to you earlier.

Well, that's my marketing coming up.

I know, I know, you're so good at it. I love it. That's awesome.

Well, we have, we have the same audience from a marketing standpoint. C-suites that want to get access to some strategic talent that they don't have. They used to only be able to go out and hire it full-time, or try to develop it internally, or bring in an agency or consultant. And now with the, with the great resignation, and then all this talent's out there looking for a place to go, but they don't want to be full-time. Nope. They'd rather share their talents with a handful of clients. And so I think part of what our job is, is to help our clients understand what that criteria is to find a good one. And so I hear what you say, make sure you're not hiring a trainer to be your Chief of Fractional Chief of Sales. Make sure you're not hiring a consultant. Make sure you are finding somebody who's, who's a coach, who's a leader that has done it before. And it's important that they've done it before as a fractional person or just done it before even full-time and now in the fractional space. What do you think? Is there a difference when you're trying to look at who you might hire as a fractional leader?

You know, honestly, obviously experience in the field is great, but I always tell people hire on, on trait. You know, if they have that trait, if they have— if they don't have, you know, it— this is the perfect example. Someone cold-called me the other day, and I I totally teased him, but later in the conversation, I said, you know what, I would love to hire you. Who are you working for right now? And I will do that at McDonald's. If somebody is very friendly at the front and I noticed that they have a good persona for sales and they're strategically thinking and doing all of these really helpful things, you know, I'll do that. But I think that, yeah, if you're trying to get the bang for the buck, they have to have at least been in that chief sales role or chief marketing role full-time, because then they will have that proven experience. Otherwise, you're back to that $50,000 start and you've kind of gone away from that whole experience of years of experience.

I think I see the same thing in our, in our space, in the fractional chief marketing officer space. There's a lot of people right now that are putting up a shingle that says I'm a fractional CMO, and they've never actually had a leadership role in an organization before. They've been selling digital advertising, or they're a HubSpot reseller. And if they say they're a fractional CMO, they're going to be able to sell more HubSpot or more digital ads. And that's certainly important for our people to understand that you got to look behind the sign a little bit.

Smoke and mirrors.

Yeah. And same way with Chief of Sales, someone who's actually been there, done that full time for an organization. They're the ones that have the experience to be able to go out. And then when they are fractional, I think like you mentioned as well, they're part— they're committed to a fractional business model. That's the other thing that I think is important. So they're joining the Fractional Professional Association. They have, you know, they have set themselves up and committed to it. They're not just in between jobs. Yeah, they're not just, oh, you know, I'm going to do this for a little bit, but I'm looking for my next full-time fractional sales gig. That's not who you want.

No, because they're not committed to doing it because they can get hired and then they're just gone again, you know. So I Yeah, it was, it was kind of interesting. It was an interesting dialogue when I was licensing with SalesQB around that very subject. And, um, you know, I actually have a— I actually do not have a website because I can only handle about 10 customers, so I just use LinkedIn for, for most of that. But, um, I do have a landing page with SalesQB that I can send people to And I think that that's important if they're actually showing that they're affiliating with something or some kind of methodology. I also feel as though you should be able to check them out pretty quickly on LinkedIn. If their LinkedIn page looks like, especially in our arena, if you only have half a dozen people follow as your connections, you're probably not on the marketing, you're probably not a marketer for, for yours. And for me, um, that's a, that's a big sign that you're not very well connected and not networking. So you should be probably part of networking groups and be able to talk, talk. But, um, yeah, and, and I think it's— I think it is going to fill the gap of the great resignation because in about a year from now when some people come to their head, to their, come, come back, one of the interview questions will definitely be, so did you give 2 weeks notice or did you just drive on by and then you thought you were just gonna be able to, you know, start your own company and, and do some of these things? And there's going to be a big void of, of leaders. Out there that are, you know, so I don't know. Anyway.

Yeah. So let's segue a little bit. I want to hear about your singing career. Tell me about that. Let's talk a little about some fun stuff. How did you go from that to sales? How did you get in that to begin with? And you can pick a song if you want to.

That's fine too. Oh goodness, I would have had to warm up and I've been talking too much. Actually, it was funny. I, you know, you're young and stupid, you're 17, you're going to college, and you have a roommate that says, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a voice lesson. And you're like, what's a voice lesson? I didn't know you could even have a voice lesson. And, uh, and I said, well, I will too. Awesome. And, uh, yeah, and I just, I fell in love with, uh I fell in love with, uh, just the whole— it was just a great outlet. And, um, so I ended up, I ended up being a coloratura soprano. And at first it was musical theater. And I remember right at the time I was taking these lessons, Phantom of the Opera came on, came into being, and listening to Christine sing this beautiful you know, whatever. And it was so gorgeous. And I was like, I, I gotta do that. I love that. And then as I realized that it— Rodgers and Hammerstein was just not doing enough for me. And, um, so I, I have played the part of the narrator for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. So I, I do do musical theater, or have in the past. I'm kind of semi— I'm very, very retired. I'm singing a couple times at Christmas time. But, um, so I end up coaching other singers for about 10 years. I had a private coach myself for 18 years, and I was soloist for New York Boys Chorus, and I was on kind of a version of a PBS kind of thing in another country that I was living in at the time. And, um, And then did get to do some musical reviews and be Christine, which was fun. Wow. And, and, but what I, I was introduced to a wonderful composer. And, and you're going, well, how did you get introduced? Everybody knows this composer. But I, you have to bear in mind that I wanted to be a rock star with my best friend, my girlfriend back in high school. So, okay. So Mozart, and I remember hearing The Magic Flute, and yes, I have sung the Queen of the Night aria several times. But anyway, so we— it was just fun. I mean, it just became really fun. And classical music is extremely technical, kind of like engineering compared to improv, you know, doing improvisation and stuff like that. The notes are all mathematical. And so, yeah, and it was a blast. And it actually had roots in when I started coaching students. I realized, well, there's two things. She said, how did you get in sales? Well, I was going to be in merchandising. I was going to be the big, big bad buyer and go to New York and Paris and do all this fun stuff. So I— my degree's in merchandising, and I knew that musicians are always starving, so I made sure I had a business degree of some sort, some kind of something. And I went to work for Nordstrom, and at the time Nordstrom was the model to follow in retail. And I got my little book, and that's how they call it booked, book of business. I got my little book and they sat us down and they gave us 4 hours of sales training. And I was top sales pay setter, you know, all that stuff for, for Nordstrom, and found I had a little bit of a knack for it. And, um, but I did end up on the side, like I said, coaching for, for 10 years because I'd have people ask me if I would teach their daughters or whoever to sing. Actually, boys. I had some that would— one was trying to get into in London, one of the boys' courses. I can't remember. It's really well known. And so I end up coaching him and some of these others. And so because to sell is human, coaching is selling. I had a tone-deaf student who had what I would call grit like nobody I've ever met before. Hit the same note over and over again for 5 months, and she'd keep coming back. Never could sing a song, which is the fun part, for 5 solid months. And then something clicked in her head and she could match the pitches, and she went on to win solo and ensemble. And then my second one was— my second learning in sales was the other one, um, which is the title of the book that I. And getting chapters down and chapter headings down on, which is I Can't Help You. And it also has framed selling because she came to me from another coach. And you were saying a marketer can set up their— a fractional can set up their shingle, right? Well, people who think that they can sing can coach singing, and so they start coaching it. And she came to me and she had these really, really bad habits. And it's really hard when you're singing, you can't see, you can't put your hand on an instrument, you can't play the, you know, this is middle C on a piano, you know, that kind of thing. And she'd created some really bad habits that were really hard to break. And in 6 months into it, she just constantly said, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I'm fine. I'm not doing that. And her mom came to me. It was my first customer that I fired, um, just because I won't ever work with somebody that I don't think I can help anyway. And she so basically got fired. And I said, but come back when she's ready to listen, which is part of selling. You got to learn to listen to what they're saying instead of feature-benefit vomit. You've got to listen to the customer if you're really going to help people. And she came back 6 months later ready to learn, and she would listen so hard. Oh, I am doing that? Okay, repeat. Okay, repeat. Okay, until she got it there. And, um, then she ended up winning solo ensemble as well. It just took her a long— a lot longer because she wasn't willing to listen at first. She was the one that was naturally talented. The other one was not naturally talented. They both got there.

So do you see that in your sales coaching, that you can take somebody who's naturally, uh, you know, has a tendency to be a good salesperson and somebody who's not naturally a good salesperson? Can you coach them, both those people, to being good, successful sales winners of their own?

Right, in their own realm. Yeah, as long as there's, there's will and there's that grit. That gal had that grit, right? She was willing to listen to one note over and over again, 5 months. Now that's amazing. I'm sorry, I don't know if you've ever— you know, I've always been so impressed by that person because she wanted it so bad, you know? No, um, There are truly tone-deaf people out there. It's very rare. She was not truly tone-deaf. She did not know how to match it, right? So if you take somebody who is not truly tone-deaf in sales and they've got that grit, yes, there are some that they really— they have that will, and they, you know, there'll be some that just cannot close a deal. They just cannot figure it out, you know, and, and they make good marketers. No, you know, I think everybody had, you know, 1 in 8, 1 in 8 jobs out there are a sales position. Isn't that amazing? And only about 50% of them should be in there. And then 15% of them are probably hunters, and I'm thinking high. Right. The rest are account managers, and they're very, very good at account managers. And some of them are sales engineers, which— that's— that goes to the org chart. One of my best sales engineers, I moved him from a sales position into that role, and he's happy because it fits, right? Shoe fits. Yeah.

So, yeah. Well, what else can you tell about yourself?

Well, let's talk more about you. You've been on this and I, I haven't been under the— I've been under the gun. Um, so I'll, I'll tell you a couple fun fast facts, but then you've got to reciprocate.

Okay, okay, fair enough.

Yes. All right, I truly have a dirt bike and it's a Kawasaki 140. I have done an upside-down loop in an airplane with my dad in his trick plane. And I have— I'm an avid scuba diver, and I sat behind my husband on our first date because I didn't know he was asking me out. So I sat with his friend and my girlfriend sat with him.

So you—

now you're on the gun.

All right. Um, wow, those are kind of hard to top. My, uh, I met my wife on the dance floor at my fraternity, and she reached over and kissed me on the dance floor. And I still tell her that she made the first move. And she said, well, you were just talking so close that I had— you were a close talker, and I just had to. So that's, that's, that's how we met. I was a close talker. My Man, I have jumped off of a giant, um, bridge in New Zealand called the Nexus, and it's the longest bungee cord jump around the world. And I did that— oh wow— about 3 years ago with my, uh, my wife. Well, my wife didn't jump, but my daughter was there with me and she jumped, and, uh, it was the biggest rush. I can't tell you how amazing that felt. You had to walk up these— there's a little plank on this. It was, it was essentially a platform that was, you know, big wires strung to two sides of this gigantic cavernous area. And then there was a little plank and you had to walk outside the plank and do a swan dive. It was the scariest thing I ever did, but it was so exhilarating. I love that.

And we have that in common. I did not jump. But I did the Sydney Bridge climb while I was on business down there in Sydney, Australia. But keep going.

Keep going. It was amazing. And I guess, let's see, what else is interesting about me? I, you know, I'm a, I'm, I'm a big cigar connoisseur. I gave up alcohol about 9 years ago now. And I got into cigars and You had to have a vice. Yeah, yeah. Now I'm considering another vice because I think the cigar smoking's probably not the healthiest thing for me either.

But wow, that's amazing. I, I don't know that I could— I don't know. I— my daughter would love for me to go skydiving, and I have a little healthy fear of heights, so bungee jumping— I know I've done tree to tree and some of the zip lines, but I don't know if I could do that. You know, that's pretty crazy. So, oh, how, how old's your daughter?

She was 21 when we did it.

Oh, okay, that's awesome. That's, that's some good bonding time.

Yeah, it was great. She was down— she was in— she was studying abroad, so that's why we went to visit. And, uh, oh, the Great Barrier Reef also over there, which is your scuba diver.

Well, we did the snorkeling. Oh, okay. Beautiful though, still. Yeah, yeah, absolutely beautiful. Oh, that's wonderful. Wow. And what kind of engineer were you? Because I just gotta know.

What?

Uh, I'll let you guess. Mechanical? No.

I'll give you a hint. I'm probably a lot like your brother.

Chemical? Yes. So you were the— apparently I've learned from the mechanical engineers that chemical engineering is like I was talking to you before about how Good Human Sell by Katherine Brown, and she polled all those sales team members as to what the honorable profession was, and doctors were at the top, and sales, they put themselves at the bottom of the rung, at the bottom feeders. And I'm like, okay, there's some head trash there. But anyways, And so I guess there's a pecking order, and chemical engineers are like the top of the pecking order.

Yeah, I don't like to brag, but we are. There's a lot more math and a lot more chemistry than most of the other engineering disciplines, and you have to learn every other piece. You have to learn all the mechanical, all the electrical, all the physics to be a chemical engineer. And it was one of those degrees that I got without any idea that what I would do when I got it. And I was good at chemistry and I was good at math and my counselor says you should be a chemical engineer and I looked up how much they made and I say it sounds good. I'm going to college for chemical engineering and then I spent a year and really didn't like it and so I left and got into technical sales for 5 years. Where money's at. Yeah, well, my wife jokes because she met me in college, and we would go to the chemical engineering socials, and, uh, we would be the only two on the dance floor. I mean, it was like high school— guys over there, girls— and there'd be like 3 girls and 100 guys, and then we'd be in the middle, and we— there just wasn't a lot of, you know, social engineers.

That's what my sister-in-law says about my brother. She's like, they're the biggest nerds. We are nerdy. Um, I'm laughing because they call themselves that. I didn't call them that. I— and we, we laughed because, uh, you know, I geek out because I'm a big science fiction nut, you know. So I'll call myself a nerd because I totally geek out on stuff like that.

So, oh yeah, I love sci-fi. What's the newest one I'm watching? It's the, uh, it's on Apple TV. It's, uh, I can't remember the name of it right now, but it's about math and the predicting of the fall of this empire in the future. Have you seen what I'm talking about?

No, you'll have to forward that.

Oh yeah, it's great. I wish I had it at the top of my tongue. I can Google it later. I'll send it to you, but it's really good. There's about I'm 7 episodes in.

Oh yeah, I need a new show. And I, I, I'm such a geek, I actually wrote a Star Trek episode and sent it in. You did not!

I did too! That is awesome. Was it, uh, Next Generation or, uh, original?

Yeah, Next Generation. Yeah, I was, I was a kid when the first one, but you know, I, yeah, I Jean-Luc. Yeah. And I've done presentations where I talk for new product development about all the technology that's in use today from Star Trek, you know, from tablets to, you know, they even have food replicators. Yeah. And they have a lot of things. And I, and I was trying to talk an engineer into saying that there is virtual— there will be vehicles, autonomous vehicles in heavy equipment. And he goes, that'll be 20 years from now. I said, I give you 3. I give you 3.

I just want the holodeck. I want to be able to go there and just chill out. Oh yeah.

That place looks cool. I know. I would love that and be able to beam over to London, you know, or China or whatever, you know.

The beaming would definitely be pretty neat.

Yeah. Well, cool. I'm so glad I got to know more about you on this.

Yeah, me too.

Absolutely.

And if people want to get to know either of us more, what's the best way to get to know you? Is it go to LinkedIn and connect with you there?

Yeah, they can go to LinkedIn. And I, they, I was laughing because that's a work cell phone, not my personal cell phone up behind me at 208.

The one that we'd have to watch, like look at in a mirror.

Microscopic. Yes, you can pull it. So it's 208-425- 7542, and they can email me too. And usually when people talk to me, I tell them straight, like I said, I will give them— start with a sales audit to see if they even have a problem and go from there. So how can they get to you? And I'm on FPA. We talked about that, Fractional Professionals Association.

Yeah, I think the best way to contact with anybody these days is LinkedIn. So I I'm at LinkedIn at Joseph Frost, and that's where I meet a lot of interesting people. That's where my connections are. And that's where I share bits and pieces about marketing and fractional leadership that I run into from time to time. We'll be sharing this podcast there.

So people might come across us together on the deluge of all the other— on LinkedIn. Yes. And it's Valerie Cobb as well. I don't have anything crazy. Out there for my LinkedIn link.

So yeah, that's good. Well, anything else you want to share about sales, about singing? You want to leave us with a tune?

Oh no, I'd have to warm up. You wouldn't want to hear a tune right now. But if you ping me, I'll have to— I have a recording of me doing some of the narration for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor A Color Dreamcoat, I'll be happy to send them an MP3. Maybe we'll— but I would love them to come and talk to me about sales. I love just talking about sales. So that would be a great next step.

Okay, I might have to see if the editors can pull in some of your performance into this podcast. And we'll get a little, a little song and dance on the way out of here.

If they can make their magic happen, that'll be what we'll look forward to seeing. Okay. All right, thanks, Joseph. It was wonderful.

I appreciate it. Thank you, Valerie. It was great, and we'll, uh, talk to you soon.

All right, bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye. And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional Visit them at yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com. Spelled wrong on purpose.