Outsourcing the Solution - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 007

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 is an industry thought leader, Sales Acceleration Certified Sales Leader, an IMA Certified Management Accountant, president at the OSX Sales Solutions, and Rob Copenhaver. Welcome, Rob. How are you?

I'm great, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for being here today. I'm excited to talk to you a little bit, uh, You know, sales guys like to talk a lot. So I figured you and I might just— this is supposed to be 60 minutes, we might go 2.5 hours if we, if we have enough to talk about.

True.

So what I wanted to lead with was, we mentioned it earlier when we talked last, is I'm always intrigued by what fractional professionals see from an outsider's perspective when you go into a new engagement or have an opportunity to talk to a business owner or C-suite, what are some of the opportunities that you see that they might be missing?

Okay. I appreciate that. Um, first tell you a little bit about why I do what I do. That'll kind of lead into exactly what you were asking there, Joe. Uh, I was that corporate sales guy, 125 nights a year at Marriott. Delta was sending me Christmas presents, and I did that for about 30 years. And So, I ran into the company who got acquired for the 10th time in my career. I got acquired for the 10th time, uh, and I started looking around Omaha, Nebraska, my hometown. I was born and raised here, and I thought, I've never worked in Omaha except for when I was an accountant for the first 10 years of my life. And so, I looked around, I found Sales Acceleration specializing in small businesses, mostly local, and that's how I got affiliated with them. It's kind of a give back to the community. You know, I love small businesses, I love sales. So being able to give back to the community, being able to walk through Hy-Vee and see somebody who I'm working with, you know, rather than get on a plane and fly to Las Vegas to a conference or something, that was so much more rewarding. So some of the things that I can see when I walk into companies is when entrepreneurs start their company, they start it because they're experts in their industry. They know what the problems are. They develop a product that fits a niche and solves a problem, and it works great. And they can go out and they can sell, start to add a couple people. They go out and do it— I call a volunteer fire department of sales calls— where everybody gets on the truck and goes to the fire and puts the fire out, and then looks for the next fire and kind of goes from fire to fire. But after you start to grow, you hire a few salespeople, you got some sales support, you don't have that level of expertise in those salespeople because they weren't the founders of the company. Plus the competition just woke up. They didn't know you were there. They're starting to react. And a lot of times it's tough for CEOs and founders to realize the landscape has changed from when they were doing it And they get frustrated. They get frustrated and say, you know, when I was doing this, it was easy. We always won business and always closed. Now it's so different. I hired these people and they're supposed to be great at what they do, highly recommended, and they're just, they're just not putting up the numbers that we anticipated. So that's what I see a lot is just landscape changing and the CEO owner of the company not realizing that it's changed and some movement needs to happen.

Yeah, I see that. I, I completely get it. When we work with clients on a marketing perspective, it's really similar. A lot of times the owner is the best marketer in the company because they started the business, they know the product or service so well, they know the competition as well as anybody else, and they know the customers because they found them and they, they brought them in. But over time, they start to get removed and the competition changes a little bit, customer changes a little bit, product and service probably it's changed because the owner is probably pretty familiar still with the product or service, but the buying habits of the consumers have adjusted. And when we go into a situation like that, it's, it's a big opportunity to show the owner how their customer has changed or how their competition has changed, to give them the insights to be effective again in marketing. And marketing sales are so similar. I imagine That's the same thing you have to do. How do you bring that awareness then to those owners or those C-suites that sales is different than it was before? How do you bring that awareness without making them angry at you?

So when I have an engagement with a customer, very first thing we start off is reviewing historical information and talking to the sales team and the marketing team and management. Just kind of feel like, where do they think they're at? Because what's very important is where do they think they're at? Do a self-assessment of themselves. I mean, maybe they're looking at themselves through rose-colored glasses and they just, they don't see what I do coming in from the outside with as many companies as I've been to. So that's a lot of times what I'll do is try to uncover, you know, where is it they think are their strengths and their weaknesses. I'll also ask them some key questions such as, what's your unique value proposition? It's more of a marketing thing, but it's something that sales needs to know. 'Cause a lot of times if you have 5 salespeople in there and you ask them, what do you do? You pretty much get 5 different answers and they usually revolve around the activities that that person does and not about the problems that you solve for your client. So that's always kind of a sign right there of, are you focused on the right thing? You know, selling, do you sell to solve problems or do you sell to push product? Obviously it's the first.

Yeah, yeah, the problem-solving sales approach has always been my way of, of, of going to market, but it's, it's, uh, it's a lot different when you've been in the business for a long time. You kind of forget about those problems and it's all about the pitch and the message and the, and less about what problems are, are you really solving there.

Yeah, very true. You get to work in, uh, you know, instead of working on your business, you work in your business. Next thing you know, you're a doer and you're doing a lot of high activity work and you're getting away from the big picture. Yeah.

So what's your favorite type of business to help, or maybe you prefer not favorite, uh, B2B, B2C, retail? Where do you like to spend your time?

Definitely B2B. We do some B2C a little bit, but usually it's because there was a B2B component of it and this was just a, a different off branch or a different department or something like that. Working with companies with a little more complex product. I come from the insurance software world. I spent 30 years in that core processing. So I've seen everything from mainframes. I've sold mainframe items, went down to things when they went to a PC LAN. All of a sudden ASP came out. Now ASP is called cloud and, you know, seeing the whole evolution there. So software cloud complex is very good. I also do quite a bit of manufacturing because we live in Nebraska. And it's amazing the number of fantastic manufacturing companies you find in, in small towns throughout Nebraska, and just carved a niche out and just killing it.

So I'm, I'm interested to know, when you work, when you talk to a client for the first time, how do you discern if they're having a marketing challenge or sales challenge?

Well, I assume it's sales because you're talking to me, so it's kind of what I figured. Yeah, so, so I, I, I will ask them a bunch of— I do discovery with them. So anytime I get referred or I have a company call me up and say, we think you can help us, we don't know though, uh, how, how do we get to know whether you can help us or not? And I said, listen, let's take 45 minutes face to face, hopefully. If not, we can do a Zoom, and let's just kind of talk. And I'll take them through a series of questions. I'll ask them about their current staff. Do they think they have enough? Do they think they're the right people? What are the compensation plans like? Do they use any sort of technologies? One of my favorite questions is to ask, do you have a sales process? Because a lot of times they'll say, no, absolutely, we don't have a sales process at all. And I said, well, that's— I don't believe that because you have sales, so there's a process. I said, Now you might have many sales processes that are very inconsistent and everybody does it a little bit different. That's where I come in. We're talking sales playbook, consistency, best practices. Basically something that, face it, salespeople don't like it to be on their back looking over your shoulder all the time. They like to be pointed in the right direction, given the right tools, said go get 'em and get out there after it. So when it comes to managing salespeople, you gotta have those key meetings with them, your one-on-one, your team meetings, But then you need to set them up and you need to wind them up and you need to let them go. Somebody told me one time, good salesperson is coin-operated. And that's true. You put the right compensation plan together with congruent goals with the organization and you let them go. So those series of questions are all kind of sales-related, and that's how we get going down the sales path. But I will tell you, when it comes over to the prospecting side of things, name recognition, website, the importance of digital marketing strategies. Now, those are things a little bit outside. I know about them, I don't do them, you do them. And that's when the conversation starts heading that way. That's, that's when I— that's when I bring in the experts, you guys.

And when do you notice then that if you're in an engagement, you realize we do have some, some problems in marketing that we need to address? Is it Is it a lack of lead gen for this, for the, uh, salespeople? Is it, is it awareness? Is it a lack of understanding of the competition? Like, what, what are some of the triggers where you realize I need to get marketing involved?

So for me, I'm looking at purely sales. I want lead generation. I don't care what the website looks like as long as it generates leads. Now it turns out you got to have a good-looking website, professional looking, look like Know what you're doing. So that's very, very important. But some of the things I look at when I go to the website is I look at, does it look ancient? 'Cause that'll just kill you right off the bat if you first look at it. How wordy is it? Some of these websites, you know, it's like they're trying to sell you through the website. So they try to tell you absolutely everything about the product so you can just make up your mind and buy. And I don't read that much. I mean, I think people are lazy readers, especially when you gotta scroll and scroll and scroll to get through something. Also, something I always look up and see if their HTTP has an S in it to see if it's secured, because that tells me something where people don't even know about it. And then Google AdWords, I have clients that use it and use it very effectively, and I have other ones that try it because somebody told them to try it and they don't have an effective strategy and they're just wasting money.

Yeah, lead gen is, is definitely what salespeople generally associate marketing with. And I think it's important. That's, that's, that's the biggest quantifiable thing that a good marketer can do for sales. What about messaging and assistance on even nurturing campaigns to do some follow-up activity? How important is that? Have you seen in the market and the sales work that you do?

So just lately, it's really kind of changed. I came from Well, 30 years ago I got into direct sales, and that's when you picked up the phone, you called. It was cold calling, it was prospecting, and that's, that's the way we did it. Uh, I saw a couple years ago a statistic that basically said that nowadays that the buying decision is something like 75% already made before the salesperson even gets involved because of all the do-it-yourself, uh, stuff that you can find on websites and you can read up on and go Of course, it really matters whether the website's truthful or not, but, you know, to be able to look at all that and be able to make those determinations. I get pinged all the time with companies who help me set appointments, help me do email campaigns, help me do all of these different things. I definitely think you gotta have a strategy, you gotta have a plan, you gotta have dates on a calendar, you need to follow through, you need to make an investment. Too many times I see the à la carte marketing where it's like, well, let's try Google AdWords this month, and the next month it's SEO, and then the next month it's let's change the color of our logo. And there's no rhyme or reason or plan. It's just all over the place. I think you need to sit down, you need to put together a 6-month campaign, a 1-year, a 3-year, and really follow through on it.

Yeah. I mean, you're preaching to the choir here. That's our approach. One of the things that I hear a lot from business owners, and it's very hard for them to find a salesperson that can actually, in their minds, do better than they could themselves. How often do you find that reality out there where the owner is just not able to let go, or as expectations just don't match what reality is?

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes that's an education process when you're talking to the owner who started it. I will always acknowledge that, you know, a good entrepreneurial owner of a company is just naturally a great salesperson. You know, the product, the market, the problems, they just can relate. So when they do hire even very, very good A+ sales players, there's a learning curve. You know, I saw a stat the other day, It takes 9 or 10 months to get an A player fully active and going. And that's a good one. Think what the bad ones take. Some of them never get there. So a lot of times I need to sit down and talk to the CEO of the company and tell them, you know, times have changed. You're never gonna grow the company if you only have one of you who's also trying to run the entire organization. So you need to build an organization, a sales organization, And I'll tell him or her, the CEO, we need to take what you know, what's in your mind, and we need to put it into a process that we need to train to salespeople. Even if we're hiring A+ salespeople and bringing them in here, they don't know your way. And every sale— I've worked for a lot of different companies that sold the exact same product, and guess what? Each time our value proposition was different. Because sometimes we're selling to big companies, sometimes small companies, some, sometimes thought leaders, sometimes companies way, way behind the times. So that's the way it would work.

Yeah, for sure. What are, what are some of the secrets that you find that can get that A-player up to speed faster rather than wait 9 months? Can you get them productive in, in 3 months, in 6 months with, uh, with with your approaches?

Of course we can. Yeah, yeah, there's ways you can do it. First of all, hire a winner. Hire a really good one. And, you know, uh, they always say the first place to look is a referral, and a referral is great because somebody refers somebody who they trust will do a good job with the company. But be careful they're a salesperson. You know, I've met a lot of great people, extremely smart, gift of gab, horrible salespeople because they don't listen. All they do is talk, or, you know, they just, they don't have that empathy button to be able to put themselves in the shoes they're trying to, of the person they're trying to sell to, and it just doesn't work out. So number one, you want to hire the best that you can, and there's different ways to do that. There's things that you look for. I've read enough resumes I can pretty much go through, and a lot of times you get customer service people parading as Salespeople, there's certain key questions you ask such as, you know, tell me about your last commission plan. And if the word commission or the comp plan, if the word commission doesn't enter into the conversation, they're probably, they probably just get a bonus or something like that. But I'm big on using assessments and I use one called PXT Select. And I have a version of it that has a sales slant on it. And I can put people through this when I have my finalists to make sure that they're right for the job. And this has saved me multiple times where I've had fantastic interviews with people with resumes that were just incredible. And I thought this might be the best hire I ever have in my life. And they come out of the self-assessment and they got an extremely low score. And I call them back. I said, I don't know why you scored so low, but for some reason. And then he'd finally— I'd say, your resume looks great. All those awards. He goes, well, those weren't exactly mine. That was the team's award. A team's award? He said, yeah, I was on a team. I was the subject matter expert. I said, who did the prospecting? Oh, not me. That was a salesperson. Who did the closing and negotiated contracts? Oh, that wasn't, that wasn't me. That was a salesperson. So that test saved me. It saved me right there from thinking I was hiring the best salesperson I ever was going to get. They can't prospect or close.

Yeah, that's amazing. What about What about compensation? How should a good salesperson be compensated?

So I like doing compensation plans. As I mentioned, I spent my first 10 years as an accountant, so I'm kind of a numbers guy. So when it comes to— and being on the sales side for 30 years, I understand how a good compensation plan can really incent salespeople. But you got to be careful. You got to make sure that the plan that you put together for salesperson is congruent with the plan that the organization has. Because too many times I've seen the salespeople super excited, they're all getting rich, and the company's losing money and they don't know why. Well, the plans weren't synced up right, or vice versa, the company's making a ton of money but nobody's making any commission. So the thing I look at is, you know, I'll ask people, where do you want your sales? Is there a particular product line? Is there— and I had a customer one time, I said, hey, I said, if I could grant you one wish and one wish only, what would it be? And he said, I need more new customers. I need new logos. We just don't get very many of them. Then I went out and started interviewing the salespeople. I was looking through the comp plans and I went back to the CEO and I told him, I wouldn't sell a new logo for you. You don't pay anything. So we quickly revamped the program. We put some bonus programs in. The guys got in their cars, went out, started visiting people right away. And the funnel all of a sudden filled up with new logos, something they hadn't seen in a while. So, that was a good example of how you kind of change the attitude of the people to drive them in the direction you want them to go.

Yeah, it's human nature, right? Incentive for what you want.

Yeah.

Is there a rule of thumb for like what percent should be commission versus a base? And is it all over the board?

It's all over the board. It's all over the board. I mean, you look at the life insurance salesperson who makes 100% of the first-year premium, and then I think maybe 5% after that. And, you know, I've worked for software companies that it was only 3%, but it was 3% over the 5-year contract of a SaaS-based, you know, it added up pretty good. It was a pretty decent sale. And then a big thing is, when is it paid? Well, it's paid as we earn it. So you sell a 5-year SaaS product, so you make a little every single month for 5 years. Okay, that's one way to do it. Or just say, hey, listen, we'll add it all up, we'll pay a big chunk up front, but that's it. Which is interesting because when you pay more up front, generally a company can pay a lesser percentage. And it's usually a larger company that does this because they have the money. So you can do a much lesser percentage, but the salespeople love it because they get their money now, right? On the other hand, it also, as soon as they get that big check and go, wow, this was great, they realize I got nothing else. And it motivates them like crazy to get out there, go find some more.

Yeah, yeah. How much work do you work, uh, get into on retention? You know, marketing, we realize that sometimes the best way to enhance the value for the business from marketing standpoint is how do you retain more customers versus go out and find new ones, because it's a lot more expensive to find a new customer usually than it is to retain someone. Do you get involved in that much? It's, you know, it's not a direct sale necessarily, but it, it impacts the numbers for sure.

It definitely does. It definitely does. So, you know, it depends on the company too. They bring in me in to fix the hunting side. It's usually the hunting side is broken, and usually retention, usually retention is pretty good with some of my clients. But, you know, where retention is important, uh, then you have a comp— and then, you know, this comes down to the hunter-farmer. And the farmer being the person in charge of the retention, as well as trying to do some add-on sales to that that you want. So the farmer can— so basically put together a compensation plan based on retention and based on growing what I call their portfolio. So let's say that they had a portfolio of $5 million that they were managing, they would be compensated for every dollar that is above that $5 million because two things just happened there. Number one, you kept them, and number two, you sold more to them. 'Cause you might lose a few and then you might sell a little bit more, but it breaks even, you don't make any more money. So you gotta have both of those things happen. So again, you incent the employee to try to hang on to everybody, but also then upsell them. Very good.

Well, I think it's, it's, I think sales is the one thing that's easiest to quantify in a business. And when we look at marketing, it's very difficult sometimes to quantify. How easy is it for you to justify what you do as a fractional professional to clients? Is it a direct ROI with an increase in sales? Or is it a little more indirect because you're, you're on the strategy side as well?

It's a little more indirect. I mean, first of all, sales is truly, you know, measured. I, when I was an accountant, you know, I would go in for my reviews and they'd say the same thing every year. And it was all just, it was just all words to fill out a form and nothing ever really mattered. When I was in sales, you got a quota and you either hit it or you didn't. And I was like, okay, now I like this, because I really like being held accountable that way. So, I think it's very important that, you know, you have those measurements that you need to hit like that. But there are wins along the way. So, I always tell everybody, I say, you'll probably start with one of my engagements, and the one that I do the most is a 3-month engagement called the Genesis Plan. In 3 months, yeah, you're going to start seeing some positive changes. But they're not going to be consistent. You'll see good movement, you'll see some back off, good movement, but somewhere between 6 and 9 months you're going to see good consistent progress if you follow the plans that I put into place that we implemented together. And I give a series of management tools and stuff so you can measure. So there's those goals which are close to sale. So you can figure if there's a year, 2-year sales cycle and I show up for 3 months, probably not going to be a lot of changes by the time I walk out in 3 months. But a year later, pipeline should be full of new things. And you, you need to measure your mile markers too. You just can't wait for the contract to come in and go, oh, there's another. You got to say, okay, what else is important? One thing that I like to measure is the number of face-to-face visits where the salesperson gets in a plane or a car and goes out there, sits down face-to-face with the decision makers, and has a very, very good meeting with them. How many proposals did you send out last week? I know a lot of people like to measure phone calls. I'm not a big phone call measure person because you can fake it way too easy. And then, of course, the contracts that are coming in. But as long as you're measuring, those are different stages within the funnel. As long as you can be filling the funnel and growing all of those stages, and these mile marker metrics will tell you that,, you, you can see growth even though it hasn't hit your top line yet. Yeah.

What did you—

how about during the, uh, pandemic with the face-to-face? Did you just substitute Zoom as an equal measurement of activity?

Well, it was interesting because I had 3 clients at that time and I lost all 3 of them all like the same day. And then 2 hours later somebody called me up and said, hey, I want to hire you. So, so that was good. So I actually got my 3 back within the next 3 days. So I kind of had to swap out But the attitude was different, fully anticipated, we will have this, we will do Zoom meetings. Now, one of the companies was west of Omaha in an area where they weren't too scared about COVID So they allowed me to come in, sit down with them. Another one is about 3 miles from my home. Nope, can't ever go in. COVID's a big thing there. And just so, some of it was attitude, some of it was location, but Zoom became much more accepted, and obviously I go outside the state of Nebraska, you know, since I used to travel the United States. I have people that are out there that I know that refer me to different companies, mostly up and down the East Coast. So I still do that, but it's totally normal to do Zoom. I mean, if you told me even 5 years ago that we'd be closing sales and doing this stuff through video, I'd say you're crazy. There's no, no way anybody's going to accept that. But I think with the new generation coming up who lived on the Apple phone and the video chat and all of that, they, you know, my kids look at me like I'm crazy because I don't do it as much as they do.

Right, right. So how do you like being a fractional sales director?

Oh, I I love it because I run into so many different opportunities, so many different things, different industries. You know, one thing, sales, the process, what you're trying to do is the same regardless of the company, the product, the industry. I mentioned I had been in the insurance software world for a while, but again, every company I worked for was so drastically different in the way that they went about doing things that It was like starting over every time. So today I've been doing this for 3 years. I've done it for 22 different companies in the Eastern Nebraska territory here. And I just love coming in, meeting with the people, talking to them, finding out what their issues are, being able to help them, have them be able to see that the end is near. And there's a lot of great ideas that they have. That they've been talking about for years that all of a sudden I bring up and they'll be, hey, we talked about that. We thought about doing that. We almost did that. And then you also, they start asking about other things that they thought about doing. And then I'd say, see, I prevented you from doing those things because you didn't want to do them. And I think that's what it is for these smaller companies is, you know, 90% of what I do, they probably thought about. I just prevent them from doing all that other crazy stuff that they were thinking about that you know, they read in the book and decided, hey, let's do this one now. Yeah.

What do you think the top criteria are for businesses that want to hire a fractional sales director, somebody who's not full-time but fractional? What do you think the top criteria are?

Yeah, so, so first of all, they have to want to change. They have to say, we're ready for a change. There's, there's a lot of times I will work with CEOs of companies who are like, you know, I'm just not I'm not this. And I always tell them, listen, if you think you got one more bullet in your gun, point it at the target and fire. And, you know, I hope you hit it. But if you don't hit it, you know, come back. And frequently, that's what'll happen is months later, somebody will come back and say, well, we tried it our way and we're ready now. Because I need that frame of mind that they're ready to do it. So, one of the big things I think that we have to offer all of us in the fractional environment is the reduction in risk. I mean, face it, we've done this for decades. We have processes that we follow that are proven over years and years. I follow Sales Acceleration. We got something like 300 to 400 man-years of experience out there that we all share and put our ideas together. So we bring that to the party, and you're basically paying a high-level executive that has worked for Fortune 50 companies the price that you would to an intern to be able to come in. You're going to see speed to market because the things that we know work and doesn't work, we're going to do a quick assessment and we're going to know what the fixes are versus hire somebody, have them get in there. Because if you make a bad hire, you're not going to figure it out for a year. Some people never figure it out. A lot of bad hires stay in position. But, you know, sometimes you just, you know, you make a bad hire and that person's in there and So, it's not only cost you that year, it's cost you all the salary you paid that person because they're not going to pan out. You're going to have to let them go. But it costs you opportunity cost. That's the biggest thing. You know, you saw something in the market, you went to capture it, and it got away from you. Yeah.

Yeah, they got to be ready. I like that. I find that to be so true, especially with fractional, because you have to have the mindset of I'm ready for help and I'm ready to consider a different way of accessing help than a traditional full-time role. I definitely love what you said about being, you know, less, less risk by bringing in a fractional. I think of it as also like more valuable. It's just the opposite side of the same coin because it's risky hiring a full-time person. You're paying full-time rate wages. It's harder to get rid of. And it's, it's harder to manage. With, with a fractional professional, whether it be a salesperson, marketing person, a CFO, CTO, they've got a very specific set of priorities they're working on for you. And they're accountable month to month to delivering on those priorities. Otherwise, they don't have a contract the following month. So it's a, it's a much better arrangement. I think it's, I think it's the best opportunity out there right now for leadership teams to take a look at is the fractional executive.

Absolutely.

How do you, you know, what do you think about your lifestyle as a fractional professional? What are some of the pros and cons for your, you know, in your experience over the last several years doing this?

So as I mentioned, for 30 years I spent a lot of time in planes and Marriott. My kids are grown now in their late 20s, and I missed a lot of things. I missed a lot of things. You know, when I was home, I was home. That was good. You know, I usually worked for companies who were remote, so I could sneak away in the middle of the day for my son's first grade, uh, uh, birthday, sit in those little chairs and eat those cheese sandwiches and stuff like that. So you had those, but I also, you know, my daughter was a dancer in her senior year in high school. I missed the, the parents' night because I was, I was stuck in a— trying to get from the airport and I was stuck in traffic. And so, you know, it's good to have better control on that travel side of things, especially now with the COVID thing. And oh man, it's just It's just such a nightmare. Plus, you know, I mean, you're your own boss. I can't complain about my boss anymore because it's me. And I just really enjoy it. And it's a combination you got to do. I got to prospect, I got to sell myself and my services and what I do and get people confident. But once somebody says, "Rob, we want to go with you, that makes sense," I have to ensure that they are successful. I have to do my very best job and I work very hard surround myself with tools. I can leverage 200 other people in Sales Acceleration, uh, who may have encountered a similar type situation. I got all sorts of tools that have been vetted by Sales Acceleration corporate, uh, that I can bring to the party, um, and help anybody out. And I just love coming in and just being able to think to myself, I have no idea what I'm walking into. And then after I start the discovery process, the wheels start turning. It's like, okay, Now I see it and I start involving everything I just talked about.

Yeah, that's great. So what do you like to do outside of work?

Oh, I attempt to play golf. Not very good at it. So I do that. I like to travel. We like to travel, try to once a quarter go someplace substantial. So that, that's always a lot of fun.

Where's the last place you went?

A substantial—

Greece. Oh, I was just looking at, uh, I was just contemplating a trip to Greece myself recently. What did you do in Greece?

Uh, 5 days in Athens and 11 days on a Viking cruise ship to round to all the small islands.

Oh my gosh, so you were, you were there quite a bit.

It was a bucket list. Yeah, it was. Okay. Yeah, then every year we go to Aruba. We have a timeshare, so we're going in about 3 weeks. We're headed down to Aruba. Okay.

What was the highlight of Greece?

The highlight of Greece? Yeah, I liked Athens. I really liked Athens. You know, we, we were on a Viking cruise ship, and in case Viking, in case you're listening, I'm not bashing you. Wonderful, great first class. I was one of the younger people there. Place shut down at 10 o'clock. There's no casino, there's no music at night, no dancing. Okay, so, uh, yeah, we, we prefer the the later night crowd, I guess. Yeah.

So Athens, you were there 5 days. Is that, is that plenty of time to see everything?

I think so. I'd go back to Athens again.

What was, uh, what was your favorite island?

Oh boy, I liked Crete a lot. Uh, we went into Turkey. I can't remember the name of the town. We were the first cruise ship there in 2 years. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah, so, so they had a band out there and dancers. Boy, they were They were appreciative. Of course, we felt guilty, had to buy a rug from them.

So, uh, so how was that difficult with, uh, passports to go from Greece to Turkey, or is it— was it pretty easy to get in and out?

You know, it was real strange because they, uh, they asked us— the Viking cruise ship asked us for our passports. So we all gave our passports over and they said, we're going to clear these through Turkish customs for you and we'll give them back to you. Well, then we found out that like 3 in the morning, as the boat's out there floating around in the harbor, we finally got approval. And they didn't even need to see the passports. They were like, yeah, just get off. They, you know, there's, there's nobody else here, you know, another cruise ships. So we just came walking off and it was, it was, it was real interesting.

What's another bucket list for you?

Place for me? Where would it be next? I don't know. Yeah, well, Aruba every year, because that's just a great place to relax. Plus the time zone is fairly close. So, you know, being a fractional guy, I can still, I could still work while I'm in Aruba, so that keeps things going well. So, um, been to Italy, so we crossed that one off. We went to northern Italy. I think southern Italy would be a good place. Yeah, my wife's been over to England. I haven't been to England or Scotland. That'd be good, maybe for the Husker game next year, huh?

That would be a fun one. I think that'd be a blast. That'd be awesome. Yeah, what about South America? Ever spend any time down there?

Uh, no, not a lot. Been to Mexico a couple times. I got Montezuma's Revenge last time, and so It doesn't, doesn't bring back good memories, uh, from— we were Cozumel at the time. But, but yeah, but well, Aruba is like 11 miles from, uh, from Venezuela, so.

Okay, so Aruba is pretty much South America. Yeah. Or Central America. I, I have— my geography is blurry when it gets too far south.

Yeah, we're in South America.

Yep. We're thinking about a trip to Machu Picchu with a group of, uh Oh wow, to do some hiking, uh, and that, that sounds amazing to me.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you ever spent any time in Asia or Australia or South Pacific?

In Asia, when I was an accountant working at Mutual of Omaha, um, I was on the international accounting team and we started a branch operation, so somebody needed to set up budgeting and accounting. So I had 3 different trips, each one lasted 2 to 3 weeks. So So it was great, you know, I was 25 years old and the Japanese staff came up to me, they thought I was a genius and I was like, why? They go, well, the big American parent company would send their very best, you know, and it's a big company and their very best is only 25. And I was like, nah, I'm the one that's not married.

Yeah, that's not how it works in the US.

That's why I'm here.

You get the single guy, not the best guy.

But it was fun. It was great.

How did you make the leap from accounting to sales?

You know, I just— so my dad, he worked at Mutual of Omaha and he was in charge of the Southwest Division, all the insurance agents and stuff. And they always had the President's Circle every year and big meetings and stuff. My dad always told me, he said, you know, you want the action, you want the money, you know, it's sales. That's where you got, you know, and I was an accountant, you know, I went on and got my CMA, I got my MBA. I did all the things you're supposed to do to to stand in line and wait to be promoted and stuff. And then I decided that Mutual was just too big for me. I think they had about 8,000 people at the time. So, I went to work for Berkshire Hathaway for National Indemnity. It only had 300 people, and that was too small. And I got an offer from a company in Cedar Rapids that sold accounting software to insurance companies. And I thought, "Well, that's kind of what I should be able to do." So, I went ahead and joined them, moved over to Cedar Rapids. We lived there for 13 years. Our kids were born there. But I was a subject matter expert, the SME, the, you know, the sales engineer. I was in a department of 17 people. I was the only guy. They called me Demo Boy, and I followed 3 people. Demo Boy. Yeah, because sales engineer term didn't exist yet. So Demo Boy. So, I was Demo Boy, and I would go around and I would do the demos and answer the tough questions, and I'd watch the salespeople sell. They did that for about a year and they had to get rid of one of the salespeople. She was overexaggerating what the product could do. And they asked me to take it and I was like, no, I don't think— I don't know anything about sales. And they said, just try it. And my first month into it, I made my very first sale. And that was 1992. And I haven't looked back since. Been in sales ever since.

Yeah, that's a good switch. How did you learn then the your, your sales skills? Did you immerse yourself in training or books, or—

I did, I did. I, I, well, first I was watching the salespeople go out, you know. We had veteran salespeople. I had somebody that worked for Perot Systems, another person that worked for AMS, a huge company that was out there. So these were veteran people that really knew what they were doing, but they didn't always do everything right. So I'd watch them and I'd see what they'd try and it'd work, and I'd see what they tried and fell on their face and thought, Cross that one off the list. Um, try to do something like that. But I remember my very first sales call, I went out to California with our sales rep out of San Francisco. I met her, we went into this insurance company, uh, we went up to the top floor, we sat down with the CFO for an hour. She asked a bunch of questions, she had a yellow pad out, she wrote notes. I smiled and just shook my head a little bit. And when we're leaving, I turned to her, I said, Lynn, I said, what happened? She goes, what do you mean? I said, did he just buy? She goes, no. I said, did he just throw us out? She goes, no. I said, you're the salesperson. Don't you go in and cast the magic spell and sprinkle the fairy dust and hypnotize him and either dies or buys? She says, hey man, she goes, Rob, that's not sales. Sales isn't magic. You know, there's no special magic words. He said, there's going to be some more meetings like this. There's going to be discovery. "Uh, there's going to be demonstrations. There might be an RFI or an RFP." I said, "What's an RFP?" She goes, "Boy, you got a lot to learn." It was almost 1 year to the date that they asked me to move into sales. So, and when I did that, I started reading a bunch of books and just, you know, trying to do, you know, listening to tapes back then, cassette tapes. And went to a Tom Hopkins seminar, you know, he's mostly known for real estate, but But it was interesting, you know, just being around a bunch of 600 other salespeople. And I realized that sales is not magic. It is a process. It is a best practices process that you learn and you hone your skills. And you try, like somebody told me one time, go where you've never gone before because the next time you go there, it'll be easy. And, you know, when I was closing business, there's a few things I tried that I thought, man, this could blow up in my face. And they always seem to work. So put that one in the, in the toolkit.

What are, what are some of your favorite sales books? I know one of mine is Spin Selling. I don't know if you know Rackham. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so the very first sales book I read was Tom Hopkins, The Art of Selling. Second one I read was Neil Rackham, Spin Selling. And the third one was Strategic Selling with Miller Heiman. Okay. Since then, book that I've read a couple times is, uh, Challenger Sales, and that's a good one too if you haven't read that. It kind of, kind of blows up the myth about, well, develop relationships and all this. It's kind of like they did a study and they categorized people into 5 different groups, and everybody thought the relationship seller would be on the top. The relationship seller was on the bottom, and the whole thing was, is that they spend too much time building relationships that sometimes they don't like to give them up, so they don't really try to close and move on to the next one. Where the challenger sale, by the word challenger, it means get you to think differently. And if, face it, if there's 5 different companies and you're one of the 5 salespeople working for your company and you show up and you uncover something that they weren't even thinking about because you have good discovery questions, and then you solve something that they didn't even know was solvable, and you brought some insight to them that they didn't even know about, that completely differentiates you from all the other salespeople. That will help you win business.

Yeah, that's a good one. I'll have to read that. I don't think I've read that book. What's the one that's out recently? Uh, gosh, is Everyone's a Salesperson or something like that? Do you know which one I'm talking about?

No.

No, it's— anyway, it's a I think it's, uh, uh, I'll come— I'll think about it later. It doesn't matter. I like SPIN Selling because that, that was the most natural style for me personally. I, I got into sales— I'm a little bit like you. I was an engineer turned salesperson, so I had to kind of make that same similar transition or journey that an accountant does into sales and had to self-teach, self-taught, and to learn it all on my own. I did go to a couple workshops, but most of it was just book reading and just practice time, trying to figure it out.

You know, nothing beats practice. You can read all the books, but until you get out there and do it— my very first sales job, our price point was anywhere between $30,000 and $60,000. So it was not, it was not all that expensive in the world of software. You know, you'd close anywhere from 3 to 7 deals in a month. And I got a lot of practice. I mean, I tried a lot of— I said I tried a lot of different things. Yeah, well, that's, that's why I had so many at-bats. Why not?

Yeah, it seems like the old, the old days. Listen to us. Uh, you drove out, you got a lot of windshield time, a lot of cold calls, knocking on doors, going into these little remote areas and trying to sell stuff. Nowadays it's, it's all SDRs and, uh, digital appointment setting, and then your, your marketing qualified leads and appointment setting, it seems different than it used to be.

It's different. I went to Elba, Alabama, but they didn't have a hotel, so I had to stay in Enterprise because that was the big city, and the airport was in Dothan where it's more of a military community. And, uh, you know, that's what you did. You had to go there and show up and get face to face. You'd never go there today. You'd never— and they wouldn't expect it. They wouldn't want you to.

Yeah, things have changed, haven't they? Yeah. Well, I think it's good that you now are in a position to teach those, uh, those old tricks to, to the, to the new people to keep them, I guess, up to speed with, uh, with their needs. And, um, what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you, Rob? And is there a preferred way for them to reach out?

Yeah, my, uh, one of my email addresses is rob@osxsales.com. So right up here, osxsales.com. Go ahead and reach out to me. I do have a 10-question self-assessment that people seem to love to take. It generates a report right away, tells you the strengths and weaknesses of your sales organization— not you personally, of your overall sales organization— through your own eyes. Of course, the self-assessment. So, uh, that's, that's kind of a cool way to go in and and check things out.

Yeah, and we'll have those in the show notes too, so everybody get easy access to that and that email as well. Well, this has been great. I, I thought, uh, time flew by pretty quickly there. We had a good conversation. Uh, any last thoughts? Any, any parting words from the salesperson?

My favorite quote that I invented, it was, you can hire the best salesperson on the planet which if you put them into a sales organization that's not built correctly, they're going to fail miserably. I've seen too many great salespeople just burn and crash because sales organization never gave them a chance. And that's what I do. I work on the organization side of things so that those great salespeople can excel.

Well, that's great. Well, good. Well, I look forward to talking further. We'll see you tomorrow in our regular scheduled Fractional Professionals meeting and We'll talk soon, Rob. Thanks a lot.

Talk to you then.

Bye-bye. All right, see ya. 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 YorCmo, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YorCmo.com. YorCmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.