Teaching The Students Of Sales - John Chapman - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #46

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 a highly accomplished, respected executive with a proven ability to transform and lead a business through periods of downturn and growth. He has 30-plus years of experience leading high-level sales efforts in startups and established international companies in retail, manufacturing, and energy. He also served on the board of directors for several startups and has been a member of the board of directors for Junior Achievement since 2002.. He is founder of JL Chapman Group. Welcome, John Chapman. How are you, John?

I'm doing great. How are you?

Good.

Um, what's the weather like in Omaha today?

Oh my gosh, we are like in the best weather of the year, I think. I, I love fall and, uh, this is the fall time, and but we have not gotten to the cold part of fall, so 50s, 60s, sunny. Leaves are falling.

Oh, it's beautiful. And I think you and I spoke before. I actually traveled out to Omaha in 1979 and played in the College World Series.

Yes, the America's Pastime, College World Series. Well, we'll talk a little bit about that, I'm sure, here in a minute. But I'd love to get us started with a question I like to pose to all my guests is, what is something that you think that you're interested in or know about that other C-suite leaders should be aware of or thinking about these days?

Well, you know, one of the things that— let me start off by saying, when I got my MBA 21 years ago, one of the first classes I took was a strategy class. And as an undergrad, you don't take strategy, and the professor was world-renowned, Ron Beliga. And so somebody asked him the question, what strategy? And so he said, he poised this particular problem this company was experiencing, and he started pointing at students in, we had 55 souls, cohorts, and taking the class, and it was at Wake Forest University. And he went around the room and he pointed at me and I said, well, this is what I would do. And he said, well, that's just what the company did. And I said, well, that's what I do every day. I solve problems and look for opportunities. Isn't strategy and sales the same thing? And of course, we got into this huge discussion because I was the lone sales guy in the class. A lot of HR, finance, uh, there was a few marketing people. And so they got in this debate. And so I truly believe companies, not all companies, but companies give salespeople lip service. It's go forth and multiply. And so I've looked at sales as very strategic in the work I do. It has to be strategic. What problem are you trying to solve? What's your value proposition and how do you marry that value proposition up with the prospect you're calling on? And it's got to be, you know, a focused, focused effort. It can't be things, be all things to all people. And so that's what I do. The second thing that we'll talk about is I'm actually an educator. I started the North Carolina Sales Institute at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Teaching young people the modality of sales. And now I teach— I'm starting the program at East Carolina University, the Academy of Sales Leadership, where we're actually teaching young people how to sell. And you think about in a business, what's the most important number on the P&L in order to make a profit? It's the salesman. And so we're teaching young people how to sell because statistically when they go into the workforce, if you graduate with any major at a university, your first job, 50% of your first job is sales. If you're a marketing major, it's 90%. So we're teaching young people how to sell and we get sponsors in front of the students teaching them. That sales is not a bad word. And, you know, I love the comment. We had a gentleman speaking and one of the sales students said, he doesn't look like a salesperson, you know? So I said, what does a salesperson look like? You and I, I don't think look like salespeople, you know? So they have a, young people have a misconception of what sales is and it's professional, strategic, and it's, It's a noble profession.

What are some of your favorite sales books? Maybe one you teach in your classes.

Well, I love Zig Ziglar. You know, it's, you know, I, you know, See at the Top, How to Close a Sale. I love to listen to Zig because he was partly motivational and a great salesperson. And he teaches the best books. I'm reading Frank Escobedo's book now on sales strategy, which I think is a great book for what I do, is sales is very strategic. Grant Cardone has a good book. Jeffrey Gitmore has a good book. I just finished listening to The Wolf of Wall Street. And it's interesting because I have never been a transactional salesperson. It's, I build relationships, try to help customers solve their problems, use my product or service. And at the end, there's no hard sell here. It's, are we going to do business together or not? And if not, that's okay too. You know, it's still keep in touch, remain friends. And if I can help you in any way, you know, please reach out to me. You know, being a trusted advisor is sort of the word I tell students. As a salesperson.

Yeah, the very first sales book I ever read was, uh, SPIN Selling. I don't know if you remember that one.

It's— oh yeah, actually, it's the curriculum we use. What's interesting about SPIN, and I love Neil Rackham's book, it's the thing it lacks is discovery. Now, what I mean by discovery, if you don't know, if you're a software salesperson and you have a particular software that the buyer is completely unaware of, it's difficult to spin sell that particular product. So it's discovery resistance, I call it. So it's a great format. We teach it at the university. It's, you know, I still use it today. It's, you know, basically the salesperson closes at the end. So, or the The buyer actually closes at the end, not the salesperson. But it misses that part where you have to overcome reluctance to discover. As you know, you call somebody up and I'm not interested. And a good friend of mine, he actually wrote the book What Great Salespeople Do, Mike Bosworth. I love what he says. Can I tell you a story? And that's how you really overcome bioresistance.

Yeah, there's a great marketing book called, um, I think it's, um, Made to Stick.

Yep, read that book.

Yeah, yeah, it's all about kind of the science of storytelling and how to tell a good story that sticks, uh, and resonates with, uh, with your audience. So I think stories are how for, you know, for thousands of years, how we shared information and how we retain it. It's so important in marketing and in sales, certainly.

Absolutely. I mean, you look at cavemen and they etched on the wall the buffaloes and things like that. They were telling a story.

Speaking of cavemen, so when did you start learning sales?

Back in the day, back in the day, you know, I was an accounting major and, uh, and this is, this is the, this is the true story. And I play baseball and as I told you, and so my first, uh, year, um, I was already, uh, 6 credits behind because they didn't want you to take a full load your first year. You played the fall. I mean, you played all the time. I mean, basically December, you took December off and then you were back at it when you go back to school. So between my freshman and sophomore year, I decided to stay at the university. I went to University of Connecticut and studied, take 2 classes and worked in the athletic department, the outside maintenance team. And that summer, the head of the maintenance team was a guy named Henry LaChapelle. And one morning Henry said, uh, Chapman, uh, I want you to grab a rake, some black bags, drive you out to the soccer field, and I'm going to drop you off. And I want you to rake the soccer field into piles, bag it, and I'm going to come up, come back about 11:30, and, uh, you know, drive the truck around the park, soccer field, and throw the bags in the back, and we'll bring back for lunch. So it takes about 10 minutes to drive out because it's beyond the campus where the facilities building— it took about 15 minutes. So on the way out to the soccer field, I said, "La Chapelle's an interesting name, Henry. Are you from this area originally?" And he said, "No, I'm actually from Quebec, Canada." And old Henry smoked Lucky Strike 32s. Wore a big floppy hat and he kept lighting up his cigarettes. I said, "Well, you're from Quebec. How did you end up here at the University of Connecticut?" Well, he said, "I joined the Army." And this was, we're talking, he was of the age of World War II and got wounded in France, ended up, I'm giving you the short version, ended up at Fort Devens in Massachusetts and met a nurse there. That lived in the town next to Storrs, Connecticut, Mansfield, Connecticut. And so while the morning wore on, Henry raked, I bagged, and I asked Henry about Henry. And by 11:30 that morning, he looked at me with this weird grin and said, oh my God, you should be in sales. And I said, why? He said, because this is not what I had planned to do today. I had planned to drop you off, come back at 11:30. You had me doing the work I wanted you to do. And so that's when I learned I really cared about people and I was fascinated with Henry Stewart. And so that's when I realized maybe sales is a, you know, sort of a pathway to what I really wanted to do, which was get in the finance world. But I ended up, when I graduated from college, I delivered soda during the summer for Coca-Cola. They offered me a job when I graduated as an account manager, did that for a year, and just realized that I was a New England boy. I wanted to see the world. So I made some money, took a year off, traveled the world. World. Um, came back home and my father told me, you know, I lived in Rhode Island at the time. My father told me I had a month to find a job and ended up in the home improvement industry working for Stanley, uh, Tools. Oh yeah. So that's how I started. So, um, but that's how I realized that maybe sales was a, was a way to go.

That's great. So what are some of the major skill sets that you have to teach students these days that are the core of them being successful in sales when they get out?

It's really, at the end of the day, you have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you speak. And young people, they just want to go and sell. And that's not what sales is. Sales is really understanding the situation you're in and cultivating that relationship. Just like asking your girl out for a date. It is no different. You have to get to know them. They have to get to know you before you can ever solve their problem. And I always tell students there's transactional sales, like Zig Ziglar, you know, he went from door to door selling pots and pans. I mean, he had to close them that evening or at least the next day in order for him to survive. Those type of sales Amazon does now. So in B2B sales, it's much more relationship-driven and understanding, you know, the wants and needs of the customer at the end of the day. And you only get that by getting to know that customer. So you really have to spend— I tell students, you have to prepare, prepare, prepare before you make that sales call. You just do. It's not smiling and dialing. It's preparing. Make the call, learn from it, and then move the chains down the field. You're not going to close the person right away. I mean, one time in my life, jumped on a plane, Flew to Washington, D.C., met with the buyer. Buyer says, listen, what you sent me, I love. I'm going to print you an order and have a great day. And I said, okay. And I remember getting in the car afterwards. So this is what I love about sales. I have the whole afternoon to tour Washington, D.C. before I fly back. So I went to Georgetown, had a nice meal, you know, toured the Washington Monument, walked, you know, the Mall, drove back to BWI, flew home. I said, but very seldom does that happen, you know?

Right. Yeah, that's, that's not the norm. One of the interesting areas of being in marketing, we align with salespeople all the time. It's one of our core values at Your CMO is that marketing drives sales and the purpose of marketing is to support sales. But an area where there's always confusion is prospecting. And the question often comes up is, you know, is prospecting something that should be owned by sales or owned by marketing? You know, where, where, uh, and you know, where, where does lead generation fit into prospecting? Where's that handoff? And I think it really depends on organizations and how they want to set up their, their systems and processes. But what, what's your feeling about prospecting? Is it a sales function or marketing function?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great— you know, back in the day, prospecting was a sales function. Um, but today, you know, it's a huge funnel out there, and, you know, SEO and the internet and, you know, all that stuff— Google, TikTok— all that drives people into the funnel. Then you have to qualify them, and that, that, that becomes the role once gets to a point where you have a prospect, then the salesperson's job is to qualify. So prospecting really today belongs to the marketing team, but the qualification at the end of the day belongs to the salespeople. And, you know, when I work with companies, you know, you hear this, marketing's not giving me good prospects. And that there's a fine line there. They're doing the best they can. I mean, You know, if you throw out a big net, you know, one of the things that I love to— when I work with companies is, you know, what markets do you want to play in? And within those markets, you know, who's your ideal customer? Can you give me that with any specificity? Most people can't. So really, it's really understanding the markets you want to play in. Once you understand that, then then that becomes, okay, here's our target market, you know, Mr. Marketing and Mrs. Marketing, let's go after it in such a way that we can get prospects down the funnel. And then it's our job as salespeople to pick up the phone and call them and qualify at the end of the day.

Yeah, I think you're so right. Marketing is a prospecting role and qualification is a sales role. But sometimes you'll get salespeople that want to— just want to take the order and they think that's their role. And unfortunately, it's not so easy just to be an order taker. That's not much of a sales role at all, in my opinion.

Yeah, I have a young student of mine actually works for a company that he's given leads, transactional sales, he's making a ton of money. But he said, every week I go in, I get a ton of leads, I close sales, I don't get to build relationships. And he said, you know, I'm ready to go to a company where I can build relationships. Because, you know, I talked to one of my former buyers the other day on the phone and, you know, we, hadn't done business in 15 years. He's president of a company now, and we just, we just love to, you know, he's my friend. I mean, we became friends over the years because we developed a trust. And so I have those relationships from so many years back that, you know, I tap into when I'm, you know, trying to help companies grow their business. You know, can you, can you point me in the right direction? So So I truly believe that if you're in the transactional sales business, it's going to wear on you at the end of the day, as this young student of mine has claimed. And like I said, he's making bank. I mean, there's a 5 and a couple more than 4 zeros in front of it. He's doing very, very well, but he's just not happy. And I always tell young people, you don't know what you don't know, you know. So, but get to a place where you feel comfortable selling the product, you like the company, the culture, they give you good tools to be successful, you know, you have a support network that supports you and encourages you, and, and that's where you'll find a home at the end of the day. And you'll prosper there.

What do you think the best compensation structure is for salespeople?

Well, as a young person, salary plus some type of bonus. I mean, they freak out if it's straight commission, but I always tell students, when you get to a point in your career and you've established a customer base, take a look at going straight commission. You'll be surprised how much money you can make. Believe it or not, companies look at that and, you know, it becomes very profitable if you're on salary plus commission. Now, some companies are structured that way. You know, I was when I was a corporate officer. I was paid on EBITDA, you know, in sales, but, you know, drugs profitable sales, you know, get, you know, cash at the end of the day. That's what I got paid on. But as a young salesperson coming out, you know, getting some type of commission plus a base salary where you can, you know, at least get an apartment and live, right, get out of your parents' basement. So as you move, you know, as you get more and more seasoned, I'm a big believer in straight commission, but there's some companies just don't offer that at the end of the day. You know, if you want to be in— one of my students is insurance sales. He's done phenomenal, but he had a support network. He lived with his parents, you know, when he started off. But this is, you know, he stuck to it and now he's got 3 people working for him. You know, he's bought his first house, had a couple of babies. You know, just rock and roll. So, um, coming out of college, salary plus some type of bonus structure. But as you get older, you know, commission is the way to go.

Yep. So tell me a little bit about your College World Series experience. Not everybody gets a chance to play in the World Series of baseball in Omaha, Nebraska. How was that?

It was, it was so much fun because you're, um, you know, you're, you know, you get to fly. And it's actually the second time I was ever on an airplane. The first time I actually played in the College Baseball Series 2 years earlier. And it was interesting, um, you know, we get to Omaha and, and there was a breakfast for us. And what was fascinating, and I can't remember the the catcher's name from Arkansas. We sat next to each other. We realized we had played each other in the Senior Babe Ruth World Series 2 years earlier and actually had gone to the breakfast together and sat next to each other there as well. So that was interesting. Now, we played Texas in the first game, and we had a guy that could throw 100 miles an hour, and we were up 7-4 going into the 7th inning. And, you know, we were, you know, We were a long shot and our pitcher walked the first batter, the top of the 7th, and then he tried to pick him off first and it was— so he went to 3rd, he walked the second batter, no outs. So we took him out and then basically Texas bats came alive and we ended up losing 11-7. And then we had to play Cal State Fullerton. It was pouring pouring rain that day, and, um, we went to a— back then, you know, you could drink at 18, so we decided, you know, we're gonna play today. So we went to a place called Mickey's. I don't know if it still exists.

Um, yeah, I don't know. The, uh, stadium moved, so all the old places are no longer the go-tos.

Yeah, the Mickey's was a, was a local eatery, so we went there. We were eating um, you know, our dinner, and we were supposed to have the night game that day. So I ended up walking outside and I said, hey guys, you know, the sun's out. So we run back to the hotel and the bus is there. Where you guys have been? And so we ran up and, um, the change really quickly. They took us out to the stadium. We played Cal State Fullerton, and they beat us handily. And so it was You know, if you lose 2, you're out. But there was a guy from Cal State Fullerton that hit a ball so hard that it went straight up in the air. And Rosenblatt was 420 dead center. And I remember our center fielder went back for the ball. He was standing at the warning track looking for the ball. I mean, everybody lost it in the night sky. I mean, it was hit that hard. And actually bounced right next to him, went over the wall, but I have never seen a ball hit that hard in my life. It was a great experience. A lot of my family came. It was just— the town goes out of their way to treat you right. And I remember we went out to a ranch when we got there and had a barbecue. And it was funny, our sports caster. Andy Young, who traveled with the team, who was our, you know, sports announcer, uh, the host at the end of it, you know, was thanking us and realized that Andy wasn't even a player, but he ate the most. So it was a great experience.

Oh, those opportunities are rare, and sometimes life-changing. How did that change your view of the world and what you did from there?

Well, you know, being an athlete, you know, you have to, you know, all the, all the tools you need to be in sales, you know, discipline, time management. I mean, you know, I had to— you had to, you know, you had to get your schoolwork done, you had to go to practice, stay in shape. So, you know, all those, you be competitive. And, you know, one of the things that I instill on students is a competitive edge at the end of the day and time management. And, you know, I talk to students, don't be afraid to lose fast. And what I mean by losing fast in sales, don't waste anybody's time. You know, you're there, if it's the square peg in a round hole, you know what, This isn't a good fit. You know, don't, don't try to sell something that's just not going to work out in the long run. I always tell you what I would recall on prospects. Is this something you're interested in? And do you, do you want to continue the conversation? And, you know, if they said no, it's not, then, you know, it was an objection I would try to overcome. But at the end of the day, I could get a sense that, you know, this was not going to, you know, be a good fit for either one of us and just move on. But, you know, you know, you got to get yourself psyched up to make a call at the end of the day. And preparation, just like practice, you know, uh, baseball or football or any game you play, you know, you practice your, your pitch. You, you know, if you have a big presentation, practice your presentation. Just don't get up there and wing it, you know. Zig Ziglar always said, listen to your voice, you know, recording, record yourself, you know, use voice inflection when you can, understand body language. I mean, these are all the things that I've learned over the years that I learned basically from playing sports.

Yeah, I think sales is one of those skill sets that if you learn it at an early age, you can apply it throughout the rest of your lifetime in whatever role you have. And as an entrepreneur, as a leader, you're constantly finding yourself in sales positions, non-traditional sales positions. I think it's Daniel Pink has the book, you know, To Sell Is Human or something like that, where it's just part of what we do. We're constantly having to solve problems, influence people and make sure they're happy about it. And that's kind of the sales process in a nutshell.

And so, you know, it's interesting you bring that up because I never, you know, worked for Fortune 500 companies. You know, we did a lot of product knowledge training, but no sales training. That's what's fascinating. So I had no method until I read the book Spin Selling back you know, in the '80s. I said, oh wow, there is a process here, you know. And of course now, you know, that I teach, there's many processes out there. But again, it gets down to aligning with the buying criteria. Does your product or service align with the buying criteria? And you have to, have to figure out a way it does that. And, and, uh, I go back to what I said earlier, it all takes research prior to That sounds cool.

All right, let's fast forward. You mentioned a bit earlier, um, before we jumped on the call that you had a life-changing epiphany and moment at 55. Not to, uh, not to age you, that was just like yesterday, right?

That was 2 days ago.

2 days ago. Um, can you share what happened and what was going on that changed your life? And yeah, what it did for you.

You know, in the early '90s, I, I, I, I was recruited to come to Greensboro, North Carolina by this, this guy named Hank Levin. He had this rinky-dink company, and, um, and I remember sitting with him and just liking— I liked him a lot. And, uh, and, and the products he sold at the time, I, I told him, I said, I, I can't help you, you know. I, you know, they're mature. You're in a mature industry, you know. You need, you need to— you just don't— the just products aren't going to, aren't going to sell. I mean, you're, you're in maturity. And he said to me, he said, John, I'm actually merging with another company. Would you be, um, willing to fly up to, uh, Massachusetts and walk through that facility? And I did, and I said, wow, I can do something with this company. So we ended up merging the two companies. We ended up working together for 16 years. We grew the business to— from basically $11 million at the time to $100 million and sold it. And this was 2009, 2010, during the financial crisis. And And so in 2012, I was still— so I started consulting in the home improvement space. And there was in 2012, Hank Libby drank himself to death and died. And I went to his funeral and it was sad. 72 years old, great guy, wonderful man, and just sort of lost his purpose in in life after we sold the business. And so I did a vision board after the funeral. And then that's fascinating. And the vision board was a picture of a classroom. And so the very next day, there was an ad in the paper to teach the one sales class at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. So I applied for it, started teaching there. And Joe, the first class It was 19 souls in it. I prepared like it was a million-dollar deal, walked into the class and asked the students, you know, who wanted to be in sales. None of them raised their hands. And I don't know if you remember the Shah, my mother, but he was teaching at the NYU and he taught the wrong class for about an hour. And realizing that, you know, So I finally said, is this the sales class? And the student said, yeah. And I said, why are you taking it? Of course, you know, they just sat there with me. All right, I said, who wants to be an entrepreneur? So they all raised their hand. I said, well, good, I'm in the right class. And they said, what do you mean by that? And I said, well, what do you need to be an entrepreneur? And they said, well, a product or service and a business plan. And I said, what do you do with that product or service? "We have to find investors." And I said, "What's that called?" "It's different," they said. I said, "No, it's selling. You have to sell. First of all, if you're an entrepreneur, you have to sell yourself. You have to sell investors. You have to sell partners, and they can help you manufacture or help you scale it. You're selling 24/7, 365 and then sell a customer and get paid for it before you run out of money, you are selling like you never sold before in your life. And so one of the students who was not an entrepreneur said to me, well, I want to be a CFO. I said the same thing. And I brought up Daniel Pink's book to sell. You've got to sell your ideas, your numbers. You know, is this a healthy balance? Sheet or healthy, you know, profit and loss statement when you're talking to investors. You gotta, you know, no manipulation. Everything is about influence and using your influence, you know, to make change. And that's all sales is. So, um, yeah, everybody sells. It's our—

so that all started from a— all started from a vision board.

Yeah, that's how I ended. And so what's interesting is then the department said, you know, what do you think about a home sales program? I said, do universities do that? He said, very few. But if you, if you do a good job, you'll attract sponsors from all over the country. And we did. And they want, they're, they want access to talent because they're looking for sales talent. And so there's a lot of schools now that actually, uh, teach sales, create sales programs, sales centers. And it's a great collaboration with the, you know, they're not our competitors. I mean, there's some great people out there teaching sales. But one of the lessons that, you know, the dean here asked me at ECU, what's the biggest lesson you learned? I said, if you're going to put sales in front of the students, you have to have somebody that actually was in sales. You cannot teach it textbook. Yeah, for sure. It can't be— they won't believe you. It's just intuitive at the end of the day. So it's got to be somebody that's been there, done that, got the medal, that teaches sales. You know, I use this book as sort of a base.

What is that, Selling Business Partnerships?

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it uses terms in there that I've never seen seen before. As a matter of fact, you know, their midterm I took, you know, at the beginning of the semester, I got a 65 on it. So I went back and looked at all the questions, you know, just, you know, you know, what's the best form of, you know, it's a referral, but they don't use it as— they use it as a continuous chain. You know, it's like one of the questions, what's the best form of getting business? A continuous chain. Which is a referral. You know, I, you know, I'm not going to make students memorize what a continuous chain is, but I want you to know what a referral is. That's, that's the best form of the, you know, can you refer me to somebody? If you can, that's a great lead to your next customer, especially if you're insurance or working for Tom James or selling, you know, um, you know, instruments that are difficult to get in front of the people at the end of the day.

Yeah, I think the most important skill that entrepreneurs need to have is trust. And the most important component of building trust or of sales is building trust. And so, you know, trust-based selling is, I think, the key that you find out over time that building your ability to build trust quickly is going to differentiate you as a salesperson from—

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, and what I have to do is build trust with the students. I had a great story that, you know, it's, um, so we started, you know, I had taught my first class at UCU. I'm going to start a sales club. And this young woman, um, I said, would you consider joining the sales club? And she said, I'll think about it. And, uh, you know, and I tell the students, that is an objection, and it's usually a no. And people tell you to think about it. Well, now this young woman is the vice president of the sales club, and she actually told one of our sponsors that, uh, you know, her dad was in sales, and, uh, and that, you know, you really have to care about the students at the end of the day. I, I keep in touch with them amazing amount of my former students that are working all over the country, and they're, they're my best referrals now, you know. At the end of the day, they found success with companies, and, and they talked to their senior leadership about finding help. They said, you know, call John Chapman, because I'm usually pretty good at pointing young people in the right direction. I know whether where their strengths or weaknesses are, whether it'd be a good fit, where there's not going to be a good fit at the end of the day.

As an educator, you've had a chance to teach through the pandemic. And I think as a salesperson, the pandemic has changed sales forever. What would you say some of the maybe fundamentals of that change are, some of the skills that salespeople need to learn now that they need to learn before with this remote Zoom-based communication that is so prevalent in our world today?

You know, people ask this question to me all the time. Nothing's changed. It really hasn't. And you still have to develop trust. You still have to build that, you know, build your sales pipeline. Nothing will ever replace a person-to-person sales call. Nothing. Breaking bread with somebody, coming to their office, visiting them in person. However, we have tools now that can help us facilitate sales better. But making that first call usually is a Zoom call. But I tell— and I actually sat on the Brooks Group, which is a company out of Greensboro, North Carolina, during the pandemic. I sat on a council of sales executives through this whole pandemic, and it was fascinating to me. The seasoned salesperson took to the technology very quickly. The young person didn't, and you would think the opposite was true. And but at the conclusion Nothing is gonna ever replace getting out there, human on human, making a sales call. Use the technology, but it's not gonna replace it at the end of the day.

Would you say technology's been more of a prospecting qualification tool than a sales tool?

Yes. I, you know, at the end of the day, let's, again, marketing, You need to qualify somebody. You don't gotta— unless you've done your research and this is actually somebody you really want to meet anyways, uh, most of the qualifying should be done via, you know, a virtual reality. We have Zoom or some type of modem that allows you to at least meet the person face to face at the end. Yeah, but once you qualify You know, get on a plane and go see. You know, people may argue with, you know, I want my people to go out and see them. I always tell people, you know, let's say you have a big customer, you're going to see Amazon in Seattle, and you've always wanted to meet Costco. You know, set up an appointment with Costco, go see them. Don't do it virtually if you can actually meet them face to face.

Yeah, I'm, I'm in some agreement with that. I think the, the value of face-to-face in some ways is even greater now than it used to be because it's not as common. And so there's a real opportunity there in the, in the sales approach to deliver, um, face-to-face presentations, discovery face-to-face. Uh, certainly qualification via Zoom is is practical and makes a ton of sense. I will also add on the delivery side, as a fractional professional, we have a very relationship-built service offering. And so trying to deliver that level of service remotely is difficult. And so we've instituted mandatory in-person kickoff calls and or collaboration sessions and quarterly collaboration is preferred over Zoom or Teams. That's changed our relationship with our customers quite a bit. First, it was a little difficult to move the ship in that direction, but now that we're doing it, everyone, the clients and our CMOs, see the value in that in-person work that we do, that we used to do mostly remote even before the pandemic. We did a lot of work. You just can't replace an in-person meeting. You just really can't. You can't get to know somebody the same without being in person.

Well, and you meet, you know, you're in a meeting and you can see the body language in meetings. I mean, it's just, it's, there's just nothing replace it. So, yeah, nothing will replace it.

So what else do you like to do for fun, John? Any, anything? What do you do when you're not selling or teaching?

I, um, I do a lot of reading. I, I do, um, I love history. Um, just finished Grant's book. Uh, it was a long one, but it's fascinating. The things that we're experiencing today grand experience back in the, you know, the Civil War and afterwards when he was president. It's fascinating to me, you know, history sort of repeats itself. Um, I play golf, not very well. I walk a lot. Um, I have two little— which I should say, we have two little toy poodles that I like to get out there and walk every morning. And I've got a boat down at the— in New Bern, uh, North Carolina that I like to take out and tool around in. So, but, you know, I'm a big believer in continuous learning. Somebody asked me when I was going to retire, and I said, you have to take me out of the pine box. I can't imagine the joy I get being in front of young people. It's just, there's nothing like it. There's actually nothing. Yeah, teaching them life skills. They just don't know what they don't know, and I try to give them the life skills they need to, to at least— because I will get text or an email from a student, you're not going to believe that, remember you brought that up in class, and it actually happened, you know. So that's always a good feeling, and I love hearing from students and how they're doing.

Do you bring in, uh, guest lecturers to students as well? Other, other sales?

Yeah, you know, yeah, as sponsors they get to— they get access. Yeah, they come in and teach the students. One of my dear friends, a guy named Brian Flanagan, he's actually speaking to the sponsors on the 16th. He actually worked for Zig Ziglar for 6 21 years. And we became friends through what they call the Sales Educator Foundation. And where there's actually— it's so funny because you'll be at these meetings and you get to just some of the neat things that they're doing in the field of sales to teach young people. It's mind-boggling, you know, using improv. You know, I do a class on improv. I do a class on, you know, a professor at VCU did this, Aaron, I can't remember his last name, on the use of texting, what that does to you. It's fascinating, the results when you do those type of exercises in front of students because, and I tell students, and I actually talked this summer You know, the cell phone's an addictive— it's just addictive. And, you know, it's like open up the cabinet at 13 or 14, drink the liquor. Social media is— it's good, but you need to shut it off. And I've sort of given up on it in the classroom, you know. I just— I just, you know, have your cell phones, you know, don't be texting back and forth, you know, when Whatever they're doing is more important than what I'm trying to tell them. I just, like I said, I used to be no cell phones, but now I've just come back with it. You know, I even told one student, you guys are addicted to it. Oh, we're not. I said, well, can you turn it off? No. But I said, as you get older, you'll realize that it is distracting. You really want to focus and get some work done, turn it off. You know, it's like, you know, I don't remember who brought this up, somebody went on vacation and, uh, got back and, you know, they had 1,500 emails. 3 of them were important, right? You know, it's just, yeah, and they really could wait for a week. At the end of the day. But I also say sales is 24/7. Even if you're on vacation, you still have to check in and make sure the balls keep moving at the end of the day.

Yeah, I think that's the hard part of the sales life. Uh, it is a— there's a demand or an expectation, I should say, that you're responsive, um, more often than not within a 24-hour window. And so it's that 9-to-5 worker is not going to excel in a sales role if they wait till 9 the next morning to respond to that email or that text or that in, in, you know. And, and I find that, um, support team members need to know that as well. If you're going to be an inside support, and that's where marketing kind of sometimes blends into sales, you know, marketers generate leads, but you got to be responsive to get that, you know, prospect warmed up for a qualifying call. And if you wait too long, the prospect's going to go away. They're not interested in me.

So I tell a great story back before we had— you remember well, you may, you're 50. I'm a little old, a little more seasoned than you. I used to know where all the places where pay phones were. Oh yeah. Stop and, you know, dial into my voicemail, listen to my voicemail. And used to go up to— I had a place up in New England and took the kids up there for this, for the month of August. And every day— and we had a big trade show in the middle of August, so my customers were going to see me at the trade show. They want to see me before and they didn't want to see me afterwards. But I'd ride my bike into town because we had no phone in the cabin, I'd go to the payphone and dial into the office and see if, you know, everybody called me and deal with any fires I needed to put out, and I'd ride my bike home, you know.

So yeah, I had the— I had a sales job about, uh, my second job out of college. I was driving around western Missouri and eastern Kansas, um, from little town to little town, and I knew where every cell phone, every payphone was in town. I had my MCI card and I dialed 1-800 number to get into the office. Yep, yep, yep. Those were, those were the days. And somehow we were productive.

We got stuff sold. I actually— you'll appreciate this. So I'm sitting in front of the buyer at Home Depot. You know, this is back in 19— I'm going to date myself, 1984. And he says, John, I'm gonna like what I see, um, I'm gonna fax you an order. And so I didn't know what a fax was, and I just sat there. He said, John, I'm gonna fax you an order. And so I was smart enough to realize that this is the end of the meeting. I left. I remember driving back to the office and saying to, uh, The receptionist, hey, I think we got our first order from Home Depot. She goes, yeah, it's on the fax machine back there. And it was all, you know, think about it, that has come and gone in our life, my lifetime.

I've got one funny fax story. About 10 years ago, we were doing some work for a client, and I've got a little video production company that did some marketing, advertising design work, and we ended up working for a dentist. Um, it was a, an endodontist. They did root canals. So his customer was dentists. He was looking for referrals. And we did a, uh, marketing, um, like Halloween. It was this, this time of year, uh, and I forget, you know, but something around, you know, candy causes, you know, whatever, dentist problems. Talk— if you got anybody need a root canal, call us. But we came up with really clever message and design. And I came up with the idea because I noticed that all the dentists still had fax machines. And so I said, well, why don't we fax this to the dentist? This is going to be unique. They're not going to get a flyer over fax very often. So we took this really beautiful kind of color, full-color sales document marketing piece, and we faxed, like, I want to say 750 dentists in the Omaha area. The calls were off the hook. And I'm like, yes, it's working. Well, everybody was calling because we were jamming up their fax machines. There was so much data on this full-colored, pixelated document that it was just eee, eee, eee, eee. They couldn't stop it. And so they were calling to complain. So I told the dentist, I told the endodontist, like, all right, well, at least we got their attention, but let's not do that anymore. Well, the endodontist decided to do it again the next day. Like, that was not a good idea because then it got even worse calls. But anyway, so there is, uh, there are channels to get people's attention and different ways to get it.

That was the takeaway. Way there.

It was fun.

So what are some of your biggest challenges, Joseph?

My biggest challenge? Well, I've got a— I've got a few personally, professionally. The, the biggest challenge that I'm trying to solve right now is remote work. And when I say remote, we have a large team of fractional CMOs and marketing coordinators and support team members that all live, that all work remotely. And some live across the globe in the Philippines, some live in Mexico, some live in the US, and they're all remote first. So the challenge is, how do you build a remote team that is strong with culture is aligned and is motivated to show up, do the work. And we've got a really good team, but the traditional tools out there for leading an organization, things like EOS, Traction, or Scaling Up, or Four Disciplines of Execution, OKRs, The Great Game of Business, all of those tools are challenged by this remote workforce and this communication difference between in-person and virtual. I'm spending a lot of energy trying to figure out how we lead our teams better. What I've come across is what I call decentralized leadership. It starts with the idea that everyone in the organization is a leader at every level. And that we have teams of leaders, not leadership teams, and that we use our time in meetings to build teamwork in addition to making the big decisions for the organization. And that approach, although it's simple, when you go deep into it and you start treating everybody and expecting everybody to be a leader at every level of the organization, it starts to build ownership and accountability in a different way. And you have to have an intent. You have to have a belief that every— you have to assume a positive intent when you're doing this because there's a large expectation of empowering people at different levels. That when you have a company that's all— everybody's all located in one office, there's a lot of water-cool conversations, a lot of drop-ins to someone's desk or office throughout the day. You can manage by wandering around. When you have a remote team, you don't get any of that. And so it's truly a different way of leading and growing a company. And so we're focused internally quite a bit on implementing these decentralized leadership practices, but it also applies externally because all of our clients, all of them are remote first. We Zoom in 90 days, you know, 90 days at a time, we're on at least once or twice a week via Zoom, and we're trying to build these leadership roles roles within the organization in a decentralized environment, it's very difficult. So we're, we're also looking at how to solve these challenges with our clients as well. It's a fascinating challenge. You know, part of the solution is to create intentional in-person opportunities, as we discussed, but then there's also just the realities of When you have a meeting in a traditional organization, you want to get in and out as fast as possible. You need to have a specific agenda and make it meaningful because no one likes meetings. Well, when you have meetings in a decentralized organization, you need to intentionally extend the meeting and create opportunities for teamwork and team building and catch up and getting to know each other and opening the window, the Johari window, as I say. And that's counterintuitive. So those are some of the things that we're exploring and I'm excited about.

Yeah, it's the future. I mean, because I do work with companies, they're asking me as we come out of this pandemic, do I bring people back to the office? And I said, you know, if they're brand new to the organization, yes, you know, but if they're seasoned, you know, maybe twice a week if they're in town. You know, I, you know, I try— I was a traveling salesperson, you know. Last place I wanted to go was the office, um, after I got back home. I mean, I had my office at home, uh, I'd wander in there, uh, you know, at least once a week. But, uh, you know, when I, when I did manage and lead salespeople, I was in the office, we had meetings, but at the end of the day our meetings were on Monday, and then whoever was in town on Friday, I took them to lunch. And, you know, I didn't see you Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I don't care, or Friday. As long as our Monday morning meeting, you know, when we looked at the metrics, you know, they were all pointed in the right direction, you know, that's how I graded my sales team at the end of the day. Activities that lead to outcomes. That's what I was after.

Yeah, and I think the, the approach that you mentioned where if they're new, bring them in the office, if they're experienced, you know, maybe a couple days a week, and that is the reality, and a lot of people believe that and it makes sense, but the question is why? Like, why would you have a different level of expectation And I think the answer is trust. You don't trust the new people like you trust the seasoned people, and that's okay. But also, you don't trust that you can build culture remotely as you can in person. And so it's exactly the problem with remote work.

It is.

Because in all reality, it's hard to find a person remotely and start to build trust. And having them to get to know you well enough to understand your culture and be part of the team that trusts you. It's a two-way street.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, you know, going out, breaking bread, you know, that, you know, getting to know somebody on a personal level, having a beer after, you know, happy hour, that is so different than, than, um, that's really what I think we missed in this pandemic was that that human-to-human connection that I think people are still longing for, a feeling of belonging, especially young people. They want to feel that they belong at the end of the day. If they feel they belong, then they'll prosper.

That's my biggest challenge.

Yeah, it's a— it's— I'm hearing it. It's a challenge for everybody right now. It's how do you— how do you install culture remote?

Yeah, and teamwork and trust. That's what it comes down to. Yeah. Well, John, I really appreciate your time today. This has been a great conversation. It's been a lot of fun, and we touched on a lot of different topics. So, um, I will, uh, be excited to see if we can get in person someday to connect, and maybe over some golf, or if you want to come back to the College World Series and have a visit anytime, I'm here. You're— we can connect for sure.

Oh, you know that Because you actually go to it every year, don't you?

Generally, there's always an event or two, a game or two that I'll, I'll make. Um, it's super hot though, man. Like, it's, it's so hot that time of year in Omaha. People don't realize it. I mean, it's baseball, it's outside, you're fine, but it is hot.

It's usually great. I just remember the announcer one day saying, um, I thought this was funniest one the announcer announces, um, there's a Ford, you know, I don't know, a Ford pickup truck, license number 625732. Your lights are getting dimmer, dimmer, and dimmer. It's great.

That's funny.

They were pretty— I just remember that was, was great. Yeah. So All right, Joseph, I appreciate it.

Yeah. And for our audience, thanks for listening. If you want to reach out to John, his contact information will be in the show notes. But John, what's your preferred way?

I just— it's John L. Chapman on LinkedIn.

Great. So John L. Chapman on LinkedIn. Well, okay. Well, looking forward to talking to everybody next week. Thanks, John. It is Halloween here today.

Have fun tonight.

I hope the next time somebody watches this, they can recall their favorite piece of candy when, when we've recorded it.

I'm going to tell you, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup right now.

Oh yeah, that sounds good. I always like to get the dark chocolate. That's my favorite. All right. Well, have a great one.

Thank you.

Thank you. 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 execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com. Spelled wrong on purpose.