Training Sellers for Success - Karl Schaphorst - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 38

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. He's a sales coach and leader. He's refined thousands of salespeople into high-performing sales professionals. He helps businesses develop these high-performing professionals and a high-performing professional culture. He is president and owner of Sandler Sales and Management Training in Omaha, Nebraska. Welcome, Carl Schapphorst. Carl, glad to have you.

Hey, Joe, thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited about it. These are, these are fun. I've done work with you in the past, and I know this is going to be a great time.

Yeah. At one point years ago, my video crew came in and you were on the other end of a single camera. Now we're on dual cameras. It's a little bit different.

Yeah, it's a different time, different place. Let's, let's, let's, let's be for sure on that.

Yeah. Well, good. Well, let's kick it off with the first question I like to ask guests, which is What's an opportunity that you see in the C-suite today, or, or that other C-suite or business leaders should be thinking about?

Well, yeah, you know, of course, I always look at, look at things through the lens of sales. That's, that's kind of the world we live in. That's our wheelhouse. And, you know, it's an interesting time that we're in. I really think that the supply chain issues and the pandemic and inflation, all these things have had an impact on, on the effort of business to produce sales. A common theme has been, stop selling, we can't handle what we got. And of course, you know, I get it because the pain in trying to serve customers when you don't have supply coming in yourself, it can be very difficult. But I always say that you should always have your sales function running at full speed. And make sure that, especially during these times, because when customers are in pain, when customers have problems, that's when they talk to salespeople because salespeople bring solutions, folks. We solve problems. And to back off on that is certainly not wise. To take advantage of an opportunity is— we should be all in. Now, look, I totally get if operations can't keep up. I understand that. And that's when salespeople just need to manage the expectation. In other words, talk to the customers, understand the customers, and then manage the expectations within the boundaries of what you're able to produce. And I tell you what, you won't get upset customers. You won't lose business. You will capture share. And some of our clients have done just that. You will capture share and be able to capture even margin. So, boy, what an opportunity is for us. Look, I know that a lot of your listeners are probably struggling with trying to get stuff out the door, maybe, or maybe not. But we ought to have our salespeople not being reactive, not sitting back taking orders and letting the phone ring because it's ringing so much, but proactively going out and capturing market share, capturing enemy territory, because that has to be done with proactive effort. Reactive effort doesn't do it. So there, there may be some value in that for, for some of your listeners.

That's great. I always, or never really think about it that way, but I've heard it quite a bit. Like, we can't handle more business. Is it your experience that with those companies that are saying to their sales department, slow down, we don't need the, the work right now, that the salespeople get out of practice? They like start sitting the bench and get a little flabby or like, what's the, what's the problem with just having 'em take some time off?

You know, like we, we, we just got done doing this training on, on building high performance habits. You know, we spend a lot of time in, in our day doing things that are somewhat automated and we don't think much about 'em. And if you wanna be high performing, well then you gotta learn the, the hard tasks to do and then do them automatically. Things like prospecting every day. You know, that just doesn't happen. And one thing I know about those habits, I, I, I think prospecting is a habit I've developed. And I, I gotta tell you, I, I track it still, even though I, I do it 100% each week. I get the calls in. I still track it because I know if I were to stop, then the habit decays very quickly. Now here, and this is what I, Joe, this is what I, I worry about. So these businesses have flipped into an order-taking mode. These business owners are happy because, you know, the backlog is larger than it's ever been. The margins are higher than they've ever been and they're just loving it. But their salespeople have been relegated to being customer service people, order fulfillment people, and order takers. And they may have been great salespeople when they had to go out and get it. But here's what happens. Those difficult behaviors that they were able to master, if you don't keep doing them over time, they decay and you begin to fall back into a conformed state, something that is emotionally easy, something that is simple. Then what happens is that the supply chain begins to catch up, demand begins to cool off. Now we start wanting business. The phone ain't ringing as much, and now we're wanting business and we've forgotten how to do it. Not because we couldn't do it, but it's been so long since we have. That, that we're still thinking that if we just act as order takers, that's going to help us grow. And then all of a sudden, we're going to have— you're gonna have problems. So, uh, it's, it's important, especially for, for C-suite, uh, leaders, to make sure that your sales function stays very proactive and the habits that build business are not quickly forgotten but are strengthened every day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you think that, uh, not only do they start conforming, but some of them might actually, I would guess, leave and look for a more challenging role again, that they're wired for sales or wired for prospecting, for hunting. And if they just become order takers, they may get disgruntled or unhappy, maybe a better word, and look for something different.

Could you lose some of the people that way? Because, well, think of what happens. We're paying salespeople based on performance., right? So, so, so they, they do, they get all these orders and then, and then, and they're doing basically busy work, which, look, they may be stressed doing busy work, but it's not hard. You just, you just gotta get it done. And then we, we pay these salespeople a lot of money to do just that. And, and, and so, so emotionally speaking, you, you're doing the hard work and then, and then you infuse a reward into that. And so talk about building a habit of this is what I want to do, and this is, I'm worth this much money. And now all of a sudden the demand begins to fall away. The business is not as easy and the pay begins to fall off. Then they might start complaining, say, hey, I'm not, what's the deal here? And so you're absolutely right. They may think there's greener pastures elsewhere and they may go looking for that. Or they may just quit altogether because heck, they made a ton of money and now I can live on this and that'd be good. Or they'll just try to, they'll just try to capture and, and hold on to these really good customers that are recurring revenue customers. And instead of going out and growing, they'll just try to hold on to what they have because that pays well. And, and if I can just get the commission off these accounts, I'll be fine. And then they resign themselves to, to the where they're at, which again, human nature will absolutely drive you to that place because it's easy. There is a, a saying that, that your listeners I'm sure are all familiar with. It's a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Well, if that bird in the hand is, is all these customers I built up and, and now I'm just gonna take care of 'em and forget about the two in the bush. 'Cause that, that's risk that, that, that I could lose everything and, and then it's painful. Why would I do that? We at Sandler say that what a horrible saying that is, especially for the entrepreneur, for the sales professional. Dump the one and jump into the bush to try to get the two. Because if you are successful, that's 100% increase, Joe. Yeah. And I know C-level people like those numbers.

I'm curious, if— have you seen any, um, movement towards a fractional sales role? Yeah, we, you know, we've seen a lot of movement on fractional marketing, you know, fractional CMOs, certainly been in finance. I've seen it in fractional, like, sales coaching. I've seen some of that. But have you seen any successful models out there with somebody who's approaching sales from a fractional, where they're out there full-time salesperson working for a handful of clients?

Yeah, you know, it's an interesting question, and honestly, I can tell you I have not seen it working successfully. And perhaps there are some reasons, you know, sales is a frontline job, meaning that you're putting your life out there on the line, you know, comparatively speaking, obviously you're not going to die, but it's painful. Customers are not nice. They can treat you poorly. I mean, it is a frontline position and nobody really wants to do that unless their why, unless the purpose that they're pursuing is much larger. I kind of look at this, this journey of through sales towards one level of performance to a higher level. It's that you've got, you have to go through the wilderness and the wilderness is filled with pain and suffering. And, and the problem is, is if you're working for multiple clients and, and you don't really get excited about any one of them, it, it's hard to stay in that. And, and, and I think, I think what happens is you just kind of quit on it and then you go to where it's easy. Maybe, maybe this one is easier because it's a bigger brand or, and, and I, I, I, I, I, I'm a little, I'm making some assumptions here, but honestly, I have not seen it. Now, now where I do see fractional involvement in the sales side of it is with the management side. So take for example, a business leader. In fact, we just met with a, with a prospect just the other day. They're, they're a current client actually. We do, we do sales training, but But the president of the company is the sales manager. Yeah. And he doesn't want to be the salesman. He, he's an operational guy. He's done great things on the sales side. He's a great salesman himself, by the way. You have to be with the C-level. It's amazing how those people tend to appreciate and understand sales and what's involved, the risk-taking that must be, must be made. But he's an operational guy and he thinks he can bring so much more value to his company if he focuses in on that. And really pours himself into that to making sure that that is where it needs to be. Well, bring in fractional sales management. He doesn't have a team large enough to justify the expense of a 6-figure salary to manage a relatively smaller team. And so he says, can you guys manage my team as you train them even? And so it's just a good example of how You can get some really good structured management, which again, has accountability, has expectation, has the ability to review performance, and then even, well, hire and maybe even fire if that's the right thing, even on a fractional basis. And now the president feels good about it because he knows that the system he wants is also then being managed by the very people who are training it. But even if it weren't us, even if it was somebody else, let's say, there's a real value. And I know there's other fractional sales managers even in our marketplace that are having success being that interim person until the sales team or the business grows to where they can justify now bringing that person on full time. So that, that's where I see the fractional piece inserting itself in the world of sales, more on the management side. I think some people try it on the sales side, but I've not seen anyone share with me that it's been successful. I'll add one more thing. One area that they do fractional stuff in on is the prospecting side. And even that is, I don't hear a lot of good stories about that because prospecting now, I often call prospecting, that's the union between the marketing effort and the sales effort. And now what prospecting does is we're trying to inject enough energy to get prospects to move into the sales funnel by calling them and saying, hey, what do you think? And if they've been marketed on and they know who you are and are sympathetic to the message, they're likely gonna come into your sales funnel. Well, so if you hire a fractional person to do that, first of all, that's tough work. Nobody likes to do that work. So the fractional companies, you know, they're just, they're just doing the call so that they can get the numbers done, and, and they, they might get paid for an appointment, but, but the appointments I've been hearing are not good. They're not well qualified. They're just, they're just trying to get the appointment, and, uh, and it doesn't really end up paying well for the, uh,, you know, for, for, for the customer. There are a lot of firms that, that actually do that for, for people. But where I've seen the greatest success is where the business owner brings in what I'll call an inside sales team, trains them on a methodology that they believe in, gets them to understand their culture, their philosophy. They're the ones that will make those calls and set the appointments. Much better quality in those appointments than if a third party does it. So We've seen a little bit of the fractional sales on that side of it with some of some businesses out there.

Yeah, I concur with everything you said. I've certainly seen the sales management be done well as from a fractional standpoint. There's some good success there, management/coaching. And I've seen the fractional sales role not work. And I've seen a lot of people trying to kind of emulate that through the prospecting, whether it be door openers or call centers, even some email outsourced SDR services. And we've tried many of those at YuroCIMO for our clients when it made sense to make a test or experiment and for us ourselves. And We've yet to find a really good option there. And I'm curious about that last thing you mentioned about bringing inside salespeople, training them to your methodology, which could be a Sandler methodology, and investing in building that internally as a core competency. Yeah. Have you seen that successful utilizing overseas talent? Do you envision that how that could be successful using a team from the Philippines that was full-time? Or from Mexico or some other country?

So, so I do have some clients that, that their entire sales function is remote. In other words, they're based in York, Nebraska. There are salespeople all over the country. And, and basically the virtual platform is the way that they engage until it gets qualified to a certain point. And then once they really believe that there's business to be had, then they'll begin to invest by visiting the customer and then developing a solution. And some of these people are what I'll call inside. Now they're not international, but they're inside and they're employed by the company. And so they're trained by the company on, you know, of course what it is that they sell and also on the methodology that they sell. In this case, it's SAMR, but it could be any methodology, at least one that's consistent, right, with the culture, with the methodology that they want to embrace. That's the key. And that works very successfully. So look, I think if you're going to bring in labor from overseas to do inside sales, I don't know if thinking about it in a fractional perspective is the right way to do it because— Oh, I would look at it as it—

I would just think about it as you mentioned, as a full-time, okay, dedicated employee in the Philippines. It was an inside salesperson just in Manila instead of Miami.

Yeah, uh, I, I think, I think you're on to something because now I can train them, I can inculcate them, I can, I can make sure that they appreciate, um, what we stand for as a business, uh, help them appreciate the value we bring, and then teach them the methodology that we want them to use when they engage and touch, touch potential, uh, customers. Um, I think then they, uh, they, they have the ability to, well, go a little bit deeper on, on, on, on the prospecting effort, trying to set that appointment, and then set the kind of appointments where there's real opportunities. In other words, they're setting opportunities that might drive to business instead of just setting opportunities for the sake of setting the appointment because that's how they're measured, right? Um, and, uh, I, I think that could work. Again, what As long as they're an employee and they're excited about and will believe in what we're doing, whether they're in the Philippines or in the US, I mean, what difference would that make?

Yeah, that's good. I kind of thought the same. I thought it doesn't really matter. I think the full-time is the key. It does. In my experience that I've worked with part-time and full-time, people for 15 years, and I've never found a part-time role, period, that's worked out well because part-timers are part-time because they're either in between jobs or they're not looking for any consistency at all. And so they come and go fast. You can train them and then they, they go to a full-time role and you've lost them. Yeah. Across the board, almost every role I've ever been in where I've tried to fit a part-timer in, it's just been super difficult. Yeah. Because you spend a lot of energy getting up to speed and then 6 months later they're gone.

You know, it's kind of like, what do you want on your team? Do you want a mercenary or do you want a patriot? Do you want someone who's just getting paid to get a task done and that's all they're gonna do and they're just gonna give you the minimum to get it done, especially in the world of sales, it's such an emotional task. It wears you out. And look, I don't tell you that as somebody who's training sales. I tell you because I'm the sales guy. I'm in it. I mean, we're out there doing it. And that— I mean, making the calls and trying to set appointments, it is tiresome. It is. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort. And Joe, I'm going to tell you that Given the choice, I'll, I'll, I'll do the absolute minimum and nothing more, if that's what the job requires. And, and I think the results then track with that. And so, getting people on that will be real patriots who are, who are there fighting because they're not just trying to get a task done, but they believe in what they're doing as, as being a betterment to the customers that they're trying to serve.

That I realized, I realized you just, I, as I was thinking about what I just said, in some ways fractional is part-time. So when I say I've never seen a part-time role be successful, I want to clarify that we won't even hire a part-time team member to be a fractional CMO. Because we look for people who are full-time committed to being a fractional professional, which means their plan and they have a system to work full-time offering their services to 2 or 3 people. And I think that's the, that's the clarifier that I wanna make sure I make, uh, before I anger all my fractional professional friends out there. We found that when we've tried to take somebody who's currently working full-time and give them a second job as a fractional, it doesn't work out cuz they, they, they, they burn out. Um, we've found that people that are truly in between jobs that are part-time interim, just looking for some extra work, as fractionals, they end up getting that full-time job and they leave. So we've just found out ourselves that when somebody's committed full-time to a fractional way of doing things, then it works out really well.

And, and I think that's, well, so, so think of it like this. So, so, you know, a lot of small businesses, they don't have a person for every function in the business. Yeah. So, so one person will have to wear multiple hats. Well, basically what they are is they're a fractional marketing person, a fractional salesperson, a fractional operations person. Now, how does it— why does it work there? Well, because they believe and they know that they gotta make this work. And so they're 100% all in and they'll stay in it when it's difficult. I mean, here I'm a business owner and I can tell you that when it comes to the accounting services, I do not have a full-time accountant working for me. I bring in the fractional accountant because they're experts in that, which I am not. And they bring value to my business. And that's all they do. They just do accounting. They're not, that's not a fractional accountant who then goes and becomes a fractional CFO and then, and then goes and becomes a fractional marketing person for someone else and then a fractional something else for somebody else. They are, they're focused on the task. They are, they're highly professional in that role and therefore can bring value to me even on a part-time basis. Like, Joe, that's what you're doing. I mean, that's what you're talking about. This is why it works even if you're looking for a fractional sales manager, because again, you want it— you want to deal with somebody that that's their expertise, that's what they do, and they understand it, they've systematized it, and they understand the KPIs. They know how to hold people accountable, and they can bring that value to your company at a fraction of the cost if you were to try to bring it in full time. And a lot lower risk because the disengagement is certainly a little bit easier when you're dealing with a fractional organization as opposed to an employee where their family is depending on you. Yeah. So yeah, there's a real, real space for what you are doing. And I am evidence to that because I use it myself.

Let's switch gears a little bit. And it's not very far of a switch, but Sandler has been a leader in the, the sales training and, and, uh, systems kind of for a long time. And I'm curious, since the pandemic, how has, how has Sandler adjusted its training or its methodology or its fundamentals or practices as it relates to kind of this new remote reality that we live in? And from a sales standpoint, it's a lot more of this on Zoom than it is in person? Yeah. What's Sandler kind of thinking around that?

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a good question. And, and no, just like everyone else's business, our, our business has changed. You know, when the, when the, when the pandemic first happened and people were just crazy, it was not good for us. People saw us as a nonessential and we did see some attrition of our business. Actually, I was quite terrified in the, in, in during those times because I, I didn't know if we were gonna be able to keep the doors open. And, and, but we had customers that stayed with us. Certainly sales became more challenging, and where there's pain, there typically is opportunity to sell. I can tell you from our business, we had to adjust. We had to change. I built this training center. You know, they say if you build it, they will come. Joe, they're not coming. And they weren't coming then for sure, right? Because, you know, you can't— the pandemic, you know, social distancing. So they were not coming. And that was concerning. So we really had to become experts at managing the virtual platform because if we could not deliver our product at a very high level through a virtual platform, then we were going to be closing our doors. So it was a necessity for us to appreciate this. I can tell you what's happened today. Today, every training session that we've done, that we do is either 100% hybrid are 100% virtual or it's a hybrid where we have a number of people that are in the room and then a number of people that join us virtually. And then we train in that fashion and we have to get good at producing that, at delivering that and, and making sure that everybody that's there feels like this has been of good value. 'Cause otherwise they won't come back and they won't, we won't, they won't stay. I think we're doing pretty good because we, our customers are staying. They like it. And now what's happening is I'll have clients that are 2 miles— they live 2 miles away and they still beam in virtually. I mean, come on, come to the darn training center. We built this for you. Now, another thing that, that's kind of happened, which maybe is a good thing now, is since people are certainly much more agreeable to the virtual platform and they don't see it as a negative but perhaps as a positive, It has expanded our ability to reach more people. Now, look, I— so I have a franchise certificate in both Nebraska and Iowa. I got to tell you, when you got it, when you got trainings happening in Omaha, Sioux City, and Des Moines, there's a lot of real estate that we're just not getting to people if they want to do live training. Well, now bring into this virtual platform that we have, we now have customers out in western Nebraska. We have customers in central Nebraska. We have customers in western Iowa. In fact, we go all the way up to the Mississippi River. And we have clients that beam in from Florida, from California, from Ohio, from the Chicago area. They can beam in. And so that really has allowed us to, well, not be worried about where the customer lives anymore. If they're a customer that we believe needs help from our sales training, we can prospect them and we have a good solution to offer. That works and, and can give them the value that they're looking for, even if they can't come live. So that's been perhaps a benefit to, to the changes that have happened. And I can tell you that our business is growing now again and, and we're excited about what's coming. We think it's good.

How about with, with a focus on the actual salesperson, the sales professional? What kind of guidance do you give there as it relates to hybrid, virtual, in-person? Are there— is the professional having to change his or her approach? Are they having to learn new skills so they're more effective online? I know that it's a lot easier to sell face-to-face than prospecting like this, building trust, picking up on cues, communicating. Have you gone through a lot of work from that endpoint at Sandler?

Yeah, Joe, you're asking great questions. You know, the virtual platform for salespeople is something that all salespeople now have to really evaluate and work in because, look, the technology and the mindset that people have about this Look, it's an acceptable way to communicate, acceptable way to do transactions. And you cannot deny the scalability that it brings to the sales professional. I mean, if I were to tell you what was going on just today in terms of my schedule, I started off with a virtual training, then I went into a virtual meeting with a client that I'm going to be doing training later this month. Then I went into a virtual sales call., and then I went into a virtual, a meeting with another client, and they all were back to back to back. Now, if those all were gonna be live sessions, no way would I be able to get that kind of work done in a single day. But because we have this technology, you can just put things back to back to back. Now you gotta, you gotta manage it. You gotta make sure you're prepared for that cuz it comes at you like a, like a ton of bricks if you're, if you're not ready. Cuz, yeah, cuz, and, and you better work in bathroom breaks too, by the way. I, I learned that you gotta have bathroom breaks worked in because you go from one virtual meeting to the next and you never can get away.

Why isn't the calendar and Zoom defaults now like 40 minutes? It should be automatic. Nothing's an hour anymore. It's 20 or 40.

That should become the new norm. That should. That should. I mean, I'm a biological creature. I got certain needs. I got to take care of some things here. But you cannot deny how the scalability works. And look, I'm okay with the, with salespeople saying, I hate virtual. I wanna do face-to-face. Look, all, all power to you. Go do the face-to-face. I have a client that, that loves the face-to-face, you know, and they're very good when they get into face-to-face. But you gotta recognize that the technology is available and, and, and your competition can leverage it and they can perhaps get some competitive advantage if they're able to use it to scale and, and increase their effectiveness. So I'm gonna tell you a quick story. So we, we had this client and they had about, they had about 12 salespeople that were, that were placed throughout the country and they would have multi-state territories. And typically what they would do is they would, they would drive out to see their customers and in about 2 weeks they'd see them all and, and then they would turn and, and, and, and, and then support them. Well, then the pandemic comes. And now they can't go in, they can't go see him. So now they have to communicate to him virtually. Well, they learned very quickly that, that a 2-week tour could be done in 2 days. And, and wow, did that— and they found that we were getting everything done virtually that we were otherwise getting done, you know, when we were there in person. Perhaps there were some things that weren't as good, but something might have even been better. And so as we were training them, they did have some attrition. And what was so interesting is that the president did not replace anybody. Okay? In other words, they just expanded the territories. And so they ended up with about 8 salespeople after a couple of years, 8 salespeople. The business grew. The business did not shrink. The business grew. They were still covering the customers and it was all because of the increased scalability that the virtual platform gave them. And can you imagine if you're the president of that company, your sales grows, but you're able to do it with fewer human resources. You can imagine what that does to the bottom line and how that improves the margin. It was a big impact and it was all because they were able to leverage the virtual technology. And so I think, I think it's something that the sales professional has to think about. And as you think about it, if you're going to leverage it, then you need to be an expert at it. You got to be good. You got to know how to dress. You got to know how to look. You got to know how to get lighting. You got to know how to position cameras. And I don't know if you noticed, but I got a computer screen and my camera is not right in the screen. My camera's above it, but I've trained myself to be looking at the camera not the screen so that when I'm talking, people think I'm looking at them. These are the small little things that as sales professionals really need to be experts at if this is the platform you're really gonna leverage. And, and so all those things are a part of our profession now. And we need to be professional at doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's great. Thank you for elaborating on that because I do think the, the role of a sales professional has changed and the professional needs to learn how to be, it sounds like more productive virtually than at least as productive. It's different and it works. And some professionals are, well, I think by now, because we were all forced into it, most people are pretty good at it.

Well, yeah, we had no choice, right? It's trial by fire. Had to figure it out. You had to figure it out. You know, I'll add one more thing on how virtual is impacting sales. You know, a lot of clients and sales companies out there, part of their sales process is that demos must be done. We had a client at Council Bluffs that they always would go out and do a demo first. And then once they saw the demo, they would have a highly likely closing. Well, the pandemic shut that down. And, and the salespeople kind of panicked because it was so ingrained in their process that if they didn't get to show the customer really how this would be a benefit to them in their own facility that, that, that they wouldn't buy it. And guess what? They started struggling. And, and so we said, look, you gotta figure out how to do a virtual demo. You gotta figure out how to do the demo as if you were in their facility, showing them how it would work and how it would, of work in there. You have to invest, perhaps build a production studio, uh, whatever you got to do. If this is part of the process, you've got to figure that out. Well, they figure it out, and now they do these virtual demos, and they're very good, and now they're closing deals again. The cool thing about it is that when you're doing a virtual demo, it is a fraction of the cost. Yeah, I'm trying to go do a demo on site, and, and now they're actually getting an ROI on the whole deal. I mean, it is. So again, talking about how it's changing business and, and, uh, and the pandemic for the most part is, is over. And, and yet we're still doing this virtual stuff because, uh, I think we appreciate, uh, the value that really is in it. And, and so there we are, there we were doing it.

We've been a virtual company before the pandemic. Our first client was out of Missoula, Montana. We're based here in Omaha and we use Zoom back then. It was around before the pandemic, but the pandemic forced us all in and along with all of our clients and it became much more common and acceptable. What we found is that we are realizing that with clients and with the relationship that a CMO needs to have with their clients to be successful, it's so dependent upon trust and trust with all the team members at the C-suite, not just the owner or the business leader that we've not taken a step back, but we've added the requirements for all of our new engagements to kick off in person so that we can, we know that most of the rest of the time it's gonna be like this, but we wanna have at least the first engagement kicked off first part of our engagements kicked off in person. And then we highly recommend the quarterly in-person touches when we can make them. And so some of our CMOs, gosh, that's going to be a lot of work. I live in Seattle, I got to get to Miami. Maybe that's not really cost effective for me or the client. And my response has been, it's an investment in the relationship. It's an investment in the long-term relationship with the business. And It's definitely cost effective. It just may be not willing to take that time. And that's your prerogative. We've had our customers, not one of them, when we asked for them to do it and pay the additional cost to bring us in, has pushed back at all, because they're actually excited to meet their new CMO and to kick off this new adventure that they're going on with us. So the investment on the client side has been exciting and a little pushback from some of our CMOs because it's not they don't want to do it, they don't want to add an expense to their client, you know, early in engagement when they don't need to. But if we think about it, it's an investment in that long-term relationship, it makes a lot more sense.

Look, I look at this virtual technology, it just gives us options on how we want to engage and how we want to develop trust, build relationships, and And this is not a replacement to shaking hands with your customers. Yeah. This is just an augmentation of how we do business. And so we look at it like that. I mean, I still do live training. We still do in-house. I fly to people's places and we do training there because they want it to be live. But goodness, I mean, we still appreciate what it can do for us. And, uh, and it's not all in, it's just an option. And so recognize it as such, and I, I think you'll find how to fit it in nicely so that it really helps you be better at what you're doing. And, uh, in, in— we still do business the old-fashioned way.

So, yeah, old-fashioned. What, uh, what's something you like to do for fun, Carl?

What do I like to do for fun? Well, I love, I love to play golf. I love to ride, love to ride bikes. I love ministry. I love studying the good book. And, you know, I don't know why I did this. My wife's not happy with me, but I decided to run a marathon and I'm in the midst of training for that. In fact, it's just 5 weeks away. I'm going to do this. We're running from Park City to Salt Lake. I thought it'd be easy because it's all downhill. But I tell you what, that has been a trial. I wish I wouldn't have signed up for that. But now that I've committed to it, I gotta, I gotta finish. And so I'm gonna finish. I promise it'll be the only one I ever run.

Well, great. That's, I've, I've ran a half, but not full. And the half was quite a, you know, stretch for me. When I was done with the half, I'm like, I don't know if I wanna do a full. I could do another half, but I'm not sure I'd want to do that twice back to back. Regarding golf, where do you like, you know, besides Omaha and your home courses, where do you like to play or where would you love to eventually get a chance to play?

Well, I, so I have a brother who has a beach house in Myrtle Beach. And so every year we, I go out with him and a bunch of guys and we, we do a golf extravaganza for over 3 days. And I tell you what, that's, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Great golf courses in Myrtle Beach, perhaps the best, maybe. And so I enjoy that and, and do love the game. And we decided we're going to plan a trip over to Ireland. To play some of the old courses. And, uh, and, and, and that's definitely a bucket list, uh, uh, item that, uh, we're gonna be able to check off. So we're gonna head out there in June and spend a week.

Uh, oh, so you already— you have, uh, you've already got your reservations. I was talking to a friend of mine, John Lund, uh, you know. Yeah, he, uh, just got back from his 8-day golf trip in Ireland. And he said one of most of the courses that they played at are booked through next September 2023. It's insane because they were shut down for a couple years and everybody's trying to catch up to get back. But he said the golf was amazing. Some of the courses were just unreal.

Yeah.

Well, kudos to you. You got, you got in.

You're gonna make it.

Yeah.

I'm gonna have to get used to working with a caddy because I guess you can't take buggies. Out onto the, onto the golf course. You walking only and you got to bring a caddy with you. Are you—

how long are you going to be over there?

It's— it'll be— it'll be 7 days. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

4 to 4 days of golf and then 1 day of tourism and the rest of the days for travel.

That'll be terrific.

Yeah.

Yep.

What's your favorite non-Myrtle Beach-like place you've played in the US?

Not Myrtle Beach.

Well, it's right here in Nebraska.

Really? Which one? There is a golf course out near— out in the— out in the plains of Nebraska. It's called Sandhills. I don't know if you've heard of it. And I used to be in the heating and air conditioning business, folks. So the guy who developed that needed some heat pumps for his cabins that he had out there. And, and I, I said, I can help you. So, so we sold him some equipment and got to know the guy and even was able to get a contractor out there who was having to be out there when the other developer, Ben Crenshaw, right? Ben Crenshaw, right? The PGA player. He was out there too. And, and got to meet him. I was a little jealous about that, but So I've been out there a number of times and have played that, and that really is a golf experience because there's— humanity is completely absent. There is nobody out there except for you and the golf hole you're on and the wilderness that you happen to be in. It was an absolute exceptional golf experience that I'll never forget just because of I mean, the golf holes were cool, but it was just the— it was the entire experience. We was out there and then we're at the bar and it's a very small number of people because they only have so many cabins, so only so many people could be there. Glen Campbell comes out and plays a little music for the people in this small— I mean, there's about 12 of us and Glen Campbell whips out his guitar and starts playing a song. I mean, how about that? Now you try to duplicate that.

I bet you can't. No, no, I can't. I can, I can tell you when I was in, um, on a, uh, it might have been a bachelor party or weekend or just a guy's weekend, but it was a group of guys. We were down in Dallas playing this, um, what's the name of it, a course. It means cowboy in, um, Spanish. Quintero or— but no, Vaquero is the name of the course. And second day, we're—

we're—

this is when I used to be a little bit of a drinker. We were all hungover the next morning. We're all sitting at breakfast, we're having, you know, Bloody Marys and making fun of each other. And right next to us, at the table right next to us, is Terry Bradshaw. Doing the exact same thing with a couple of other his NFL buddies. Like, that's as close to your story as I can get. We were at this really exclusive fun club. You turn and you pull up the first day you get there, and they're greeting you by name. Like, they've already studied your profile. They know who you are. Like, hey, Mr. Frost, how are you? And, uh, it was an amazing experience, but the golf was fun. The golf is fun too. I enjoy the game. I played Sandhills once a long time ago, a couple days, and that is a beautiful course.

Yeah, really is. What's your handicap? Well, that's kind of like asking how much I weigh or how old I am.

Yeah.

Oh, you gotta be—

she's, you know, I'm, I'm not that great. I mean, I'm a bogey golfer and I, uh, I try to— I, I, my, I— as soon as I get done with this marathon crap and I promise you I will, I will focus on my game and get it, get it honed in because I think that's, that's going to be the path of my older years is a lot of golf and, and I want to play well.

So good. Well, we should get out and play sometime.

I would like that. You betcha.

Join us too. Do you like a good course here? And you enjoy in town?

Oh, yeah. I tell you what, I, I think Indian Creek is, is awesome. I love that. And that's of course public. When it comes to the private courses, I mean, Happy Hollow is tough to beat. I love how that lays out. And, uh, um, and so those are probably my, my two favorites.

Yeah, they got the PGA Championship, uh, tournament going on right now at Indian Creek, so I'm heading out there Sunday to catch them.

Nice. Yeah, make sure you've got a VIP pass into a hospitality tent because it's good. Yeah, I do. It's going to be like 100 and something, right? Well, good.

Well, we will— we'll spare our listeners more golf talk. We're starting to get a little Omaha golf talk is probably when we should end our conversation.

Be happy to talk more about it if you like.

I know we could compare all sorts of notes. Yeah, I really— I've appreciated the time. Very great conversation. We went down a lot of different paths. I really value your expertise and what you've done over the years. And I know you're a— you've done a lot for a lot of businesses and a lot of people I know speak really highly of you. So thank you for spending time with me today.

I really appreciate it. You bet. And Joe, I'd say the same about what you do and in the space that you have. I've seen you in a lot of places and I know you bring tremendous value, especially to those companies that are trying to figure out how to, how to get themselves known in the market. Um, and, uh, so, uh, yeah, I, I feel like we— even though it's been a little bit since we did business, and now I, I felt like you hadn't been that far because I always kept seeing your work, and, and it's all been very good. So yeah, it's been fun.

I enjoyed this. Great. And to our listeners, thank you for listening and putting up with the golf stories at the end. If you want to reach out to Carl, we've got his, uh, show information in the show notes. I'm sure he'd be happy to talk to you about, uh, top holes, his holes in one, and all the other good stuff, as well as sales and sales management. I've never had one. I'm going for it soon though. All right, thank you everybody. Have a great listen, and we'll talk to you next week.

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.