Scott Duffy interviews Dave Norton: Passion, Salesmanship, & Authenticity, SLIDER 7

Today, David Norton, chief revenue officer of Scipio, sits down with us to talk about passion, salesmanship, authenticity, and more. That's right now on Business and burgers sliders.

So, as an entrepreneur, it's one thing to build an amazing product, but if you can't get it in front of people, if nobody knows about it, doesn't do any good. So how do you begin to generate awareness, build awareness, and kind of start to organically, like, grow your sales effort?

Great question. So, number one, you've got to have confidence in yourself, your team, your product, and your value proposition. Everybody has specific needs that they're trying to satisfy, whether that's their role, whether that's in their personal life, in their business, whether that's monetary, you name it. They have an incentive for which they're doing their job. And it's up to you to find that product and connect the dots and tailor it to what they need in their life to help them achieve everything they want and more. And when they recognize that they're on your side, they're on your team, they dive in and they say, what can we do to help you grow this? This has not just changed my business, it's changed my life. So that's who we try and find. You know, Malcolm Gladwell, he wrote this amazing book, and this concept is you've got these mavens and these brokers and these early adopters and these laggards. Well, who are the mavens that are out there searching for products like ours that they know doesn't exist right now, but there's got to be something. They're searching for us just like we're searching for them. And when you find each other, they help find the brokers who are going to be those influencers. They help take it to market, whether that's in their community, that's in their network, in the industry, and they're going to connect you. And you find those brokers who are going to be those influencers to then take it to large masses of people who do the vetting, who help you do the beta testing, who help become your new users, your advocates, and they want to champion you. And they get satisfaction out of that of saying, look what I found. Look what I'm helping to create.

I run into so many entrepreneurs that are trying to build a sales team, but they don't believe they can afford it. They don't know what to do. What would you recommend to them?

That's a great question. Two things. Number one, we are all in sales, and that's Something in life we all need to get used to is selling what we believe and selling from our heart in our mind. Because when you hear and look for and listen for opportunities, that's what sales is. So, number one, we're all in sales. Number two, you're foolish to think anyone would be foolish to think I believe that you can't afford a great salesperson or a great sales team. The greatest salesperson could sell a crummy product. The greatest product in the world could not sell itself. And I think those are two philosophies that always tend to overlap each other is you always need a good solution with a great value proposition, and you need good, passionate, motivated sales reps with great tenacity. So those would be the two things that I think is, number one, we're all in sales. And number two, you have to have passion and belief that a great salesperson or great sales team will pay great dividends for this amazing creation that you want to take to the world.

So, Dave, let's talk about passion for a minute. I'm a passionate guy. I put my all to everything I do, and it somehow makes things grow. Talk to us about passion and authenticity as well.

Awesome. Two things that I love, being authentic and being passionate. You know, building and starting a business is just like how this nation was founded. Our founding fathers were so passionate about building a free land, a country, a society that was ran by the people and for the people. And we all governed by these principles and lived by them. And it was not easy. I mean, you think of the wars and the battles that they went through, to be victorious for this heartbeat, for this belief of the vision they were creating every day. And you had men who were willing to give it all up because of what they believed. That's passion. And we know where we are today. And that is the same thing in any business. Everybody has different perspectives and beliefs and passion that they fight for every day that they sell for, that they believe in, and they come together and they're cohesive, and those are the successful businesses. And if you're not passionate on the sales front, if you're not passionate on the product front, on the HR front, on the marketing front, on the customer service and client services front, you will fail.