Noob School - Episode 13: Mark Vetzel

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Have you heard the story about the salesman who got a job just by leaving a voicemail? Mark Vetzel is kind of a local legend for this! He and John talk about what made his voicemail so convincing and share a bunch of lessons they've learned through the years at Datastream. There are some really awesome nuggets in here for Noobs! Follow John on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/johnsterling_ Facebook: facebook.com/johnsterlingsales Twitter: twitter.com/johnsterling_ TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnsterling_

back to Noob School today. I've got one of my true all-time favorites, Mark Vetzel. A little quick story on Mark. Mark went to college of Charleston down in Charleston, and he came along, you know, fairly early on in the company, and we were hiring people, and we had a little small process we went through to bring them on board. But we were hiring pretty quickly, and one day I got a voicemail, a voicemail for Mark. And it says, hey, John, this is Mark Vetzel down in Charleston, I got your name from Tom Taylor, your brother-in-law. Yeah, he told me you guys were hiring, and I thought, you know, I want to move to Greenville, and I thought this would be a good thing for both of us.

So I love to talk to you about that. So anyway, very good at voicemail, very empathetic voice, probably one of the best I've ever heard. It's just a very caring, interested, curious voice. And it was so curious that that was the interview. And we brought Mr. Mark on board from the interview. Is that true? That is a fact.

How does that first conversation go after the great voice? Well, I can remember when I started. It was in June of 1989. I think I was the 10th employee on. And I had been doing some sales for a short while. Now, if you remember, I was selling drill bits and hacksaw blades and whatnot. And I had a roll of quarters that I have to make phone calls with in the pouring rain at pay phones. And so that's sales.

So when folks talk about what would you want to do in sales and what you don't want to do in sales, what I didn't want to do was hang out in the rain and try to make appointments with $10 with a quarter. And sometimes $10 wasn't enough. Right. So I did know Tom. Tom and I hung out in Charleston, your brother-in-law, and next to know, I'm on board a data stream, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. I don't have to drive around.

The phone calls are free. The leads are free. CRM was there. I could track what I was doing. That was new to me as well. But yeah, it was a quite interesting thing. I met Mike Cannon Day 1. He became the, you know, I think everybody needs somebody to,

compete against, you know, and Mike was certainly that. He was not only my best friend. He was my best enemy, right? So it was for enemy. He was for enemy, yeah, yeah. So I'm still in contact with Mike today. He's doing different things, obviously. What's happened to Mike? He's an Episcopal priest these days. Yeah. So he got all the bad out of himself early. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. We both did. We both did. All of it? Well, there might be a piece. There might be a little bit left. So I know you worked a sales job after college of Charleston before us. How long were you with us? I was from 89 to 97.

So I think I was, I think I was right behind Mike Cannon and Mark Smith on the hiring. That's like 10, like employee number 10, maybe. And what did you learn about sales in those early years? Well, I think a lot of people probably say that already, that it's not as easy as you think it is. You think it's, here's a lead, go sell them, widgets or whatever, hacksaw blades or drill bits, and then come to find out it's not so good. And so cold calling people who don't want to see you, that was a difficult thing. I literally got thrown, almost physically thrown out of spots.

And I'm thinking, I'm just not liking this a lot. That was before. There was before data stream, yeah, a lot before data stream. Yeah, that was some fun times. So I know Mike was there. Was it Mark Smith? Mark Smith was there. Mike was there.

Who else? You were there. There was two older fellas. They weren't noobs at all. Rudy and Don. Yeah. Rudy and Don Strobeck. And they were cool guys, but they weren't nubs by any stretch of the imagination.

And they had a, so we had those two guys that were probably in their late 50s at that time. And then a bunch of 22-year-olds like me rolling around. And it was a different vibe all together. And they held the corner offices. And the funny thing was, everyone thought they knew. what to do, including me. And I was actually in charge, but I didn't know what to do either.

We were all, like Rudy would say, listen, you young kids tell you what to do, and Don would just smooth on. Yeah, smooth on. Yeah, it was crazy. But I think maybe out of all the energy and friction, we kind of created a process that worked. Yeah, and there was some friction,

because we were changing fast. Some people better would change than others, maybe. And so maybe I wasn't so good. So one of the things I might have learned at sales early on is, hey, be okay with change. Because there was some significant changes because we're growing so fast. And we're growing so fast that the change we were doing I wasn't comfortable with because they didn't really fully understand it. Right.

It was a kid. Right. So I thought it would affect my salary negatively. Yeah. Ultimately, it didn't. Right. And just that's a great point, Mark, because, again, I think all of us are pretty much the same. But when you hear that we're going to reorganize this.

territories or we're going to change the comp plan or something you put your defenses up. And I think the lesson for the nobs ought to be don't put them up. Say, this might be good for me. Yeah. How can I get involved to end up with the best territory or how can I understand the comp plan early and get ahead of it? Right. Management will change things, right?

That's one thing we got to understand. I mean, I wasn't the ultimate boss at Datastream either. I had to deal with change too. They will make changes. You just got to say, what am we going to do with it? Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing, too, I think it was always, and Mark Smith did this, Smolo did this.

Smolo was always the first, when you had an idea, a wacky idea. Others would be like, I'm not doing that. Smolo was always like, yeah, I give it a shot. Yeah. So maybe there's a lesson there for everybody there. Something's new and wacky, somebody just wants to try something. Be that guy. Who's the Italy?

Mark had a nice long run with us. Yeah, that's right. Maybe it likes people like that. Yeah. So, yeah, just come out of your comfort level a little bit. You know, try something new. If somebody suggests it doesn't mean that's the way you're going to have to do it all the time. But they want to see how it's done this way. Be that guy, be that girl.

Right, right. Good, good, good, good, good. Do you remember your Colby or do we do Colby's back? Yeah, we did Colby relatively early on. I certainly didn't take one to get the job. Right. But I think I scored high in the whole sales quick start. I don't know my numbers.

I really don't. Yeah. The whole quick start, certainly sales was my thing. And that's what I wanted to do right out of college is being sales. You probably knew. People probably told you your natural salesman, right? Yeah. Yeah.

You had that personality. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. But others have said it. I don't think that's enough to be just a good personality and have a knack for it. You've got to invest in your craft. Yeah.

I agree. I agree. And I don't know if you, if you heard Tap Haley's podcast, we did. I did. But, I mean, I would have done that differently myself. I would have invested more time understanding how everything worked for the customer. I think I had a misconception that I need to focus on sales. I need to focus on numbers, calls per day.

Right. You know, you have to have a piece of that. I think if you want to walk in it, like, Like, if you want to talk to the director of reliability for a big, big company, you better know their language. Right. Right. Not just take them out for a nice steak dinner.

Yeah, which is good. It is good. It's not enough. No, it's not enough. Not enough. Not that level. Yeah, and that's why I think some others might have been real successful in sales coming out of the whole AED group, that training and implementation.

Elliot, for one. I mean, Elliot jumped over the other side. Next thing you know, at the end of the day, he was looking at that board to find out where he was. And that was a big driver, if you remember that. Camille updating that board every day. Yeah. And I think Greg Gardner put it best. I think we put so much attention to kind of electronic metrics and graphs and charts.

But sometimes having that thing updated with a magic marker every day and who's in first and who's in second and what am I going to do to be first? Yeah. I think that's a big motivator for salespeople. Yeah. And they'd be updating the board, the white board, and people would say, that's not right. That's not right. You go back and fight accounting over 37,000 or. Yeah, a quick Elliott story.

I remember Elliot saying, why do you put it? so much attention into that board. It's only day four or the month. I said, well, it's kind of important. Where are you? Because I'm third. That's great. That is great. Well, walk us through. I know you were, you were, that takes you to about age 30 through data stream. Tell us about some of the other interesting things you've done since then, up to now. Yeah. I worked for a company that did digital x-ray. So a dentist puts a piece of, used to put a piece of film in your mouth and it was uncomfortable. And sometimes. painful. It took a long time to get back. Digital X-ray allowed them dentist to put a sensor in your mouth, take a picture, and it'll appear on the monitor. And so that was... Do they do it now? That's how almost it's all done now unless you get an old school dentist. But yeah, most doctors will want to do digital x-ray. And that was a lot of fun. And that was an

inside sales job working with guys who incidentally, who were older at that point. There were like a bunch of me's in there who had inside and outside sales jobs decided they were tired of the travel, wanted to get back in. And this is strictly dumbed by one over the phone, go to meeting, things like that. Now it was a lot of fun. On the dentist himself or herself? Yeah. At the time, we were the lot, we were the fastest growing company in the fastest growing segment of dentistry. So leads were pouring in, right? This whole digital x-ray thing was super new. And leads were pouring in. So it wasn't, we weren't prospecting cold call the dentist. They were chomping at a bit for this stuff. And that makes it fun. Where you want to be. Where you want to be.

Yeah. That is important. I mean, if it's for a new, think about, I mean, if you get get a chance to go to work for, you know, Apple or, you know, some company that's really growing or like your company you work for, that is 50% of your success. Right. Right. And then the other 50% is how hard you work and what you learn and everything else. But picking a good spot is very important. Yeah.

I mean, you and I, all of us got really lucky to be with a data stream because it did so well. Sure. We're just kind of along with it. Yeah. And currently I'm selling a product from SAP code, SAP, business one. Business one. They work for a local systems integrator here.

I'm just really a couple miles out on the road. Really? Yeah, I've been there for several years. And SAP is, I think, the biggest software company? It's the biggest software companies in the world, but certainly the biggest ERP company in the world. And we sell a product, not that necessarily runs BMW or Coca-Cola, but runs to small to mid-sized companies.

So is there scaled down? It's just scaled down. It's not an SAP light. It's a total different product, but it's marketed to. towards a different market altogether. Yeah. Cool. Very good.

Very good. So you really have sold, you know, for three companies. Right. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. Right. And I think that's important. You know, once you start selling something is, you know, the longer you can stick with it, the easier it gets,

the more your contacts have more power and all it. Right. Right. Okay. Tell us about stuff you want to go back and tell yourself, you know, 20, 30 years ago, like if people are just, the people just starting out today, give us a couple of things you tell them they should do and they shouldn't do. Yeah, jump in with both feet, right?

Commit yourself to it, you know. Learn from the guy who's doing best. Don't be jealous of that individual, the guy, the person who's doing best. Don't be jealous that individual. Find out what they're doing and then copy it. And I like helping whenever I wasn't such a noob, we had noobs come in. I'd love to show them what I'm doing. I'd love to show them my process.

I love to show them kind of, here's what I would say instead of that. You know, I like to prank them. I need it. He also would like get them to voluntarily give you part of their commission sometimes. Because I'd been around, John, and for helping. And you would say, he would tell the noob, this is how we normally do it. Until Perry Keys called me out on it. Yeah.

And I would say, as the manager, I would say, a new person, they'd say, how do I do so on something? I'm like, just go find someone to help. Yeah, right. People would say, well, John, that's so good, the way you're. fostering teamwork. I'm like, no, I'm just lazy, okay? Somebody else's young. But yeah, that's a, I remember how you did that.

You were in the closers quad. Yeah. So there was a, there was a, in where we were at the merrivan, there's these little sectioned off little cul-de-sacs that held four offices in a door. And I like to prank people a little bit around a data stream. But we had, when you close the door, it was just those four offices. And we put up a sign, closer's quad.

This is just for the closer. Right. And I think Lorvok was part of that. I know that Hesepeth and Rob Greer and another person were the part of that. But it took about three minutes for somebody to come up with a pencil and mark off the sea to Losers Quad. And we just thought that was so genius. We just kept it. We just kept it up forever.

You wore it with pride. We wore it with pride. That was funny. Well, what's one thing that you wish you would have known when you started by sales? Again, it's not easy. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's um, you've got to find a fine line between pest and persist. You've got to develop some sort of rapport even with it's, even with the, you know, the gatekeeper, right? But I think as Tapp said it best, you've got to get in there and expand your footprint inside of that account.

If you rely on one individual just because you like the way he, he operates or he likes what you're saying. you might totally disregard the fact that he doesn't really have any say so, right? And that doesn't get you anywhere. I agree. That's a good one is for a new to think bigger about the account. I was the same way. I would just think about I got a lead. I'm going to close the lead.

And I'll go to the next one versus saying, what is this thing part of? How big is it? How many users are there? How could we possibly address the whole thing? Right, right. Instead of selling five user systems, sell 25 user system. And it's not that much harder. I know.

It's the same amount of work. Mark, what's your favorite word? Can I say hot for teacher? Yeah, you can. I won't say hot for teacher. I will go back to it. Compete. Find a competitor, even if you have to manufacture a competitor,

which I didn't. I mean, I had plenty. But find one, mirror what they do, be upset when you're not number one, and go back to trying to be number one next month. And so I think that's the thing to do, compete. And I know I've heard Mike Pace, that as well. So yeah, I think that's a word. That's a great word and it's a good way to close up

unless you have anything else. I don't appreciate this. I enjoy these things a lot. It's always good running into the data stream mafia. Yeah. You've always been a favorite. So we appreciate you being here, Mark. Thank you, John. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.