Noob School - Episode 38: What to do if your first job isn't a good fit with Dan Sterling

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

John Sterling Noob School Podcast Descriptions "Rhino" Dan Sterling is a natural salesperson—and John's brother. They recall a story about Dan's time in Columbia at the University of South Carolina that showcases his selling abilities perfectly! Noobs will want to listen to this episode. Dan's start in sales was anything but smooth. He was selling a product he didn't believe in and working for someone who didn't respect him. Tune in to hear how he overcame that and became a major player in the telecom space. You can truly feel the brotherly love! Screen reader support enabled. Turn on screen reader support

All right, well, welcome back to Noob School. This is where we find great salespeople and we interview them. We figure out how do they get so good at this? What would they tell you to do different, to do more of, do less of, etc? And today I got to tell you, and I always tell you this is one of my favorite people, but this time I really mean it. I mean, this is my brother. This is my brother Dan, all right?

So I got brother Dan here today and he is, he is, a true, true salesperson, more so than me. And I'll tell you why I know that. I've known this for quite some time, but he's a little bit younger than me. And when he was getting ready to go to college, when he was going to college at South Carolina, you know, most people with these big state schools, they just flop them into some, some, you know, some boarding house or whatever dorm room kind of deal, just slap them in there. And then eventually they might get out and get an apartment or something.

Not Dan, okay? Dan goes to my parents and says, hey, I got an idea for you. Instead of going to one of these dorm rooms, which, by the way, cost you money, why don't we go ahead and find us a deal on a good condo downtown near five points? And if you'll just buy the condo,

I'll take care of it for you during these four years. When I'm down here, no rent for you. I'll just be staying at the condo. And when you come to Columbia, of course, there's a free place for you to stay when you come down here. And you know, you make money when it's all over. And, you know, I'll be safer because I'll be closer to, you know, the Five Points area

where we go to congregate sometimes after we've done our school work, I think you said. Anyway, he talked my dad into it. So I'm living at the Citadel down in a, you know, Stalog 13. Dan's got some, you know, some swanky condo down in Columbia. I figured, well, he's just a better salesperson than me. So, Dan... It was good for studying, John. Yeah, yeah.

Now, didn't Edwin McCain live with you for a while? Edwin, when he first started playing, he would call my place home base when he was in South Carolina. Was he studying? None. Yeah. I didn't think so. All right. Well, welcome to the Noob School.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I'm going to go. I have no idea. I have no idea. But it always starts the same way. you've had a great career selling mostly in the telecom space for various companies. At one point, I know you won't say it, but at one point you managed a channel for Windstream.

You yourself had a billion dollar number per year that you had to hit for Windstream with your channel. Is that right? Yep. A billion. Not a million. A billion. So Dan started like everyone starts, every noob starts. Every noob starts just about modestly, right, selling smaller stuff and working your work.

But eventually, he's selling a billion dollars a year through his channel. And he's gone on to do some other really cool stuff also. So why don't you start us out, Dan, by telling us kind of how you got in sales, what your first couple of jobs were like and things that you might do different, or might tell them to do different in terms of your perspective for them. Okay. Yeah, I think I'd realize quickly that I'd have another choice because all the other things I was looking at required you to sit at a desk all day long. Okay. Behind a computer. Yeah.

And not move very much. Yeah. And that's pretty much impossible for me. Meaning a sales job would let you get out. Yes. Okay. And so I knew that I couldn't sit in an office all day. I'd go crazy. Yeah. And I love people. Yeah. I love meeting people. Yeah. And to me, that's what sales kind of is.

Yeah. That's a great answer. I mean, Dan, Dan knew he was not going to be able to sit there. I mean, a lot of jobs where you sit in an office, they're kind of like doing homework at school. Yeah, right? Where you have to, okay, go to the library, get your cube. Neither one of us could do that. You know, my nickname is Rhino.

I call it a cage. If you're going to sit in an office or sit in a cube all day long, you're kind of in a cage and you're not hitting anything. So you understood enough about yourself to say, well, I need to be out and about doing stuff. meeting people, that's sales. Okay, good. And what about your first job in sales? It was selling a product that I didn't really believe in, and I had a boss that I didn't like. And in hindsight, a lot of the guidance he gave me was correct, but I couldn't accept it,

because I didn't like him. I didn't like his style. Yeah. Interesting. And as I got unhappy, I ran into a company that was the exact opposite. It was a bunch of hard-charge in young people for the most part. Now that was CTG. CTG, corporate telemanagement group. I was going to ask you, that was the beginning of your telecom experience,

which has lasted from then, which was in the, what, mid-80s to now. No, it's the mid-80s. It was like the late 80s. Yeah, late, like 90. 81. To now, you've been in a variety of different telecom jobs even to today. But how did you find them? Some friends of mine were there.

Russell Powell, I sure remember Russell and Ted Hassel, David Hudson, and Layton Cubbage was the president. Okay. And I went over there to meet one of them from lunch one day and walked in. And I was like, this is home. Yeah. They were throwing the football around. Yeah, it was just a bunch of hard chargers. Back then, everybody wore, you know, suits to work and shine the shoes and the ties.

It just felt right to me. Yeah. It took me a while to get there. So you, this is, again, we're trying to teach them what you learned. You knew you wanted to be in sales. You found a culture that made you comfortable. Correct. And this happens a lot.

You found them because you were hanging around with some of the people that you wanted, you liked. Ted and Cub and these different people that you liked, where do they work? Right? Yeah. So where do they work? And if you go there, probably there's going to be a fit. And, of course, we saw this at Datastream where we had just tons of young people that were all very similar. And they would bring their friends.

Yeah. going to work there. Yep. So, well, no, it was a startup. And because of your background and my dad's background, our dad's background, you know, I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Yeah. And, you know, they interviewed me seven times and told me no six times.

And I called Layton Cubbage, who was the president on a Sunday night, said, I'm starting tomorrow, pay me whenever you want. And Layton said, you can't do that. And that led to like three more conversations. And then a lady that was with me until about five. years ago, hopefully that we'll back together soon. Janice Johnson called and said, we're going to pay you up $17,500 a year. Yeah. You're starting tomorrow. Yeah. Nice. And she said, I don't know how you did that. I said, I don't either. But let's go.

That's great. Yeah. So again, once you locked on to what you wanted, you knew you were going to get it and you just interviewed, interviewed, kept going after it and told the guy you'll work for nothing. You want to come to work there. Okay. That's good. That's good. I think everyone, every noob should have that as a goal to find that place that you just got to work for, whether it's what they're selling or who they are. And, of course, it was nothing about the money. That was not big money back then. And we've interviewed other people from CTG that, you know, Ted Hassel went from his salary,

went down by more than half when he started there. But he's like, I don't care. Yeah. I want to be at this place. And, of course, it worked out. So how long were you at CTG? It was about nine years. Okay.

I started in dealer sales support, and I was really, really bad at that because you had to sit in a cube and you couldn't talk except to, you know, customers. And it was a bunch of details. You know, you talk about all the different kind of testing people can take. I mean, that's what I did the testing. Yeah. And they realized that the details aren't my strength. I think somebody to help me with that stuff. Yeah.

And then one day, late in Coverage came and said you got promoted. You've got Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and some other state. And back then, you didn't have cell phones and you didn't have all the computer technology we have today. You didn't have LinkedIn. And so we would literally fly to those places every week. And you would rip the yellow pages out with every kind of telecom person that sells anything telephone-related. And we'd go get them to sell our stuff. And we used to show up?

Yeah. Back then, you just showed up. Wow. And Layton taught us if you got, you know, if they threw you out, just go next door. And so that's what we did. And it was fun. And I learned a lot. At the time, you know, I heard your James McKiswick podcast.

And he talked about the books I've given him over the years. And Layton was giving me most of those books and telling me what to buy. And so I was just covering myself with positive knowledge. And so I thought I'd set out. of everybody. Yeah. And that's where I learned a big lesson. Because I'd go in and I'd get at the parking lot and start asking for the order. And that doesn't work. You got to go in and find a solution that works. And you've got to listen. Yeah. I've listened to you talk about that a lot. Yeah. Well, that's a good one. That's a good. It's hard. But it's good to all. I mean,

you got to temper that with your enthusiasm to get the order. We talk also about, you know, nicely reminding the client that you are there to hopefully get the order. You know, that that's why I flew to West Virginia is I'm trying to find people that I can help. And if I can't help them, I'd like to get the order before I go back. You know, I mean, so there's a fine line between, you know, just listening and getting the order. But I don't know, you've done pretty well the way you do it. So tell me, from there, that's another 10 years. Did that get sold?

Yeah, we sold it. to LCI at the time, which is now Lumen. And I stayed there for a few years, but the culture wasn't the same anymore. Yeah. And it wasn't, you know, we had a saying that we were going to kiss a customer to their lips bleed. We were going to do whatever we could to take care of them. And they started asking us to do stuff that wasn't doing that. Right.

So, you know, I mentioned Russell Powell earlier. He and I went to a company in Raleigh, North Carolina for about three months in the telecom space. in the telecom space were offered everything under the sun to come rebuild their channel. Yeah. Because they had messed it up. And we were about 45 days in. And we were driving back from Raleigh one night. And I can't remember who said it first. We said, we got to get out of there. I don't care how much they pay us. Because these, the way we sell us through a channel. And those people that own those small companies that resell our stuff, they become our friends. Yeah. You know, we have to cut out of their kitchen.

Right. And we really get to know them. We were doing things that hurt them. And so the same people from CTG for the most part, the Hauser family and Leighton was involved. We started another telecom company called NuVox Communications. And that was a really good run. We had a lot of fun there. New Vox. Where was that headquarters?

It was headquartered. It was headquartered Greenville. Where is that? The downtown Main Street. Downtown. That's right. That's right. That's when you used to go to the coffee underground.

Absolutely. You're a charge account there. Yeah. I didn't wait in line, I promised you that. And that was a great learning experience for me because that's where I really moved into sales management more. And I had to learn process. And I had to realize that not everybody cared as much as I cared.

And so I had to set real strict boundaries. And it was this number always worked for me, but it was 42 qualified prospects and 30 proposals at all times. That's what a salesperson needed to have. And then they need to have 10 active, you know, agents, partners in the channel that they were recruiting in all times. So they have to be able to point to those for you. Yeah. And those numbers, one of the piece of that is they had to be honest with themselves.

If they just kept the same 42 and 30 and they never moved and never kicked people out, they were just lying to themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And I had to learn that with myself. I mean, when I first got out there, it was, you know, run two appointments, set to appointments every day. And if you're honest with yourself every day and you do that, should be successful. And what we found is if they weren't successful following those numbers, we could either help them, they were lying to themselves or they just weren't trying. Yeah.

And, you know, so if we could help them, we always, we could do that. And we ended up having a team that stayed together for, you know, 18 years. Now, was that all at NuVox? It was NewVox until we sold the company to Windstream Communications. Okay. And there were a couple of mergers in there with David Hudson and Eddie Terrell's company, New South. Yeah. And the company out of St. Louis called Gabriel Communications.

Y'all all merged together and then got bought by Minstream? We got bought by Windstream. And that's when you had the billion dollar number. Yeah. That was the Daniel building? That was, yeah, the Daniel building. Yeah, a couple of buildings downtown. Yeah.

But Windstream's still in the Daniel building now. That's wild And so how long were you with windstream proper? Just a little under five years I think that's right, four or five years. Okay. And the same kind of thing happened. It was just the first three and a half or four years, it was Nirvana.

Yeah. Because we'd never been used to having money. Right. You know, we never sponsored anything. We did everything on the cheap. We did it based on our relationships and doing the right thing for our partners. Yeah. Well, all of a sudden, we were having the biggest parties at all the shows.

and, you know, biggest booths and stuff that I still don't think we really needed, but we had it. You're rolling. Yeah, we were rolling. We're still working with Ted Hassel. And, you know, a bunch of people that we'd been together a long time. And it was a good run until they made a mistake, a pretty big mistake with an acquisition. And I was, I guess I was still too dumb at the time to know if a CEO and a CFO hire a big consultant to do a, to do a. analysis and there's only one person to disagree with them, that person's probably not

going to be there for long. Yeah. We think we found the problem. Yeah. Well, the consultant's not necessarily there to help. Yeah. Yeah. You can help help you.

Well, that's all right. So Windstream went well until the end there. The consultant showed up. And you transitioned to scan source, right? No. I spent about three and a half years at Green Cloud. Green Cloud. I forgot all about that.

Which was a cloud-based company. And it was, it was, you were president of Green Cloud. Yep. Okay. And it was back with that same groups. We had a series of three startup companies we did. Okay. And Green Cloud's killing it.

They just sold out. And most of them are staying there. Yeah. But we, our challenge with that sale was it was something we'd never sold before. Yeah. And sales had never been our problem. Right. And I was the sales guy.

Yeah. And it became our problem because it was different. Yeah. And it required more technical type people. So it was a, as I understand it, Green Cloud is like, instead of going to Amazon Web Services or Google or some of these people, you've got your own private cloud. Correct. Green Cloud was a Cisco certified cloud. It's closer.

Yeah. It's like right near you. But we thought we were going to be able to take that to our traditional agents that we'd work with for 20-something years. And it just, they weren't ready for that yet. They're much more ready for it now. But they found some other people who were ready for it. Yeah, they found MSPs that were Cisco certified and they wanted a Cisco certified cloud. And then they've done very well.

Did you find that before you left? Did I find. Did you all find out that specifically? We started to. Okay. We started to, but we were struggling a little bit with our communication, which was weird after a long period of time. Everything's fine now. And you actually called me one day when I was driving my car kind of frustrated.

And you said, call Mike Bauer at ScanSource. And I said, why? And I said, you said he wants to pick your brain. And I said, all right. And I literally had no idea why I was going out there because about 10 years before that, Mike had told me never to bring up services again. And Mike was the CEO of a big distribution company called ScanSource. And I went out there and he slid a piece of paper across the table and said,

Do you know any of these people? And I said, yeah, I know them all. They're my biggest customers. And they're what's called a master agent. So they represent lots of companies like Green Cloud and Windstream. Yeah. And long story short, he said, I want to get in that space. And over about a couple of weeks, we put together a deal and ended up buying the biggest master agent out there.

Nice. And this last five years has been challenging because all the reasons Mike didn't want to get in this business. we've been trying to figure out how you do it. Yeah. Because the scan source customers that are their partners. Their VARs, yeah. Their VARs. They're not like the agents I was used to working with.

The agents I was used to working with, one, they get recurring revenue. And they already usually come from selling this type of stuff in the past. Where the hardware guys are used to sell them with something, a piece of hardware, getting paid one time. And there's good and bad with both. Yeah. tying them together is really special. And we've got a great opportunity to do some wonderful things. Right.

And that's been, as I followed it along, that's kind of been the goal, is it was never going to snap into place immediately. But as you start to get these VARs thinking about selling the subscription part of the business, along with the hardware deal, give me an example of how you've tied hardware to services in a big way. Okay. So when I got to ScanSource, nobody really knew who I was. was or what I was doing. And over a couple of months, people would start asking me questions.

And I was walking in the hall one day and this guy, friendly guy that has waved to me 10 times named Bob Kroski, goes, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I'm part of this new deal and tell us this. And we're trying to get hardware people to buy services. And he goes, I don't understand. And I said, well, what do you sell? And he said, I sell this, he goes to his cue and picks up this device. It's a zebra scanning device.

And I said, when they scan that thing, what happens? And he goes, what do you mean what happens? And I said, does it have a SIM card in it? Does it have connectivity? Does it go to Wi-Fi? Does it go? He said, I don't know. And we called one of his partners and asked him.

And the partner said, thanks for asking. He said, it's awful because we sell the partner to the device. And then the end user has to go to Verizon T-M-Mobile Sprint, whoever, and get a SIM card. They put it in and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and Verizon Valab's, you know, the company and vice versa. And so Bob and I kind of put it together. We started going to his Vars and saying, you know, you can now through scan source, you can also do the SIM card. And we found a multi-carrier card that we can insert in the device before it leaves the warehouse. And you like a lot of the Vars are kind of shaking your head like where the heck is he going with this?

And where I'm going with it is we're providing a better end-user experience for the end-user customer. ScanSource is making money by putting the SIM card in the device and making money on services we never made before. Yeah. And the VAR is making money on recurring revenue that he's never made before. Yeah. And so that example is not a huge dollar maker for us, but it's a huge value add for our customers. And it's making us sell more hardware. Yeah.

And I know, based on having talked to you, we can maybe. We can't use some of the actual companies, but people that your VARs, your SCANSURS, as far as are already selling, let's say, thousands of handheld units a year or two. Yep. Like a big, you know, warehouse chain or something. And they're having to take those somewhere else separately to get them, you know, put online. And so there's two different vendors, and it takes, and people are blaming. And you're saying, scan source will just say, we'll do it all.

Yep. And we're going to make it a subscription versus just a margin sale. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the vision I've heard, you know, from you. And, you know, ScanSource is a large Avaya partner and a large, you know, all kind of different hardware. Yeah. And a lot of that, a lot of those hardware customers want to move to the cloud, especially since the pandemic. Yeah.

And so we're having a lot of success going to our Viya customer base and moving those Avia prim-based phone systems into the Avaya cloud. Yeah. And the VARs are very loyal to the Avaya prim-based business, even though Avaya is doing everything they possibly can to move them into the wild. Yeah. Well, you've got to change that comp plan. Yeah. That'll change them.

Well, that's cool. I mean, I love the vision. I've heard the vision from Mike and from you and others about, you know, marrying the hardware with the subscription or the service side of things, making it at one price for the customer, one delivery vehicle. And I know it takes time to get all those thousands of customers, you know, ready for it. But I know you all are picking off some big ones. That's great.

And so you're doing that today. So that takes us to current. Tell us just a couple of things over the last, you know, 15, 20 years since you started that you think were really good decisions you made along your sales path that you'd want to do again and pass on to the noobs. Well, I had to learn not to confuse activity with the results, kind of like I talked about with the funnel. Yeah.

You know, I thought that just being busy was being successful. Yeah. And so I had to learn that if you're not making money, you're not eating. Yeah. You know, so I had to learn to always be truthful and honest with myself. Yeah. You know, and that not being busy for somebody like you and I can be hard because we both tend to get overwhelmed when they're just, you know, all this list of stuff.

Yeah. And you taught me to prioritize that stuff on a nightly basis. So in the day, you come in and do the hard stuff first. And with sales, that's important. You know, because you, especially as a noob, you know, you got to do it all. You don't have people that help you do all that kind of stuff. I know. That was hard.

It was hard times, weren't there? Yeah. Jeez. And in that process of putting numbers around whatever you're trying to achieve. Right. And, you know, another thing you taught me early on is, you know, quota is your job. You know, some people say, come on 90%. Well, that's not, you know, that's not what your quota is what you're supposed to end.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, quota's like, you know, hey, John, Dan, I'm going to pay you. I want you to cut these four yards every day. Yeah. That's your quota. Cut the yards. I mean, you've got to do that. You need more than that, great.

But, yeah, I agree. I agree. What's the one thing you wish you to know about sales when you started? That it's not just energy and enthusiasm and having the best product. It's building a relationship of equal business stature. And that was real hard early on for me. You know, calling somebody with their first name and letting them know that I was there just to sell something. Right.

Because I was. And I also, if I, if I, didn't have the right fit, I'd tell them that. So honesty, you've got to be honest and not just try to sell, sell, sell. And that's one of the things I love about scan source and intelligence is, you know, we don't have to walk out the door. Because if it's technology, hardware, software, services, cloud, we've got, you know, 200 options for them. Right.

Which is pretty powerful. Right. So the latent thing of go next door, you really don't have to go next door. Because if you can get the customer to start talking about all their. technology challenges. You've got something for them. You got something for them. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Because especially during the pandemic, I mean, the technology challenges people have had have been massive. Yeah. I mean, I've got a great story of one of our big customers who their big, their big end user customers are airlines, retail, big, big customers. And when the pandemic hit, people weren't flying. So that, that business is dried up.

Yeah. And they got lucky. One of their end-user customers is a big major airline. And on the back of his phone had their customer care number. And this pilot's brother-in-law asked a question of, you know what I can help me with technology. We've got to send all these teachers home. He's over the whole state of Ohio from a technology standpoint. And the pilot looked at his phone and said, try calling these guys. And so literally over a couple week period of time, their business pivoted because they, They had solutions that could help with that. Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's great. I wonder if you get on the back of everyone's phone, that's a good idea. Yeah. A little mini billboard. So, Dan, what's your favorite word? It's a two-word answer.

You can have an extra word. You got a condo in college. You can have two words. It's Charge Rhino. You know, I talked about how my nickname was Rhino and one of the entrepreneur guys that, as a friend of you or I, Ralph Walker, and was a business partner of her dad early on. One of the summer jobs dad got for me or helped me get was cleaning bricks. And it was an old textile mill that had burnt down.

And they were doing turbo power off the thing. And I started cleaning bricks. And I was the worst brick cleaner in the history world. But I would get there like four in the morning and stay till like 730 or 8 at night. Yeah. Because the people that are other people cleaning bricks. I wasn't going to let them clean more bricks than me today. Yeah.

And they'd get there real early in the morning and leave during the heat and then come back at night. And after working there for like two months, Ralph came, drove up one day and handed me this book called Ronos for success. And said, read this book, go to college. You're not going to be a brick cleaner. And the book basically says, I'm going to get up every day and work as hard as I can. Yeah. and realize that it's not always going to work perfect. Yeah.

But just get up and do that again the next day and try to learn from your stakes. Yeah. So that's kind of been something that I've used. Rino charges. Yeah, I highly recommend that book. I don't think we've talked about it before. But it's called Rhinoceros success. Scott Alexander.

Become, yeah, Scott Alexander. Become kind of a family motto. Yeah. If you ever on a Zoom call with me or a team's call, you'll see Rino is all behind me because people have been giving it to me for years. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, you've had quite a career thus far, Dan, Intelcom, and I love, I really love what you're doing now because you're unlocking all those thousands of scan source traditional bars and tagging them together with Intelis outside of the business. It's, it's powerful. The guy that's the president of Intellesius, John DeLosier, he says this is his biggest, biggest technology opportunity he's ever seen.

Yeah. It's just, it's just massive. Yeah, and it doesn't mean it's going to happen immediately. It's been a couple of years now. It's going to be hard work, but we're in the right position at the right time. Mike's done a good job of putting us in a position. Absolutely. And if you're looking at the history of scan source over time, maybe it takes six years or four years or eight years, but it's going to be just a period of time and it's going to switch. And it is like John, like JD says, it's a monster.

I'm glad you're doing it with them. It's awesome. Well, listen. Oh, one more thing. Just in terms of what you're doing now, is there anything you want to tell the number? Noobes, any, is there any like job openings or should they be looking at any of these people, Vars maybe, that might want to talk to you?

Yeah, you can always look at the Intellisysus website or the, or ScanSource website. Okay. And, you know, we're hiring people all the time. Okay. Because of the growth. Yeah. And they're all types of positions, sales positions. It's, it's a little hard to get in our position, in our company and just start selling

overnight unless you've got some background and telecom or cloud tech. technology. But it can be done. Okay. Great. Well, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. And you are, you know, very special guest. Thank you. Yeah, man. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for time. Hey, is John here. Thanks for listening today. Please check out noobschool.org. That's my website. That's where we have other videos and content that can help you get started in sales.