Noob School - Episode 40: The Power of Consistency and A Good Plan with Matt Klein

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

SHOW SUMMARYToday’s sellers may have the fanciest tools and the best sales education that money can buy, but at the end of the day it’s about two things: consistency and a good plan. In this episode of the Noob School, Managing Partner of ACME Capital and Senior Lecturer in the College of Business at Clemson University, Matt Klein talks about his own sales journey and the many lessons he learned from it. From cold-calling to doing enterprise sales in Europe, Matt stands by being consistent in his efforts and carefullying detailing his path to ultimate success.  HIGHLIGHTSThe power of a going the extra mile in meeting other peopleTransitioning from computer science to software sales Earning stripes through cold-calling and dialing for dollars Always be consistent and have a planSelling in Europe? Just drink the teaTransitioning as an individual contributor to a team player again Tips on getting your MBA  QUOTESMatthew on going the extra mile when networking: "You don't know who you're coming across so might as well through a total line out. Make them feel important, as you say. And then set the table right. Give them the experience they otherwise couldn't get or take them to a nice lunch. It's, what, 100 bucks on your side but what you get out of it is a relationship and a connection that you otherwise wouldn't get just trying to figure out on your own."Matthew's recipe for cold-calling success: "It's just the consistency of doing it and having a plan. Walking in the office every morning, 8 am, having a plan and executing on it and knowing why you're calling. You're not just calling to say hi, or thanks. Sometimes I call and say, 'hey, I noticed you had a support issue. Maybe I can help you kind of push it up the queue?'" Matthew on choosing where to get your MBA: "When you get your MBA, you really want to be the dumbest person in the room. I, for sure, was the dumbest person in the room. I was lucky to be there." Connect to Matt in the links below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewklein/Website: https://www.clemson.edu/business/about/profiles/MCKLEIN Connect with Noob School and John by visiting the following links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsterling1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnsterlingsalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsterling_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_TikTok: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_Website: http://salestrainingfornoobs.com/

Hearing yourself on the phone and listening to people's responses as you get, especially early in sales, you realize how bad you really are. Having that experience and going through that, you really had to handle objections, how to position the product. Yeah. And really just be a better listener. Yeah. Because before you just... We had a one-page script and the new people, I say, listen, if you will just read the script, if you'll just read it and go all the way to the bottom, you'll pass the test. And they just can't do it.

They have to like spew off in one direction or another. I'm like, you don't need to do any of that. A lot of people don't know your name of the company. Like no one knew BlackBod, no one knew some of the other places we worked at. So you had to tell your story. Yeah. But you had to do it crisply and pitifully right in the beginning.

And it's hard to get that to come across. Yeah. Welcome back to Noob School. This is where we interview successful business owners, and we dial it back to the beginning and figure out what they did to make their revenue grow. All right. Well, welcome aboard, Matt.

Thank you, John. Yeah. So this is how Matt now got started. So I'm working along, you know, some muckety-muck business guy here in Greenville, and I get this call from this guy, I don't know. And he goes, John, this is Matt Klein. You don't know me. But I'm a new professor over at Clemson Business School and played basketball at college.

Charles, Naluton, I'm just trying to meet everyone. I'm a new guy. I'm a new guy. I'm trying to meet everyone in town that's, you know, important. around here. When I heard that word, I was like, well, you come to the right place. And so, you know, the old-fashioned cold call. You know, he was literally trying to network with anyone in town. It was kind of, I guess, doing own businesses, I assume. And it was quite easy for me to say yes. And you even suggested a place that was like real near where I worked right around. What was it?

That's right. It was some kind of Mexican place. Yeah, right around the corner from you. Which was very smart. Convenient. And he got there early, and he got us a really good spot. So he wasn't just like coming in at the last second. So everything about our original meeting I was impressed by. And so, and subsequent to that as well.

Thank you, John. So I just think it's a good example for people is a way to meet people. You can still make an old-fashioned cold call, even if that would have been a voicemail, that would have worked. What you're trying to get people as an experience, and I'll share that a little bit later about why I'm OCD about that type of setup and engagement with folks. Yeah. Tell us more about it. Let's jump right into it. Tell us about the process of calling, moving to an area because you weren't from here.

Correct. And trying to network and meet all the people in the area that seem to be legitimate business people. Yeah. So when I first came to Greenville, like you said, I didn't really know anyone. My brother was from here, but, you know, different network, different crowd. Yeah. And, you know, it was my wife that brought us here. She got to be the curator for the Museum of Art.

Yeah. And it was a lot of fun. But for me, right, I didn't know anyone. And so being in the software world, I wanted to meet as many folks as possible. And next was around or starting at that time. And, you know, the first thing you want to do is, well, I'll just rent a space it next. And that's what I did. So I worked there a couple days a week.

Yeah. And you can meet those folks and get to know those folks. And the next is the technology center. Yep. The nonprofit or the extension of the Greenville Chamber. Okay. So they still have a place on Church Street. And I think they still have Next on Maine.

And they're still doing their thing, which is great. And so there's a real buzz about Greenville at that time about 10 years ago with Next. And they had a lot of luncheon learns and, you know, kind of give back. So I met some great folks like yourself and others and got involved with Venture South and met a lot of folks there. And that's actually how I found a co-founder for one of my businesses was through all that networking. But you don't know who you're coming across. So I'll throw a line out. Yeah. Make them feel important, as you say. And then set the table right. Yeah. Give them an experience they otherwise couldn't get or take them to a nice lunch. It's

what, 100 bucks on your side. But what you get out of it is a relationship and a connection that you otherwise wouldn't get just trying to figure out on your own. Yeah. And Michael was hopefully to help you and more importantly, you help me and everybody wins. Yeah. I agree. And it's a little thing. It's a small sales thing. But I could tell as the prospect in this situation that you had just taken a little more effort than normal in picking the restaurant and getting the table.

And you're probably there 20 minutes early. And that means something. Just as someone's, in these days, it's someone trying, you know, to do something. That's right. It wasn't the point set club or one in the country clubs. you can create that same environment in other places as well. Yeah. Well, you've learned a lot about sales over the years and we'll back it up a little bit.

I mentioned the basketball. You went to college of Charleston and played on the basketball team. What did you major in? Well, I started out in computer science, but I reached my mathematical limit, which is another way of saying failing some classes. So what do you do in that situation? Polysy. Well, close.

Communication. Communications. Get in and get out. As quick as possible. Four years up or out. That was the rule. So I had to make a quick switch. But I had a great professor because I had an internship at the company.

You probably mentioned here in a minute, BlackBod as a programmer, my junior year, went through that process and enjoyed it, but realized I didn't want to be strapped to a desk staring at a monitor every day. And my communications professor told me, she said, well, why don't you, you know, you got that software background, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you go into sales for the? them and try that approach. And luckily enough for me, they were hiring their first account development reps. Wow. Yeah. So I was one of the first five they ever brought on. Wow. It was an interesting experience in that transition because it was new for them then, too. You know,

that whole account development dial for dollars approach. So this is BlackBod, which became one of the biggest software companies in South Carolina, right? Right after Datastream. That's right. That's good. But You probably met some of our data stream people there. Oh, definitely. You took a lot of our people. We sure did poach quite a bit. Well, they wanted to move to Charleston, I think. That's a good setup.

Yeah. Daniel Island, before Daniel Allen became Daniel Island. Yeah. They were Mount Pleasant, I think, back then. That's right. Well, back then, I mean, I was on Folly Beach. I could actually commute from Folly Beach to Daniel Island and make it there in 35 minutes. Now you might call it an hour in 35.

Yeah. But it was a good, good world. And, you know, starting right. out of undergrad going into account development, you know, well, I had to make that choice, right? Because what I planned didn't work out. But a professor gave me a shot, gave me an opportunity. Yeah. And it was, you know, it was straight up dial for dollars. And you have to build some resilience doing that. Right. So they hired their first five account development reps, ADRs. Correct. What do they have before then? They had nothing. They had account executives doing outbound calls

themselves generating their own pipelines. Okay. And so our role was essentially to build up leads to pass on once they're qualified to the account executive, the gray hairs, if you will. The gray hairs. That's right. And so we got paid. You'll get a kick out of this.

We got paid $500 a lead that was qualified. Okay. And sold. Yeah. It's not bad. And then we had a, I still have my offer letter. We had a, it was $30,000 a year and a $2,000 quarterly bonus. if you had enough talk time, dials, and hours on the day.

Huh. On the average. It was like two and a half hours of talk time, 110 dials a day, and, you know, so many leads generated. Do you think that's a good comp plan? No, because you can't predict what's going to sell. Yeah. So that's a carrot.

You can hang out. But I can't control once I pass it to a gray hair whether or not he's going to close it in six months, nine months, or 12. Yeah. So don't necessarily. think that's necessarily the best approach to a comp plan for an ADR. So do you think it would be better to pay the inside rep or the ADR on like a combined number with the outside rep?

Yes, but that would probably mean that you're tied to that particular outside rep working closely together. And we did attempt and try to do that where you would basically generate leads for maybe one or two outside reps. And I think that's a smart move. Yeah. You know, because then you build a mentor relationship. Yeah, but you weren't doing that on this.

Okay, that's what I misunderstood. Because that's exactly what we did. We had a one-to-one inside, outside, and the only way it ever worked was just to say it's one number now, you two. One number, and you're going to share it this way, and it's not always going to be perfect. Yeah. But it was never perfect when we said, is the league qualified?

You know, all those little minutia. They would rotate us around, and you'd be like, well, I don't want to send a lead to him because he's not going to do it or her because she's not going to sell. So, yeah, you track it, but that was like the funny money. You want to give it to old Charlie. That's right. Old Charlie unclose, you know. That's funny.

Well, you know, it's so interesting. It's funny now looking back, but that's kind of where you got your, you know, your initial experience. That's right. It's all did. That initial where you're making cold calls and you're banging out the phone and it just seems like you're going nowhere, but that's where you're learning. Oh, it's where you're, I mean, we used to. Well, I used to call a lot of fax machines just to make sure they work. That's an extra dial, a couple, 30 seconds.

But we used to record our calls on the old cassette tapes. And that's actually how I got promoted. It was, you know, at the time, I was really good friends with one of the other five, it was Craig. And to get promoted into inside sales, we had to record our calls for a week. And we basically had to turn in our best tape. And, you know, lucky for me, I ended up winning that competition. And so I got out of the hell of dialing for dollars every day in only three months.

But my friend Craig, who were still friends today, I mean, he took him an extra nine before he got out. And we still joke about it today because he's gone on to done really, really well in sales. He's a VP of sales, a large software company. And so we still joke about those early days of call recordings. But he go, you know, I guess you can only be good on a couple days. And my number got called early. But we used to do those tapes also. And I was the one who listened to him.

And first of all, it was really effective. 100%. As long as you got the buy-in of the reps, he said, listen, this is not going to be fun. This is like going through boot camp or something. But you're going to come out the other side. You're going to be better. But this one guy, one of my favorite guy is Greg.

He and Maggie were going through training. And they bring me their tapes one day. They're sitting there, and I'm listening to Greg's tape. And he just took me to get a he goes, yeah. And I hear Maggie's voice. She goes, well, just make a tape for him, Greg. And he goes, why? He goes, because he's trying to help you.

And he goes, it's so stupid. He's playing that tape accidentally right in front of me. He got the guy had a dub. Oh, oh. And I laughed so hard because he's right. I mean, I know exactly how he feels. You just have to ignore it's there. And you just flip it and keep going.

He's so stupid. He says it's so stupid. But hearing yourself on the phone. And listening to people's responses as you get, especially early in sales, you realize how bad you really are. Yeah. And having that experience and going through that, you really had to handle objections, how to position the product. Yeah. And really just be a better listener.

Yeah. Because before you just... Yeah. We had a one-page script. And the new people, I said, listen, if you will just read the script, if you'll just read it and go all the way to the Bible. bottom, you pass the test. And they just can't do it. They have to like spew off in one direction or another. I'm like, you don't need to do any of that. So hard. Well, a lot of people don't know your name of the company. Like no one knew BlackBod, no one knew some of the other places we worked at.

So you had to tell your story. But you had to do it crisply and pithly right in the beginning. And it's hard to get that to come across. Well, so how long were you there? So BlackBod, it was a really good run. So did three months as account development rep. And then I did inside sales for about a year and three months. And in that year and three months, I had a pretty good territory, I guess, whatever you want to call it, but it was a random territory. It was Rhode Island, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. And, you know, and this goes back to kind of my thought process of early sales is I would practice everything in the beginning on Rhode Island because it's just Rhode Island, smaller nonprofit, smaller clients. I was from Ohio, so I understood

the culture there. And so I could, you know, kind of finagle the old Cincinnati boy attitude there and that worked a little bit. And then D.C. was like the elite. I wasn't ready to call on those people. So for the first three months, I never called D.C. I just only took inbound calls from them because I wasn't ready for that. Yeah. And so I practiced on a run-in-on, get better at Ohio. And I ended up beating every single person in the entire company in the first year. Wow. Yeah. So we'll tell you what happened next. But I was 24 at the time, maybe 23. And so, You get to go to the big banquet. You get to give a speech in front of even the outside gray hairs.

And they didn't know what to do with me. And they couldn't make me an outside rep because I couldn't even rent a car without extra insurance to go drive around. They couldn't make me a manager because nobody would respect me. But then they did have an opening for a reseller in Europe. And so I got to have the opportunity to get promoted quickly to outside sales in Europe for a reseller that they were going to acquire before going public. but we'll get to that next, that experience. But for that year and inside sales, you know, for me, it was, all right, you had, like, I think, three or four hundred clients.

You segment them down. What components do they have? What modules do they have? What training have they had last? Like, I started just doing the analytics on the weekend. So that when I walked into the office on Monday, I already knew who I was calling and why. And you just kept that cycle going where your funnel just get larger and larger. And they used to call me the mailman.

because every month 100% or higher a quota still have all the old letters that the VPs and bosses would write me. Because it's just the consistency of doing it and having a plan, walking into the office every morning, 8 a.m. having a plan and executing on it and knowing why you're calling. You're not just calling to say hi or thanks. Sometimes I call and say, hey, I notice you had a support issue. Maybe I can help you, kind of push it up the queue. But you always had to have a reason. And once you had a reason to call, they started to trust you. And when they trusted you, you could have more of a consulting type call with them

where they want to tell you the problems. Right. But you wouldn't tell them, okay, great, tell me your problems. I wouldn't just tell the solution right away because I knew what the solution was. You get dangerous after a while. I literally have a chart of all the modules and be like, well, that could solve it. But I'm not going to tell them today. We'll let this keep picking the scab.

and eventually they'll tell me how much this is really costing them. And I can get that delta between what it's costing them and what we're going to charge to make it go away. Right. And you'd start building that relationship, and yeah, the sky's the limit. That really helped me. And what's an example of what an activity plan would look like for you for the day?

For the activity plan, what I would typically do is on the weekends, right? Because, hey, it's my first job. I want to be successful. I didn't know it's going to be that successful. I would basically look at all their accounts and figure out, okay, geography-wise, where I'm calling, and then what modules they had, and then the type of people I wanted to call and talk to to get information from. And then I would just log those notes. And so that I could circle back because what I realized is that when you were generating leads for the outside group, that first ADR role, you could generate a lead, but you only had one contact. And you would pass only that one contact over.

and that was called a qualified lead. And inside sales a little bit different. You had to talk to Betty, Susan, Greg, and get all their buy-in. So I would kind of get Susan first one week, and then I'd circle back to Betty the next week and then triangulate around all those three people, different roles. That way, I had a story to tell to the CEO or to whoever I needed to talk to. And that for me, because then you can just hammer them with the same value prop every time. Like, we all agreed to this.

Do you agree as well? Let's figure out when we can get this fit. in the budget cycle. Yeah. And then you could forecast, because most people couldn't forecast to save their lives, you could forecast accurately when those deals would close. So instead of getting yelled at the end of every month, people would be like, hey, he knows what he's doing.

Yeah. Make your manager look better, too. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, it's a surefire way to increase your odds of success as a salesperson, whether you're doing inside, outside, international, doesn't matter, is to have a, a plan. And most people don't, right?

Most people just kind of... They wing it. Or they wait for the call or the bluebird to land on their shoulder. Yeah. The other thing I want to get your take on is we call it the bucket theory. Like a salesperson will work, work, work trying to prospect and find it until his deal, his deal bucket is full. And he's got four or five good, good deals in here.

Yep. And then for the next couple of months, all he's doing is trying to close those deals. Right. Right. You forget about all this activity and prospecting stuff he used to do. It's like, well, how's that Ohio deal coming, you know? And your manager would do the same thing. How's that big one coming with the postal service, Matt, you know?

Right. And so, and then all of a sudden they close them and don't close them, and you're starting over. Yeah. You know, having been on the sales side and the management side, reps do that because they need to have something to say. Like something's happening. Yeah. Right.

And for me, I learned early on, like, I would never tell them those deals were happening. One, because they would swoop on them, especially a bigger name, and you would never hear the end of it. Because that's the logo they really wanted, or that's the license they really wanted, or the new product. So I would keep those, I wouldn't even put them in the forecasting sheets or anything. I would just leave them out of the opportunity pipeline. Because when you do that, you just draw attention to yourself. Yeah. And probably going to be negatively, right?

Because it's not real, at least not yet. We had a bell for a while. And at first, it was, you know, make a sale, ring the bell. Yeah, you know. Eventually, you know, anytime the bell went off, the executives would come storming down the hall. Who sold something? What happened? How much do we sell it for? What was the margin? What were the terms? It's like the bell got real quiet after a while. We want to answer all those questions. Under the radar. Yeah. You know, my office desk, like people, they still have a picture of it. All I had was the laptop, the phone, a blank legal paper and one pen.

Nothing else in my office. And people are like, is he leaving? Is he leaving? Is he? staying. But for me, I mean, it was just about organization. Yeah. I would just listen on the phone or on speaker, take my notes. And then once I was finished, I'd handwrite all the notes because it's faster that way. Then once the call was done, log it into the system, move on to the next one and put a reminder in for what I wanted to do next. I had a plan for every interaction. Otherwise, you're just dialing to dial. Yeah. How's it going? Exactly. And it doesn't work. Like, so we sold a lot of training right on the software. I would check their websites to see if they were hiring people. And then when the website would change. Okay, so now I know you hired someone. You're going to try the whole train the trainer stuff, but you know that never works. Send them to Charleston. Let's get them trained up.

And you can always put that tickler on the file for them. Well, that's really cool. So after that, did you go to Europe? Yeah, went to Europe. Okay. Tell us about that. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

So it was a great opportunity to young age to work for the reseller in Glasgow, Scotland. and it was just myself and two other Americans that went. Andre, she ran professional services and Mike ran support and he also did sales as well. And it was a really great experience because you got a whole other culture. Now, made a lot of mistakes along the way making that decision in terms of, you know, I didn't even interview with the managing director over there. Much less could I understand him. You watch the Simpsons.

It was like Willie, the long care guy. I couldn't understand anyone in the office. Yeah. So I knew I couldn't call Skylund. And so I started calling Cambridge because it's the posh English action that we could all understand. So I'd make trips down there. And I realized, like, why are, I mean, I'd call it the ugly flight. I'd leave Glasgow, land in London, make as many stops along the way in the morning, visit as many clients as possible.

And fly back, like, we didn't move the office. So we eventually moved the office down there and get more trips in. But it was a good experience. It's a different culture. And I realized that when you move into outside spells, especially there, there were more complicated clients, much larger clients than the U.S. The charities in the UK are way larger than the ones in the U.S. Hugely larger. And you start having to rely on other people to sell with you.

And that changes the game because it's not just you anymore. You have a sales engineer. You have your manager. You have the shooting director sometimes would show up. And what you're trying to do is orchestrate all the chairs and create a nice system that's easy to buy in. And for me, that was kind of hard because that was a huge transition from just being an individual contributor.

to now having to navigate all these other egos, not just on the other side of the table, but within my own team and the consultants that were also on our side that would deliver consulting services. Because everybody wants what they want, and your job is to kind of navigate and can you be that. Different mindset on the enterprise sales level.

And I'm glad I learned it, but you start realizing that it's just, it's not so much about you. It's about making sure all those other people are happy with the sales cycle and where it's headed. And making sure that everyone understands the value proposition we're trying to sell initially. A lot of them always have these grandiose visions

of what they want the company to look like in the future. But it's, no, guys, what can we get in the door now, meaning my commission versus what we can sell them later once they're already a client? Yeah. It's competing values. I think it goes from, I mean, it's always a puzzle. Whether it's just you and the prospect,

that's a simpler puzzle. But when you get to the enterprise, selling. In Europe in particular, you know, it's a more complicated puzzle. And your job is to solve the puzzle. You're supposed to shepherd people through all this. And it's a different skill set to have and a lot harder than I ever imagine it would have been. Right. So how long were you there? I was there three years, three and a half years, yeah. And did you enjoy the London time? I did. I enjoyed the time I spent London. It was a great experience and I wouldn't change it for the world. I learned a lot by being over there.

I brought a great racemships and friends. That's awesome. That's awesome. So one of the things, you've done a lot of international travel since then, but one of the things I suggest that the noobs do as soon as they get a chance is go around the world. Agreed. You know, you can do it. I mean, you can do it in two weeks if you really want to, but that'd be silly.

But three months, six months, I mean, right when you get out of school, take a year off, you know, you can get one of those flights that around the world tickets that costs like three grand. As long as you're going one direction. That's right. You got to say the same. Yeah.

And there's a million, and I have it in the book, and I think I've done some videos on it. There's a million ways to do it. I mean, you can get jobs along the way. You can, I don't know, do whatever you want to do. But it's just like, how in the world can we think we're going to be great salespeople selling to companies that, let's just say,

we're selling to BMW. And we've never been to Germany. don't understand that they've got operations in Singapore and, you know, just to see the big picture. But it helps you, like, what I always said was, you know, one of the first mistakes I was made was I never drank the tea. You know, they'd always offer me tea. You're like, nah. You know you sank up? Yeah.

It's like, no, I don't do coffee either, but you realize like, hey, drink the tea. That's how the problems get discovered. Yeah. And I never had the time for it. But then I realized, and it took some folks to kind of educate me along the way, like, hey, sit down. You're going to have some tea for a while and you're going to enjoy it. But what you get out of it is that conversation and the relationship that normally occurs way faster in the U.S. It takes a little bit more time to get the nuanced trust built over there.

And once it's built, I mean, you're good to go. They'll open up doors for you everywhere. Drink the tea. Drink the tea. I like that. Drink the tea. So from there, were you back to BlackBaud? No.

If you go to Babson then. No, I went back to Charleston. and went to work for benefit focus. Okay. Yeah. Tell us about benefit focus. So that was a, I wanted to go to an enterprise software company that had a great track record in growth. And that was them.

And I'm very fortunate to have that opportunity. And this was almost like a, I mean, you thought enterprise sales was hard in Europe. This was at a whole other level. We're selling the largest healthcare companies in the world at another of the Blue Cross Blue Shields. And you're bringing in. an army with you when you go to the sale meeting, including the CEO. And that's where, you know, for Love and More Hadam, you know, Sean Jenkins taught me a lot.

And it was just the OCDness of a meeting. I mean, we never went to these places unless we can have the room an hour before our meeting would start. Because you know how most meeting sales means. Oh, come on in vendor. Sit down, right? And the chairs are shuffled everywhere. And the room looks like garbage. There's trash everywhere.

And you're trying to get the projector going. It's like a total disaster. I learned so much, like, Sean's like, no, if you're going, if I'm flying anywhere, sometimes we've been private, it was great, you're going to have that room and you're going to have an hour to have every chair at the same height, everything perfect. I mean, we're talking like the coozy here, the pen here, the agenda there. Yeah. Everything turned on perfectly before anyone walked in the room with us.

And it was, it set the tone of like, we're a different type of company. You might not know our name, but if this is a level of professionalism, you get in a sales call, much less, can you imagine what it's like as a prospect or a customer when you're with us? And that taught me so much because it wasn't, that was really orchestrating a whole symphony, really of the CEO, the VPs, the, I mean, you had tons of sales engineers. The product's so big, no one could ever understand it themselves. Yeah.

And you're running as unreal. So that was an incredible experience that I had there. And that was like, I would say, the height of sales for me. Wow. It was fun. I mean, you're... Do they still, they sold? They still...

They IPOed. It was, yep, another IPO. So this is my second company that I was with that IPO, which is kind of fun. Nice. And, I mean, the learning was incredible. And the people you meet along the way. Well, that takes you right back to where we started with the setup of the lunch we had the first time. That's right.

It's just coming in. It can't get out of my system. It's been in your nature now. Well, you realize how much more people feel relaxed. Yeah. and not rushed and special. Like, here's the menu. It's perfect.

Your water is already waiting for you. Let's have a conversation. Yeah. So I take that with me everywhere I go now. You know, anytime I have a meeting, I'm like, I want it in an hour or 30 minutes before we get started. I did a training session for a company for the first time this company a month or so ago. And I had no, it was horrible. My horrible.

I just said, okay, what time? You know, three o'clock? I show up, you know, for how hard can it be? And there was like 12 salespeople. I walk in the room and there's like six of them sitting in cubes this way and like four of them sitting this way and then a big screen up here.

I'm like, well, where's the training center? They're like, what's you going to do it here? I'm like, what's the big screen for? Those are for the remote reps. So I'm supposed to train this line and that line and the remote people at the same time. Yep. And it's just setting those expectations up front.

I should have gone beforehand and said, no, we're not going to do the training today. We'd have to do it when it's going to work. Okay, I've learned that. That's good. I'd be more prepared more like a Boy Scout. Were you a Boy Scout? I was not a Boy Scout.

Me either. Okay, so you had a good run there. And then Targis? Yep. So Targis Information Corporation, small company up in D.C., you know, my wife was getting her grad degree, so it made sense to move up there. and start a new kind of career. And smaller company, great atmosphere.

It was a highly sales-class engineering-type company. And we basically did data and analytics on consumers and businesses. So the idea was, you know, if you called Domino's on a Friday night, or the company that gave you the latitude and longitude, so they knew where to deliver the pizza and your name and address, as long as it was a consumer-initiated transaction. And so what I liked it because it brought me back to being. an individual contributor. We never traveled. You know, you talk about the elephants, the squirrels,

and the deer. We would just go after squirrels and deer. You know, and everything could be a transactional thing. So for me, I felt really good about it because I felt like I was making more money and in control my own destiny, which was great versus what I had before at Benefit Focus, which was a much larger, you know, a lot of ego on both sides of those types of sales. And so for me, it was fun and were doing well. And then the company kept growing new products. And then we started, what do you think happens? You start transitioning into the larger elephants in the room.

So you'd sell like an American Express or at Disney. And now we're back to where I was before again. More complex sales, more listening, right? And that company actually sold. It did really well. It sold to a publicly traded company called New Star Information Systems. So it was a nice exit. And then eventually kind of brought us to Greenville.

So, but it was interesting to have that transition of when I first got hired there as an individual contributor outside sales to where I ended up going with these larger clients, more enterprise. You know, they had to build the infrastructure around that as well with the sales engineers and the consultants and everyone else, data analytics to come in and help assist the sale because it becomes too complex for one person to manage, much less handle. So did you help them do the bigger deals? Yeah, so I helped them kind of do the bigger deals. You know, you got a Bank of America, you get a Disney. One of my last clients was Disney. You know, that was, I mean, a year and four months. Yeah.

Getting it to start to finish. But you realize you just have to kind of let Lorraine's go and let the other people around you make you successful. And that's hard to do as an individual contributor. It is so hard because you're like, I don't know about John or Susan. I'd rather have somebody else come in and, right? Because it's, it mirrors you. it mirrors your personality and you have to coach them. So I felt like a lot of my times I was just a chauffeur down in Orlando.

Get the nice SUV. Everybody got a water. Everybody got a gum. We're going to go over to Disney. Now, this is what you're going to say. Yeah. Well, let's get this thing sold. Yeah.

Yeah. But you did it. You checked the box for them. And then you transitioned. Was that when you went to back to school? I went to school during that time. During that time. Yep, during that time.

Because you could take a flight from D.C. up to Boston really quick. Okay. And do like residency weekends. So that's when I got my MBA. Yeah, so I just want to point out, I mean, you had three great companies you worked for and you learned sales from the beginning to the enterprise sales, but you liked the entrepreneurial aspect of it. And you went and got your MBA at the best entrepreneurial school in the country, and probably in the world, is Babson. That's right.

And I think it has been that way for a long time. He's been out. He's got some competition now, but, you know, looking back on it, it was an incredible experience in them. And I'm glad I waited a lot longer. Now, I had to weigh a lot longer because I have a lot longer. because I have a horrible undergrad GPA. So you had to cure a lot of sins is the way I would describe it. Can't explain away those failures.

But wait 10 years, three great companies, getting admission to a top school wasn't too difficult. And what are some takeaways from there that you learned? From the BAPSEN experience? Well, I think A number one is your network. And that's why when I came to Greenville, I was like, I have to create one. I mean, folks like John and others. You know, I sat next to the CFO of Ben and Jerry's. I had the senior vice president of L.L. Bean.

And I joke with my students now. It's like, when you get your MBA, you really want to be the dumbest person in the room. And I for sure was definitely the dumbest person. I was lucky to be there. And so that network still serves me today up in Boston and that area of folks that come from there. And I look at it here in Greenville. It's like, you really want to absorb all the great information that everybody else has around you. And you got to be humble in that.

But once you do, you know, maybe you can pass it on to others or meet more. But for me, that was the most important thing is to really be able to absorb not only what the professor was saying, but also the folks around me and having those relationships. That's cool. And connections. That's cool. That's great. And so then you and your wife and family moved to Greenville, and you became the person, as far as the person responsible for the entrepreneurial part of the Clemson, NBA.

program. Correct. So I teach in the NBA program. So you're teaching that program. And I've come and sat in some of your classes and talked to your students time to time. And I can attest that, I mean, I hear from students that don't know me and don't know you, but I just somehow meet them. They're like, if you're going to Clemson, you've got to go to Matt, Dr. Klein's class

because he'll teach you something. So anyway, I'm so glad you're doing that. It's so good for our community. It's fun. It's very rewarding. I love being around the students. I have the first new cohort today. Sharon earlier, 24 new students, 24 new ideas. And we got a good track record. About 30% of them

go on to launch the businesses that they came in with. And that's their livelihood. And to me, that's incredible because, you know, I went to the number one school in the world at Bafson and I graduated with a PowerPoint deck. What we would try to do at Clemson is graduate revenue. And if you can do that, you can completely change the mindset of these students and hopefully change their stuff. So you got a product and you sold it to somebody. You sold to somebody and you sold enough of it that you can make a living and support your family. That's strong. To me, that's a huge win.

That's so strong. And pay that tuition back. Yeah, I think it's easier to make those sales when you're in school. 100%. Because you can say, I'm just a little little old student over here at Clemson trying to sell you, you know, some stuff. But once you get out, do you just another dude on the street. You're just another one with a logo that trying to get your name out. I love that.

You want me to come speak this year? I would love to have you back. I would love to. It's on the calendar. I'd love to. Is there anything that you want to pitch to the crew? Pitch to the crew. Yeah.

Pitch them to come to Clemson or anything you're selling these days? You're invested in quite a few companies. Any of those companies in buying that stuff? Yeah. Can't touch them all other students, but when they graduate, they sometimes circle back to me, which is great. Yeah. But in terms of Clemson, I think what we do best is, one, we care.

We care about not only who you are or what you are, but what you can become. And I think every professor, every staff member truly has your best intentions in mind. That we're going to network you everywhere in Greenland. Grandville's great for it. Clemson's great for it. The network, the connections. If I send an intro, you're going to respond. spawn probably same day. Same with a lot of other people I know in Greenville. And you might not have

the answer for them, but you might point them in the next direction. You know, in other cities, you might get shut down right away or in other environments or in other universities. But for some reason here, I don't know what it is. People want to help each other and they want to help you succeed and they can be a part of that. And that's what I love to share with my students is, you know, I might not have the answer, but I know two people that are in a tangential industry that we can get you connection with. And as long as you have, you have, you know, the ability and attitude, you're going to get the answers you need to be successful. Cool.

Yeah. Last question. What's your favorite word? Favorite word? Tenacity. Tenacity. Because you can't teach it. Yeah.

I tell my students this today is like, we can put everything in front of you, but I can't make you do it. Yeah. You know, only you can want it. And that's the hard. I wish I could do an academic paper on it because, you know, we can go through all the motions. We can go through all the sales training. We can do everything we can, but I can't teach you to just do it every day and be good about it and just own it. Yeah. You know? Good word. Excellent word.

Well, thank you, Matt. Thank you, John. Appreciate you being my friend and I'm glad you're in Greenville doing what you're doing and hope you come back to the podcast one day. Anytime. I appreciate it. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.