Noob School - Episode 5: Chris Beard

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

Chris Beard shares with John some tales of his upbringing through Data Stream and beyond. Chris's first sale? Selling himself, a Clemson grad, to John, who tended to favor Citadel grads at the time. John and Chris talk about how important it is to find your passion in the sales world. Sales Noobs should pay attention to Chris's advice about decision-making, too—it's pure gold! Follow John on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/johnsterling_ Facebook: facebook.com/johnsterlingsales Twitter: twitter.com/johnsterling_ TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnsterling_

Today's podcast, I've got Chris Beard. Chris is one of my all-time favorites. We worked together for at least 15 years and had been working together ever since, his friends and colleagues and helping each other. Anyway, quick story on Chris. He'd been a great salesperson for us, and he was getting his first interview to be a sales manager. And he came to me and said, hey, what do I do? I said, well, you've already passed the bar with me.

You've got to go to the CEO now. pass his test to get this management role. He goes, what do I do? I said, just be yourself. Be yourself and let him know that you're enthusiastic about getting the job. So he's in there. CEO Larry asks Chris, Chris, tell me why you want this job. Chris, not kidding you, Chris goes,

I want it because I can crush this job out of nowhere. And so anyway, interview was soon over after that. Larry asked me to stay in the room, and he goes, we're going to hire this guy. He goes, I've never seen anymore with this much enthusiasm. Welcome back to Noob School. Noob School is a podcast that's going to help young salespeople or soon-to-be salespeople, take some advice, do's and don'ts from veterans. People that have done it before, who started out as Noobes 15, 20 years later,

they've made it in life and in business. they can tell you, here's some stuff I would do with some stuff I wouldn't do. Today, I've got Chris Beard with me, one of my all-time favorites. Chris, how you doing? I'm doing great, John. Awesome. Thank you for having me, I'm... Of course.

This is great. Thanks for being here. I like that shirt. You're a skier, right? Well, I mean, I've skied. I probably can't ski like you. Too tall. Yeah.

Well, my ambition exceeds my ability, so I have a really good helmet. That's good. That's a good idea. Good idea. Well, tell us how it all started with when we started working together kind of about your first gig with us. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I was working at a life insurance company and I wanted to, I thought I wanted to be in corporate finance. I don't even know why I did, but that for some reason I thought that's what would be cool. Interesting. But the challenge that I had with that is that, you know, I figure, hey, I can bust my ass all

year long and maybe I'll get a 5% raise next year. Yeah. Right. And that just wasn't motivating for me. Corporate finance. What is that like working in accounting? Yeah, you know, financial planning, that kind of thing. And I wasn't even there yet.

I was just with the company and I aspire to get to that area. And then I saw this ad in a paper, you know, literally a newspaper. That's all the long ago. Right, right. And it was for data stream. Yeah. And so, you know, I reached out to you. And the first thing I had to do was sell you that a Clemson graduate,

you were kind of partial to Citadel. They had a discipline. They had the rigor, right? Instead, I could do the job. And you gave me a shot. And I figured out that, hey, wait, I can pretty much write my own check if I work hard enough and get good at this. With commission.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was very motivating. And it became a driving force every day getting out, being excited. just to be able to achieve and have an upside. That was 96. 96.

That was a good year. Okay. So you had that kind of moment of clarity between kind of a salary and then maybe a smaller salary plus unlimited upside. Yeah. And not that it's all about money, but it was motivating, rewarding, to think that I had some control over that. And, you know, if I really worked hard, that I could accomplish that. And then I could go and accomplish other goals, you know, using the income that I made.

So, right. Well, it worked out great. So the Colby results. Do you remember what your scores were? You know, I don't remember the scores. Yeah. But I remember high on quick start, low on follow-through. Interesting.

And so I've been working on the follow-through now for the last 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. You remember that. You know, again, we encourage all the young nobs to take the Colby and start to understand more about it. But basically what Chris is saying is your natural tendency is not to check everything off the list and do your whole to-do list and do your homework and turning your term paper early and all that kind of stuff. You know, I've actually come to rely on to do list to compensate for the fact that I knew that I didn't have the level of follow-through.

that maybe I wanted to to balance out the quick start. So I do do that now, but it's because, you know, I became aware that that was something I needed to work on. I'm so all about that. That's so good. If you understand yourself, you can compensate, you know, and then take advantage of the stuff that you're great at. Like the Quick Start, you know, like Quick Start, your enthusiasm and you want to try things. And so when you're in the big conference room trying to get that first sales manager job, like, yeah, you know, you had that in you to go try something.

And it wasn't rehearsed, right? I mean, you told me to show enthusiasts, but I didn't even know that I was going to like do that out of nowhere. And at first I was like, uh-oh, should I have done that? Is that okay? I'm in an interview with the CEO. I don't know if that was okay. But it worked out.

Yeah, well, yeah. I tell you what, I would say that's a good lesson too for young people. is, you know, when it's just coming out of you when it's your personality, don't be afraid to let it loose. And if it's not a good fit for where you are, you kind of want to know that. Yeah. Right. I mean, you wouldn't want to be pretending not to be Chris Beard.

Right. So we loved it. Yeah, well, you know, you and I have joked about it over the years. And we had a lot of good times there. And it was the kind of place that you could enjoy that sort of thing. Right. It wasn't so buttoned up that. Right.

Exactly. Give us some of the things that you did, just particularly in sales and sales management, that you'd want to pass on to the next generation. Yeah, well, you know, you mentioned some of this in the book, and that is about understanding what you're really passionate about and sticking with that. You know, it's not, it's okay to try other things, but if you found something that you can really be passionate about, then it's much easier to develop the talent and the persistence that you need in sales. Because persistence is definitely a big part of it. Right. So, yeah, that's something else that I learned and maybe could have taken advantage of earlier

is the power of asking for help and asking for input. So I still keep in touch with a lot of the guys from our day. And we'll ask, hey, how pace, run something by them, get some really good feedback. And I probably didn't do that enough early. If I had known, it's like you kind of have this feeling you've got to know everything. Yeah. Right. And that's not true.

You need to leverage the resources that you have, which I can give you a good example of that. Sure, sure. So I was really wrapped up in learning MP2, learning the product and knowing everything about it. Yeah. And I want to be able to do my own demos, as I told you. And you said, why do you want to do that? I said, wow, you know, I got to know everything about the product and I'll really understand it. And you said, well, you know, Matt, right?

You know Matt does like 500 demos a month, right? And he comes from enterprise asset management background. You think you're going to out demo Matt? No. Why don't you leverage Matt? Oh, okay. And the light bulb goes on. I'm never going to be better at that.

than Matt. I need to understand, you know, the business aspects and be able to connect a problem with a solution. But then when it comes down to showing that, let's let the experts handle that. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a good one. That's a good one. I'm not surprised how often the people in my world that are the more successful people at getting things done, making things happen, building businesses, they're the most likely people to call me and say,

hey, I want to run something past you. It's amazing. I don't do it enough either. It's free. It is. It's absolutely free. It's fun, too. You catch up with friends.

Right. So tell me a few of the things that you did. If there are any that might have slowed you down, you know, in your sales career, that you wouldn't have done again. You know, one thing, and this occurred, well, well, there was more than one thing, I'm sure, but the one that comes to mind occurred at Datastream. And not too long ago, I got a call from a recruiter. And just by luck, the company that had reached out to me, a friend of mine is on the board of directors for that company.

I mean, so my next dial was him, right? And he said something during the course of conversation. It wasn't about that company, but he said, you know, I think something you want to consider. is are you running to something better or you're running away from something and there's a big difference and you know I thought back on that I said you know when I left Dave the day the first time right it came back but it was I was frustrated because I hadn't gotten a promotion that I wanted and I went and did something else but it wasn't necessarily because that was the better

thing to do it was kind of more out of that frustration and that was a you know and guess what it didn't work out so good. Right. Yeah. And so I would say that that was something that really, that set me back. That set me back. And if I had looked at it through a different lens, I would have made a different decision. Yeah.

Interesting. So that point is really to check out where you are more thoroughly, talk to people, consider it before jumping out of it. Might not be as bad as you think. Yeah. And, you know, I'd had a lot of success there. So it was sort of a, it was definitely an emotional reaction that really didn't have a lot of basis in fact to say, well, wait a minute, okay, just because I didn't get it now. Yeah.

Well, then I just got a more quarter at it and I will get it, right? And things have gone well here. So, yeah, I think to take a more thoughtful approach to it would have been helpful for me. Well, it's interesting. You say that because you had, you know, put it all together 15 or 16 years at one company. You just had one little tiny piece when you took a little. I took a break and did something different. Interesting.

A common theme, to stay on that for a second, that we see over and over again, is when people can find that thing that they like, you know, the software, the maintenance, or whatever it is you like, and then just peck away at it for a long period of time. You know, all of a sudden you're a sales manager. Then you're a VP. Then you're running an outside team. then you're, you know, someone like me.

I mean, I stuck with it long enough to be, you know, a VP of sales at a pretty young age. I was just the first one in the door, you know? I mean, I was stuck the first guy in. So, you know, we see a common theme. This is for the, you know, the nobs out there listening. Take the time to find something that you think you like and then stick with it.

Yeah. Not always greener at the other side, right? I remember hearing about so-and-so is making a lot of money in pharma. Yeah. Which is a great profession, great, great career. Yeah. But it wouldn't have been great for me because I would have just been chasing because I heard

somebody to make a lot of money. And that's not the way to do it. Right. By staying with something that I genuinely enjoyed, you know, that, that's what helped me advance in my career. Okay. Head trash. Can you give me an example of head trash, something that you believed to be true when you

were a young salesperson that turned out not to be true? Yeah. Well, there's probably several things. Yeah. But, you know, one of them that comes to mind, it's a little bit that we talked about this before, but that you have to know everything yourself. And you don't need to be the lone ranger. Yeah.

Right. So, but I felt that way that I needed to know everything about everything related to this. And I didn't use the resources that were available to me enough. So, yeah, getting that out of my head and understanding that a big part of the role is to bring the right people in at the right time. Right. Right. And, you know, quarterback it and make sure that everything is moving according to plan, but not try to be the expert and everything.

Love it. Love it, because I feel the same way. I mean, our job is salespeople, particularly a young salesperson who doesn't know a whole lot, is to uncover the problem, you know, figure out that someone has one, and then get it solved. It's not to be, you know, Rambo. You don't have to do it all yourself. So I love that.

Okay. What's your favorite word? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Did you have the absolutely temporary tattoo?

Of course. Yeah. Do you have any more in your desk drawer somewhere? We have to get some new ones. Yeah, I think so. That was fun. Yeah. A quick story on the tattoo.

So we made absolutely was our favorite word because when the customer said, can you get it here by Tuesday or whatever? Absolutely. You know, whatever the question was. And so we made up these temporary tattoo. You know, it said absolutely on them. And everyone was wearing them around the office. And the CFO came in my office.

My friend Dan Christie and goes, this is it, Sterling. You've got these tattoos for, who do you think is paying for these tattoos? I said, I'm paying for them. Oh, okay. All right, that's fine. So I got them on that. And it's a great word. I mean, I feel like, you know, other than it's affirmative, right?

but it's bold and it projects confidence and commitment. Absolutely, we can do this. It's quick. Yeah. You know, one word. Okay, last, anything else? Any other advice for the nobs or any other thoughts, questions, comments? You know, I think we've covered a lot of great stuff.

I would say that, you know, starting out using the tools that available to you to learn the profession. right and taking advantage of people like you yeah we did stuff in 1996 right that are in all these books today but we had it in the call guide back you know you had it for us and doing taping and those sorts of things way back in in the mid 90s yeah and I always felt like the the taping part you know being able to to critique yourself and have somebody help you with that was super powerful. Yeah. Well, you're kind to say that we were desperate to figure things out.

We all were, you know. So anyway, Chris, thank you very much for being here, your good friend, and it was my pleasure to work with you all those years. Likewise, Sean. Thank you for having it. Okay. Thank you.