Noob School - Episode 92: Expanding Your Business with Graham Stroman

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

On this episode of Noob School, we're joined by Graham Stroman, discussing all things sales, from an early move that set the stage for his career to develop, to his time at Datastream, Salesforce, IBM and more. Watch now to learn from his abundant experience in the world of sales, and how he uses his experience to rapidly expand the businesses that he works with. Check out the Noob School Website here: SchoolForNoobs.com I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Today I've got an old friend going back to when? When did we meet? 195. 95. Wow. Graham Strowman.

Graham started with me as a sales rep, I think, just out of Georgia Tech. Yes, sir. Yeah. Graham was, he didn't want to talk about this, but he was the quarterback for the Rambling Rec, Georgia Tech football team. How was the team back then? We were all right. Yeah.

In the early 90s, we did pretty well. Yeah. We had some, at the end of my career, we struggled a little bit. Yeah. Struggled to the point where they changed the head coach my senior year. Okay. So you can imagine that was a challenging year. That last year.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's okay. It was a heck of a ride and a lot of fun. Yeah. Great experience. Who was the coach?

Well, it started off, Bobby Ross was there. Bobby Ross. Then Bill Lewis took over. He came in from East Carolina. And then my senior year, Bill departed. game seven and Georgia Leary took over and Georgia Leary had an amazing run at Tech through the end of the 1990s into the early 2000s. Huh.

Okay. And then you must have been, we go to big school in Atlanta and high school? I went to high school in Rock Hill. Rock Hill, that's right. So I'm a South Carolina boy. Okay. Northwestern high school. That's a big school.

And yeah, it's one of the bigger ones in the state. Yeah. Did you all win the state championship? We did. Of course you did. We did. Damn, that's awesome. Yeah, there was no question I was going to hire you, man, when I met you.

You looked like you're going to be a sales leader. And you are. You became one. It worked out. I was right again. You were. Yeah. So, yeah, Graham came to work for us out of Georgia Tech and became one of our entry-level salespeople and did very well.

He worked hard, but he was very gifted at it as well. And then after a little while, how many years before we put you in outside sales? About two years. Two years. So you were quick on the rise, and you did well there. And then we said we need to open up a California office. That's right. And we sent you out there.

Does it mean us California? How many years was that in? That wasn't many either. That was two years in. So right when we put you in corporate sales? Yeah, I did about six months covering the southeast. Mark Vetzel was covering the West and me and Mark flip-flop territories

because Mark didn't want to move to California because of their family. Yes. So he took the southeast and I went to California. So you'd been there two years. Yeah. That's crazy.

And where was the office? It was in Irvine. In Irvine, okay. And who else was out there with you? The first person out was Clay Bush for professional services. Man, professional. I like that.

We need to get Clay Bush. on the podcast. You do. He runs his own company now. Is it in Colorado? Yes, he is. Yeah. So what was that like being a young, you know, successful bachelor in Southern California? It was amazing, John. So I'd never been to California. I'd never been west of New Mexico. Yeah. And when y'all decided to have me go out there, Scott Millwood said, Graham, fly out there and figure out where you want to live.

And at the time, there was this really cool TV show on called Baywatch. and I told Scott and I said you know what I said I think I'm just going to go yeah he's like what do you mean I said I'm just going to move I said clay was already in Newport Beach I said I'm just going to move to Newport Beach and play it from there so I jumped in my car yeah it wouldn't if it didn't fit in my car I didn't take it yeah drove from Greenville South Carolina to Newport Beach California in two and a half days yeah set up shop and the rest is history yeah well I mean I'll give you a lot of credit because you have gone on and we're going to get to this in the minute to lead large teams at some of the greatest software companies

in the world. But that decision right there, two years out of school, never been to California before, never even sold really big outside sales yet. But we thought you could do it. I knew you could do it. But sometimes the person doesn't think they can do it. That's right.

but you're like, darn it, I'm going to do it. And so just by getting in that car and going out there, you set the agenda for the rest of your career. That's right. Instead of starting here, you started here. Isn't that cool? It's amazing. It's a good decision.

Yeah. Amazing opportunity. Yeah. And I was able to take the opportunity and run with it. Yeah. So thank you for the opportunity. Well, I'm glad it worked out for both of us. Tell me about some of the deals you got out there. Do you remember?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, hit the ground run. And our biggest customer out there when I first got there was Chevron. Okay. So we really grew the footprint in Chevron. We were working with their offshore platforms as well as their onshore production facilities up in Bakersfield. The biggest deal we ended up doing while I was there was with Kaiser Permanente. So we did a really big enterprise standardization of MP2 for all facility management for all of their health care. facilities. And the other big one was Navy, so NWAS, Naval Warfare Assessment Services, which was Top Gun. It was actually Top Gun School within Navy Aviation, and we did a great, great project with them that was highly competitive against Maxmo. So let's talk about, let's talk about Kaiser for a minute. Because one of the questions I get a lot from sales reps and also from business owners is, you know, how can I get my reps to do big deals?

And so Kaiser, if I recall, Kaiser is the biggest chain of hospitals in California or West Coast? Actually, nationally now. National. Okay. They're all the way towards the East Coast, but back then they were predominantly west of the Mississippi. Okay. And so Kaiser, we had already warmed our way into Kaiser, you know, it may be a few locations. Right.

And that's kind of the way that we typically would get started on a big deal is we'd kind of weasel our way in at a couple of places. Now, whenever we'd get a Kaiser big deal, we had a presence out there that could go get to know these people. Right? So by being there, who did you call on at Kaiser to get a corporate deal? Because I don't remember the deal. It was a monster deal for us. Yeah. So the group that was running the evaluation and was ultimately going to own the implementation was,

NFS National Facility Services. And it was a division within Kaiser that was responsible for facility management of all their locations. And they were evaluating software. We had some MP2 and some of the specific sites. They had some Maximo in some of the specific sites. And then they had this internal system that was homegrown called BIMS, biomedical maintenance system.

And it was an opportunity where they called us up, said, hey, look, we're looking to standardized across our enterprise on how we handle all our asset and facility management. So went up to Oakland, their headquartered in Oakland, probably did 30 trips to Oakland over the course of that sales cycle. But, you know, went in there, met, highly competitive, had to go through a bakeoff with, you know, technical demonstrations, you know, went through the competitive phase, had to win the vendor selection. And then what took the most time was the actual contract negotiation. You know, the difficult part is getting them to write you the check. Once you get to the end and it's time to sign the contract, I was trying to get that done in about a 30-day window,

and I think it took me about 90, which everybody in Greenville was calling. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, what's going on. But there was a gentleman named Don King that ran, coincidental, same name as the fighter promoter or whatever, but he ran NFS, and I got to know him really well. And he, you know, you know, it came down to trying to get the contract done. We needed his boss's approval to get the final signature. And late at the end of our final quarter, Don was able to get the stamp and was able to sign it and get the deal done. That's amazing. 30 trips to headquarters.

That's wild. Yeah, that's wild. Well, that's, you know, one of the things we tell people about getting a big deal is, first of all, place has to have a lot of locations and you have to be in. in some of them, and you have to get to a CFO or someone who, you know, can do the deal, and then talk about what an aggregate purchase would look like. Yep. Right.

We save money, easier to maintain, you know, the whole thing. And unlike a telesales call, it ain't going to happen in two or three calls. Nope. You don't just call say, how's it looking? You know, you've got to literally spend some cases years with people gaining trust, learning to make these deals happen. Reference calls?

Yeah. They want to speak to somebody that's using it at scale the way they plan to use it. They knew MP2 worked at a site really well. Their biggest concern was will it run the enterprise

right for asset management for them? We're like, sure. Yeah, sure it will. Trust me. Let me talk to some of your references. Oh, man. Are they still using it today? I'm not sure.

That's a good question. I've lost contact. I've sold the Kaiser with Cognos over the years, but I was never able to figure out if they still use data stream asset management. Yeah. And then the other one, I'll tell you a self-depreciating story about Chevron is we were doing a golf tournament. You had a user group here.

We're doing a golf tournament, you know, for – and I was in charge the golf tournament, you know, for pairings and who's playing with who and everything. And the Chevron was four people from Chevron, and we let them play together. And afterwards, I was like, what did you just do, John? I mean, you've got what a Fortune 10 company. You've got four buyers over there, and you don't have a salesperson to be with each one of them. That's right.

For four hours. So anyway, lesson learned, but you guys ended up doing a lot with Chevron. And they need maintenance, too. Gosh, what they do. huge. I mean, enterprise asset management was more important than their ERP. Right. When you looked at a business like that, how critical those assets were to run that business and maintain production and efficiencies. Yeah, a lot more important. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go over some of the great places you've worked. So obviously, Datastream was the first one,

and you moved up so quickly. I mean, how many years total were you there? Seven years. So seven years. And did you leave because of the Cognos opportunity? It's a funny story. So I was working with Kaiser on the implementation. So we're rolling this out at Enterprise Scale at Kaiser. And when I presented the product, the way I always presented MP2 is I started with the analytics piece of it, the dashboards, the reporting. And then I pivoted back into the operational transactional side of the system, how we do preventative maintenance, inventory management, procurement. I would show them that secondary because all the executives, all they can.

cared about was the analytics. Sure. And NP2 had some real pretty embedded analytics. Well, what we learned once we got into the implementation, the scale that they were doing it at, it took the reports forever to run. So we immediately pivoted and started looking for a third-party analytics tool that they get attached to the data store and actually do the dashboarding and reporting at scale the way they needed it. And we found Cognos. And so this is after Y2K. And after all these companies and government entities had replaced legacy systems with new systems, all of a sudden a light bulb goes off, wow, this might be the next really hot market is analytics and seeing what Cognos did as far as helping out Kaiser. I was thinking, John, that maybe it was time to, you know, change space from EAM to business analytics. And lo and behold, a recruiter called me about an opportunity at Cognos.

And so I went and interviewed, and long story short, that's how I pivoted from Datastream to Kognos. And you know what? I think either path would have been fine. Yeah. Because DataStream kept growing too. And now the darn thing, you know, it was owned by the Koch brothers, owned by N4, and now somebody else. Yeah. Well, Datastream, it was amazing products.

Yeah. MP2 and MP5. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun to sell. Yeah. Well, Larry did a great job with the company, and particularly with the products. Yeah, it's amazing. He used to, one thing he used to do, I want to get too down rabbit hole, but, you know,

when a new product will come out, like the new version of MP2 or the new version of Seven-I or whatever. Yeah. Instead of just saying, well, everyone, congratulate, he would say, well, install it on my computer. And he would say, well, that's going to take, I don't care how long it takes. installed it on the computer. He wanted to see how long it took, how hard it was, and then he would start filling it out and try to print work orders and stuff.

And half the time, something wouldn't work. After all that, two years of work and QC and all that stuff, he would just simply install it on his computer and try to print a work order, and it wouldn't work. So it's interesting how, you know, the people talk about eating your own dog food. Yeah.

He was really good at... He was QC in it. He was doing quality control. Yeah. The CEO. He was an engineer by trade, though, for I remember correctly. That's true. He's true, yeah, he was.

Ph.D. For me, he was the perfect partner. He was all engineering, products, details, process, operations. And, you know, I was not that. I was more on the sales side, I would say. So after that, you went to Cognos, which became the leader in business analytics.

That's right. And then that company got bought by IBM. That's correct. Big blue. And how long did that process take? How long were you there? Well, they had a very formal integration process. So IBM had become very good at acquiring software companies and integrating them into their business. I mean, IBM had a $35 billion software business when we joined in. And so it was a two-year regimented program. My thought process was that I would be there for the business.

two years of integration and then probably leave after that and go work for a smaller company. Well, lo and behold, I woke up one day and I'd been at IBM for seven years. Wow. So it was leadership opportunities came. I stayed in the analytics group, which they had bought more analytics type companies, ETL tools, information governance systems, predictive analytics tools. And they were putting out all that into a bag that my team sold. So, you know, we could bring bigger, broader solutions to our customers and prospects.

How big was your team at that point? I was a second-line manager after the integration was completed, and that was my first foray into second-line management where I was leading leaders. I had four what we called sales directors, and then underneath them were about 35 sales reps. Okay. And so you roll all those numbers up together, 35 times quota, with that number be. You know, 70 million was my... 70 million. Kind of important.

Yeah. Kind of important. Yeah. Now, so you've now been data stream, Cognos, IBM, running, you know, 40, 50 people on your team, and then you switch to micro strategy. Microstratory, right? Yeah. Another data analytics company. That's right.

And the idea was you're going to step to a bigger role, smaller company, same field. That's right. Okay. How did that go? Yeah. Well, one of my leaders when I was at IBM is a woman named Susan Cook. And she ran the analytics team for IBM and I worked for her. She actually left and went to MicroStrategy. And so her leader in the West, a gentleman that led the West for her, moved on to a different role. And she immediately picked up the phone and called me and said, hey, Graham, you ready to do something different?

Yeah. And I knew what she was doing. Yeah. And I said, do you need, you know, do you have an opportunity? And she's like, yeah, I need somebody to run the wall. West here at Micro Strategy. And she was somebody like you that was a mentor, great leader, somebody that highly respected.

And I said, yeah, it's probably time for me to go work for a smaller company. Micro Strategy was about $500 million in revenue versus IBM $100 billion. Yeah. And so I went to work for Susan at Micro Strategy. So that move was predicated by someone from IBM kind of pulling you to the, you to the this new opportunities, which is exactly what your plan was, right? You moved down to better opportunities. Yes. The team was smaller, so, you know, I had three leaders. So it was still a second-line job. I had three leaders in about 20 sales reps with micro strategy. Micro strategy is big

and think about the industries, financial services, retail, consumer package goods, high-tech. You know, we had some big customers out there, Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Starbucks, Wells Far So it was fun companies to work with them. Did you ever go out to the Facebook headquarters? Yeah. It's pretty cool out there it is. It's very cool. Yeah, we'd meet with Visa in the morning.

We'd have to put on like a suit type situation to go meet with Visa. Yeah. Yeah. And then we go to Starbucks and do a wardrobe change. Put on jeans and a t-shirt and then go meet with Facebook in the afternoon. That's crazy. So. Yeah, if you went in a suit to the Facebook campus, they'd think you were a narc or something.

or something. They wouldn't meet with you. Yeah, they wouldn't meet you. Yeah. Yeah. We went out there a few times. They actually hired us to do a little study on how we could help their logistics move faster on campus.

Ended up not doing anything, but it was very interesting. Google went to Google too and checked out their stuff. I haven't been to Google yet, but they're doing tons with a... with this whole AI chat GPT stuff. Are you using that? I played with it a little bit. All the big tech companies are embedding it. So, you know, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.

You know, they all have analytic solutions. So they're actually, you know, taking the freemium that OpenAI has put out there, embedding it into their platforms to bring some type of a use case. It'll be interesting to see how it evolves over the next few years. It will be. It'll be very interesting. 100 million users on chat GPT right now. I use it almost every day.

What type of use cases do you use it for? The main thing I use it for is to help me write stuff. Yeah. You know, like if I have, like I used to, particularly when we had a bigger staff, you know, and say, hey, you know, Frank, you know, I want to write something, I want to speak that kind of sounds like this

with these bullet points and blah, blah, blah, these kind of pictures, and bring me something back. I would mark it up a little bit, then we'd be done. Yep. But if you just give me a blank piece of paper, I can hardly do anything. You need a starter package. I need someone to help me. So ChatGBT does that.

I'll say I want a PowerPoint. I want it, you know, 14 slides, this, this, this, and there it is. And now I can move stuff around and edit. So mostly for that kind of content creation is what I use it for. Yeah. Also, sometimes, like I'll do sales questions. If I don't have enough sales questions from the noobs, I'll ask it, you know, common questions salespeople are asking and just spit it right out.

Yeah. If I was a high school student or a college student, I would be becoming a master of chat GPT because it'll write essays for you. It'll take your test for you. And it's the future. I think that, you know, the more people embrace the technology, some people, People are scared of the technology. It's definitely got to be quality control, quality assurance, like you were saying with

the PowerPoints. It's a great starter pack. But to me, it's the modern calculator. So if you think about when they invented the calculator, it changed the way we did math because it was automated. And now we're taking all these tasks that have been manual like you just described. And it'll build you a 14 slide PowerPoint deck in a second. It'll write you a song.

It'll write poems, composed music. It's amazing. I think of it, I'll take it a step further. I think that, let's just say, Google Search to me would be the calculator. Chat is the spreadsheet. So it's able to now do these, take the information from Google Search and do something with it. Two separate things. So it is amazing.

My son, Jack, is really into it, encourages me to find some reason. to use it every day, just like another language to learn it because it's a big deal. Yeah. Okay, let's keep going. Keep going. This is so much fun. So micro strategy, good small, just 500 million small, data analytics company. And how long were you there before you switched over to Tableau?

I was there a little over three years. Okay. So a three-year run, and then a buddy in mine from Cognos that ran pre-cells, so he and I started the state and local and education group with Cognos. We were for God named Joe Lally, that was the national leader. This is going back to the Cognos days. That's all ended up at Cognos. End up in state and local and education, aka SLED.

This gentleman was over at Tablo running pre-cells for North America for Tablo, and they needed a new state and local and education leader, national leader. And so he immediately thought of me and gave me a phone call and said, hey, and Tablo was hot. I mean, Tablo was... Yeah, I remember. Yeah. Tablo had been the new hot technology. They already had an established practice, but they wanted somebody that could come in and

help grow it to the next level. The man that ran public sector was the person that hired me, a gentleman named Steve Spano, general, Steve Spano. He was in the Air Force for 30 years. he was very well tuned into how the federal government worked. And I went and interviewed with him based on the recommendation from Jonathan Lynchek, who ran pre-cells. And he and I hit it off. You know, he's like, hey, I need somebody that can come in and truly run sled.

While in your work for me, I'm focused on federal because that was his, you know, 30-year career. Yeah. Working with the Air Force as well, supporting the other big agencies at the federal level. And so General Spano hired me. And, you know, we grew that team. When I got there, it was four vice presidents and about 24 sales reps. Within two and a half years, we had it up to seven vice presidents and 57 sales reps. Wow.

And so what would that total have been at quota? That quota carried, so that was all subscription. So we had renewals, which is ARR, annual recurring revenue, which is about 75 million that we had to maintain. and then our net new ACV annual contract values was about 45 million. So 45 million and new yearly revenue that would then get piled on to the maintenance? Yes. So we were running about $130 million business roughly. Because our subscriptions, the government can't sign multi-year contracts.

Okay. Because they can't commit to out-year funding because they don't know because they budget every year. So, you know, we had to really stay on top of our customers to make sure the renewals happen versus going into like a Netflix and signing a five-year deal where you got them walked in for five years. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. So Tableau was the hot company.

You know, they weren't the first people to be in this data analytics field. Why were they the hot company? The founders. So the founders actually were looking for application that made it very, very, you know, easy something that business users could use to do analytics you know the goal was to help organizations see and understand their data right so that was the company's credo yeah was we help companies and government entities see and understand their data and the founders basically bought a system like Cognos they

were at Stanford they're bunch of Stanford guys and girls they bought some like Cognos and micro strategy and tried to implement it and thought it was very difficult. And so they pivoted and went and created a whole new platform that was very intuitive. A business user could use it and build analytics on top of data stores and data sources and all the different systems that need to be. So they went easier. They said we're going to do the analytics is going to be easier. That's right. Man, I just love that. And of course you know, the software world, they're probably complicated by now. You know, I mean, people. People, get in that way and they start, well, we had to have that.

We better have this and this pretty soon. It's a big old mess again. Yep. Elassian did that. Did you follow that where there was some product that was eating their lunch underneath them and they bought it? Yep. And then that thing got kind of complicated.

Yep. Yeah. Huh. It was an interesting run for the Tableau organization, the way they did it, and the way the founders, you know, decided to build a new, a whole new platform that made analytics for the masses, meaning not just people that would use it, but people that actually could create their own content, like chat GPT, right? It's like everybody can use it. They tried to do that same thing with analytics. Yeah. What about smart sheets?

Do you know smart sheets? Yeah. They do the same kind of thing? I do some analytics. They do a lot of stuff in the financial organization of companies. Is it with spreadsheets? Yeah, it's predominantly built on spreadsheets. Okay. Yeah. That's an old. onyx guy. Oh, is it? Yeah, the guy who started that was a, I think the guy who started onyx. I didn't know that, yeah. Because I think Crawford might have worked for them for a little while. Okay. It's a good company. They got, you know, they got a lot of good installations out there, smart shoes, stuff. All right. So now you're with Tableau and you're kicking butt. You've got 70 people, and Tablo then sells to Salesforce for $16 billion. That's correct. I think I would have probably

sold, too. It's a no-brainer. Yeah, we'll take it. We'll take it. So now you're working or you were working with Salesforce, and when did that happen? Well, that started in 2020. 2020. Yep.

2020. So how big is Salesforce? Salesforce is about $35 billion? Okay. Yeah. They're on a run rate trying to get to $50 billion. They've pivoted a little bit off of growth versus profitability. They're focusing now more on profitability.

You know, hence the big text, gone through a bunch of layoffs the last, you know, six months. But Mark Benioff, you know, his mission was to grow. It was all about growth. Yeah. And, you know, they've got some pretty aggressive investors that are wanting to see more profit. Yeah. It's amazing how that happens, right?

Yeah, it does. It does, certainly does happen. And so we've got another data stream alumni who worked Salesforce, T.J. That's right. Did you, we all in the same circles when you all were working there? We were not. So T. T.J. was focused on the sales force.

Salesforce core business, which is the CRM. Uh-huh. Right. So, you know, when they bought, when they bought Tableau, they kept us, you know, not separate, but we were still our own organization. And TJ was focused on different industries. Okay. So I think he was looking more at like construction and project management type

companies in his coverage area, whereas I was just doing government, state local and education. And I was just doing Tableau. Well, now that you're close, since you live in Atlanta now instead of California, you need to come up to the Christmas party. We still have a party every year. Y'all still doing that? We still do the party.

Oh, I got to come. T.J. always comes. Always. He and I can ride together. Yeah. And Jenny will ride too. Okay. Jenny comes every time.

Fantastic. So it's really good. It's a good, it's good to see everybody. I mean, usually it's 50 to 70 people. Really? It's a mess. Of course, I don't stay out like I used to, right? Nine o'clock.

you know, I'll pull the shoot, I'm out, but, you know. Well, it was an amazing, I'm going to pivot back to data stream real quick, John. I mean, it was an amazing company. Yeah. The people that you hired, I mean, it was like, you know, it'll be one of the questions I'll ask you later, but it's like, you know, there were some amazing people that you hired that, you know, I follow all of them and they've gone on to have great careers that were built on the foundation that you set for us. Yeah.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I'll always say thank you to a compliment. But I'll also say, you know, the expertise I had was finding you guys. You know, I didn't find Graham and then create this superstar. I mean, you already had that in you and Jenny and T.J. And all those people, they already had it, but I didn't screw it up either. No, definitely.

You definitely didn't screw it up. You enhanced it. That's right. That's right. You enhanced it. So you stayed around for the transition with Tableau and Salesforce for, what, two or three years? Yeah. And you just took, you're in the process taking six months off. Yeah. So how's that feel? It's been great. I've, you know, I quit looking at my phone so much. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not getting email and text messages constantly. It was an opportunity to step away and recharge. Yeah. They integrated the Tableau public sector team and the Mulesoft public sector team. into Salesforce global public sector. So people that had my type role, you know, those jobs were eliminated. You know, that's normal in an acquisition. I saw the same thing when Cognos was integrated into IBM. And it's been an opportunity to recharge the batteries, travel with my wife, play a lot of golf, tennis, things that I couldn't do before.

I can do now. But the good news is now I'm looking for my next gig. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. first of all, I'm delighted that you've been able to take just a little bit of time off and recharge because having been on that hamster wheel myself before of the quarterly deals every quarter, it just keeps on coming. Your body and your brain need a little break every now and then.

You can't take one when you're working for one of these companies. No. Your office will be, somebody else will be sitting in it when you get back. That's right. But yeah, let's talk about what your, roughly your ideal new situation would look like. Yeah, so I'm looking for the new challenge. That's a very generic statement, but that's at the highest level. My passion is leading people, so I'm looking for a leadership role.

And then I love selling technology. You know, the last three years I was dedicated to the state, local, and education industry. but previous to that, you know, I've worked in enterprises that were communications and telecom, retail and consumer package goods. So my, you know, when people say frame yourself for me, Graham, it's like I got 21 years of analytics experience across multiple industries, right? Whereas some people will pick an industry, stay in that industry and then sell different products into that same industry.

I did it a little bit opposite, meaning I stayed with the same technology, and then I've spanned lots of different industries over that 21 year run. So I love working with data solutions, right? So data analytics, you know, the whole next gen I think is going to be more of this AI ML. So ideally an opportunity to build something. So whether it's a small company where I can come in and help build up the small company, or it's a division in a larger company that I can help build up. Yeah. Right. Because I'm all about the challenge of building something versus managing and maintaining if that makes sense yeah yeah so

ideally southeastern based company BPSLs you know someone who's ready to step up and hire a real BPSLs yeah versus some of the customers that I work with the the owner is still kind of the sales manager or they might have a sales manager but kind of a junior level person but someone who wants to really invest and bring on a heavy hitter. Yeah. That would be perfect. Technology. They don't have to be headquartered in the southeast because there's a lot of good

companies out west that need leaders. You know, it's the reverse of data stream, right? Data Stream was South Carolina company that sent me to California. There's a lot of good companies in California that need leadership. So I'm looking for a national company that, you know, want somebody that can come in, has expertise. in leading people, helping run sales cycles, making customers successful, and need something built versus managed. Okay.

Okay. All right. So a few questions here about sales in particular. So the training we did when you first came on board, I don't even remember all this different stuff we did. I know we worked hard on just the basic call script. The tapes. Yeah, we would, so tell us about that training and how that helped you or didn't help you. Well, it was, at first it was a little odd that, you know, we were taping ourselves, talking to, you know, prospects.

But once I saw the way you used the tape to coach us, it made total sense, right? It's like, because you can't sit in everybody's office and listen to the conversation. So you make the tape, right? We had the call script, which is a great call script. We recorded it. Then at the end of the day, we went and sat down with you. Not only did we listen to our tapes and get feedback from you on us, but we listen to our peers. Right?

So you got this full circle view of what everybody was doing. And you could hear what people were doing well. You did a really good job of pointing out, hey, that was good. and then you did a great job of coaching us on how to improve our weaknesses in our sales calls. That's where I learned a lot. Probably one of the biggest things I learned was the art of asking open-ended questions and listening. If you're running an effective sales call, you should be using your mouth and your ears proportionally, meaning you should be talking one-third of the time and listening two-thirds of the time.

And that's an effective sales call. You've got to get them talking. And you taught us that. And you used this system. I don't know if, where did you get that from? So, you know, a guy that I, that I consulted who helped me so much because I was a young sales manager, man. I didn't hardly know anything. And I had this consultant in Greenville named Bill Lee, who's been on the podcast.

And he turned me on to the Colby. He turned me on to profiling, like who I wanted to hire. Yep. And then he turned me on taping. Because I would say, God, this guy, Frank, you can't sell anything. He goes, have you heard him on a sales call? I'm like, no. He said, well, listen to him.

Yeah. So anyway, again, that's the test, the Colby test. I remember the test. I couldn't remember the end of it. Yeah. Yeah. That was a fantastic avenue that you took bringing us all together at the end of the day and sharing in that experience of getting not just coached directly, but seeing our peers get coached

and having the opportunity to hear what they're doing well versus what we're doing well. Yeah. And then the feedback on what we all needed to do. do to improve. Yeah, well, you all were good sports to do it, but it's, it's kind of a, it is a, it is a fast way to get people up to speed, but it's kind of brutal, you know, a lot of people can't handle it, but I thought that was part of kind of becoming a data stream salesperson. It was. Because you have to kind of get through that, you know. Well, we were, we were dubs, a Navy SEAL kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, we were all news.

We were all fresh out of college, hadn't sold anything yet. Fifth Battalion. Yeah. So what have you done with your sales reps that's worked best in terms of helping them become their best? So most of my career, I've obviously been managing outside sales reps. You've got to get in the field with them. So it's almost like the taping experience, but it's all done in person. Because we're doing face-to-face customer calls. Yeah.

So I make sure when a new rep comes on board that they get the corporate training, all these big companies have, you know, onboarding and the standard training for a new hire. But I would go on sales calls. I would get on sales calls on the phone as well as in the field where you can actually see them in action. And, you know, an effective enterprise sales call, it's really three meetings. There's a pre-meeting amongst yourselves to determine the objective of the call. and make sure what are your desired outcomes of the call. Then there's the actual customer call where you go and sit down and execute, do a lot of listening, ask a lot of good questions, do a lot of listening.

Then there's the post call where you debrief and talk about next steps, not just the next steps that you laid out with the customer during the meeting, but then you go sit down and say, here's how we're going to achieve these next steps and here's what we need to do. And oh, by the way, here's what went well in the meeting and here's what didn't go so well like you would do with us. Yeah. That's great. I mean, that's great feedback. You got to get the field. I know some of the field trips I did with reps that I hadn't traveled with before just blew me away with, I mean, not knowing where they were going, being late, you know, wearing ill-fitting clothes. Not trust properly. I mean, and then talking, like starting to talk before they even sat down. It's like, hey, well, I was going to go back and just start.

and like, ah, help me. So, yeah. And they're all easily fixable things, but if you don't ever show up, the rep doesn't know any better. They don't realize they're doing it in a lot of the situations. Yeah.

When you're there experiencing it with them and you can provide that candid feedback, they appreciate it, right? I mean, so. Okay. Oh, we've already talked about chat. Okay, this is the favorite section. What is your favorite book?

Ann Rand. Of course, Ann Red, the Fountainhead. Remember you had us read that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I read a book recently that I did want to share with you called It's by Robert Bossman. It's called 4,000 Weeks.

You ever heard of it? Yeah. It's about life, right? So it's about how to live a balanced life. What most people don't realize is 4,000 weeks when you extrapolate that into years, it's 76.6 years, which is the average life of an American. According to the CDC, the average life of an American right now is about 76.4 years. So it's a fantastic book.

It's a little bit of a self-help book, but it really helps you understand how to live a balanced, effective, and successful life. So 4,000 weeks. I'll go read that. I've heard about it. I like the idea. and you know somehow as I've gotten older I think maybe from reading and maybe from examples of other people that are living an interesting life is how they just start to put repetitive things on their schedule that they like to do simple example would be someone who says we like the beach me and my family go to the beach every June we have the same house you know and so you're you start to be a build that life the way you want it versus just, what are we going to do this summer? You know, and just kind of leaving it to whimsy.

Yeah. And I suppose the 4,000 weeks ago talks about that kind of thing is you start to build in. Yeah. What's your ideal like? Like in my life now, because I can work remote anywhere, the last three years, every February, I'm some other place, like out of the country. Yeah. You know, I want to try a different place.

So you're doing international travel. to new places. Good for you. Yeah. Yeah. So like I was in Argentina last February for a month. And, you know, just all of a sudden you're just like you're in a different planet. Did you just spend a will to pick Argentina or how did you end up deciding on?

You know, remember we bought that business down there? Yeah. Pace found, Michael Pace found. Yeah. I always liked it. People said, where's your favorite city? I said, I think Buenos Aires maybe, because it's just great weather, friendly people. Yeah.

Same time zone is East Coast, so you're not really getting all weird on time zones. And then, you know, great food and music and all that stuff. And so I wanted to go back down there. And so that's why I picked it. Yeah, I think I remember seeing a picture you playing your saxophone down there in Argentina. Yeah. And I was like, I wonder why John's down there. So it was a...

What's he doing? A little vacation. Yeah, I mean, I would, I would, every evening. go to this little park and play. Yeah. And they would just come, they would come out of the woodwork, and I got to meet all kind of people. Yeah. It's, I've not done a lot of international travel.

So it's something I need to start doing as I, you know, move forward in my life. I've been all over North America, you know, Mexico, Canada. I've been out to the Caribbean islands. Yeah. But never down to South America. Well, I'll let you know the next place I go, you can come join me. Yeah. Even for a week.

Yep. come down there. All right. Four thousand weeks. I'm going to read that. Favorite band? Foo Fighters. Food fighters. Oh, I love the foo fighters. So Dave Grohl is probably, in my opinion, the most talented musician. I've seen him in concert a bunch. He's not just a great, you know, musician. He's also a great entertainer. So when he's on stage, you know, doing his concert, He's so talented at actually engaging the audience, talking to you, telling stories. Just an amazing man. I love him too.

I get the feeling that he's talking right to me. Yeah. It's amazing. And then the music videos they do remind me of the old heyday of MTV. They're so funny. That's right. So, yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing.

Favorite word? Not to sound too sappy here, but my favorite words probably love. Love, okay. Yeah. Tell me why. So I didn't get married until I was 43, right? Okay. And I love my wife to death.

And what I've learned from her is that I would lead with my heart, or I would lead with my mind, follow with my heart. She leads with her heart, follows with her mind. She's a mom of three. She's a grandmother. Yeah. She's an amazing woman. And I don't, you know, there's, there's so many polarizing things going on in the world right now. I think we need more love.

And I think it's okay to use the word. And I think sometimes people are hesitant to use it. Yeah. Right. But it's like, you know, it has different variations. Like I can say I love my wife. And that's one thing. I can say, I love the opportunity you gave me, John, when I was, you know, 23 years old back in 1995.

Yeah. And I think it has meaning. You know, I tell my friends that I'm really close with, you know, I'm like, hey, brother, I love you. They're not physically my brother, right? I do have a brother. I don't know if you remember him, but you did me my brother David. But I really think that's a powerful word. I think it expresses, you know, positivity, and we should use more of it, you know, in the appropriate situation.

Wonderful. Well, can't get enough of love, that's for sure. That's right. Now, the last thing is we have talked about what you wanted to promote, which was your ideal situation going forward. So, why don't you just remind us of that, and then we can close out. Yeah, so the bottom line is 20 years sales management, 13 years is a second line leader. My passion is in leading account executives. It doesn't have to necessarily be a second line job.

But I want to be in a position to help build a team, help develop, help recruit and develop salespeople, and help build a business for some type of technology company. It could be a services company, right? So I'm not, you know, my whole career I've been in product technology, but there's a lot of really good service companies out there that implement technology that I would be very interested in as well. And there's a foundation, I think, to having a balanced life that I did want to share at this moment,

which is, you know, there's three things that I think everybody needs in their life to have a good life. And it's you need something to do. You need someone to love. you need something to believe in. And if you can get those three things in your life and figure those out, you'll have a good life. Well, I think you're having a pretty good life. I'm very thankful that you came up to see us today,

and someone's going to get a great man on the bag here soon. So good luck with that. Appreciate it, John. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. See you. Awesome. Yep.