Noob School - Michael Pace Returns: Sales, AI, and Why Being a Noob Is a Superpower

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Michael Pace is back on Noob School for the third time, and every conversation with him feels like catching up with an old friend. We swap stories from our careers, dig into the pros and cons of comp plans, and talk about how AI tools are changing the way we work in sales and entrepreneurship. One of my favorite parts of this conversation is how Michael frames “being a noob” — not as a weakness, but as a real strength when you’re willing to try new things, stretch yourself, and build confidence in new areas of business and life. Michael’s experience and perspective always bring practical lessons for sales professionals and entrepreneurs alike. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co 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 #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends#salestrends

Hey, welcome back to Noob School. Episode 153. I'm here with a special friend, like third grade, Michael Pace. Michael, I guess everyone probably knows this, but Michael was the first guest on the podcast. I was. You're number one. Number one, at least in terms of that. Number one.

Well, I went back and looked at parts of it. And this is how it went. Michael, you, I was reading. Were you a noob? I was a definite noob. I was reading. My ponytail was just like, it looked like a pigtail. I mean, it wasn't long.

I think I was scared to mess up, you know. I don't know what I was doing. You did fine. You've got a lot of help now that can cut and splice and make up. That's true. That's true. That's true. That's true. Yeah, but that was, I mean, how long ago was it? Was it three years, four years? I would say at least three years ago. Three years, yeah. Number one. A lot of water in the bridge since then.

Yeah. So Michael, Michael and I do go way back. We went to the same high school. He's younger than me, obviously, so we didn't know each other really in high school, but I knew it was dad, who was the football coach. and we do a lot of the same people, but that's kind of how it started. And then you went to Wofford and played baseball, and weren't you a coach there? A coached for a year after I graduated. And then how did we find each other? I was at a bachelor's party dinner with Dustin Caldell,

and he told me he was working, starting with a software company in Greenville and working for a guy named John Sterling. I'm like, well, I know John Sterling. They're not paying me but about $350 a month to be a baseball coach at Wofford. I think I'm going to do something different. And so I reached out to you

through that, after that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it was a, I'll just, I'll say this, not to blow up your ego too much, but, you know, I tell the companies that I consult with now that you need to build an avatar of what you're looking for that would build your perfect sales team. What does it look like?

And amazingly, most people don't have it. Most people treat every interview as if, you know, yes or no, what about maybe this person might work out. Versus like, in your case, I wanted them from around here, right? I wanted to have some local connection. Also makes it less likely you're going to leave and move to Oklahoma City, right? Because that happens all the time. People work for it for three to say, well, I'm going back home, you know. Well, darn, you know, that's no good.

Athlete, you know, very important for me anyway, for the role we had, competitive, you know, work on a team, that kind of thing. I liked a few schools, Wofford, Clemson, Furman, Citadel. I wanted to create a, you know, almost a fraternity kind of situation of those people in sorority. And then, you know, I would say we definitely give people a test. And the results to test, we want them to be. in line with kind of what other good salespeople look like test-wise. And you know what the last thing is? It's the beer test.

Like, we don't go have a beer with this person. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And if the answer is no, you don't want them. Right. Yeah. Because people make that mistake all the time. You're like, well, I don't have to like him.

No, no. Your customer's not going to want to have a beer with him either. So you passed all those tests. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, and the weird thing is, and you know, Larry, our CEO, he noticed it quickly, that Michael did not know how to sell at this point, right? When you had not had that experience. Oh, yeah, my mom even said, what are you thinking?

She said, you don't like to talk a whole lot. And I'm like, well, give it a shot. But it's interesting. People will hire someone because they've sold before. and not hire them when they just you were the perfect avatar for what we looked for and then we worked on selling right we trained and we practiced and you and worked on in the way that you needed it yeah so we needed it to work that we needed it to work right yeah and you also later probably went down a path and hired

somebody that had sold before an Oracle, that type, that just didn't quite work out. Yes, exactly. Because it didn't fit the profile. Yeah, that gentleman had played football, big-time football school. You know, good-looking dude, I thought I wanted to have a beer with him. But because he had learned how to sell for a billion-dollar software company, and we were, you, you know, you know, maybe a $50 million soft of, they weren't selling the same things. And also you learn that there's different support mechanisms that maybe they had in place in those companies that we didn't at the time.

Right. Lots of help. Yeah, here's your lead on a platter. And it's your plane ticket. One-A. Yeah, interesting. So that's how Michael and I met. And Michael was great at learning how to sell.

Didn't take him long at all. He became the best salesperson for a long time until he got promoted. Right? You got promoted to sales manager, right? Yeah, whatever title you wanted to give yourself back then. But yeah, it was. We were kind of the Montessori business school. You know, it's kind of do whatever you want.

You know, I didn't manage anyone until... Until Mexico? Until Mexico. Okay. Yeah. And that was, you know, Latin America guy. So Michael, I think, was 24 or something. He'd been worth this for a couple years, done very well. And my partner says, he says, things are going well in Europe. Why the hell aren't we in Mexico? I'm like, well, we could go to Mexico. He goes, who do we have that? I'm like, Michael Pace. Michael Pace, I remember on his resume, it said he spoke Spanish.

And so I went and told Michael that we had a new assignment for him And he's like, but why, why me? Why me? I'm like, well, you speak Spanish? She was, I just said that on the resume. I took like one class. No, no, I did have a degree. You did have a degree.

You had a minor. No, a double major, business econ, Spanish. And Spanish. I just never had lived abroad where I think that's really where the fluency comes from. But I didn't lie. just wasn't as fluid. Why did you want to major in Spanish in the first place? I can't remember.

Well, at a liberal art school, you got to have a bunch of electives. And I just said, well, and I had come in and I'd place high enough in these early placement tests that they do in the Spanish world. And so I said, I'll just put it towards something I might use versus taking art history and whatever else.

Well, that's smart. That's smart. And so that's why I pursued it. Plus, they really wanted Spanish major, so it helped bolster a little GPA, too. Okay. Okay. That's good. That's good.

Huh. And it worked out. It got me different avenues, opportunities, met people I would have never met before. Well, your whole career from that point forward has included Latin America, right? Mm-hmm. Only one little period of time when I handled Asia Pacific and not Latin America. in America, but that didn't last for very long. Yeah. But I mean, it's been

interesting how, and I tell people this all the time, particularly when they're young, they can make a move, they can make a decision to do something, and it will change the direction of the rest of their life. Because now when you get hired by, you've worked for, obviously, data stream, you killed it, but

then Pitney Buzz Software and Yvante and now when, excuse me, smart sites, they all have that Latin America piece, right? Yeah. And I think you also, you make some big decisions to, that allow you and afford you other

opportunities that some people don't make or like not to make because of other reasons or various reasons. But sometimes they're, you know, picked for you. And you go and you take advantage of them or if, if, and do the best you can. with it. Well, I did think it would be good for you. It wasn't all about me, Michael. I thought that would be good for you. But I, you know, I didn't think past, you know, our conversation. I didn't think about your conversation with Devin. You just been married or just about to get married?

Yeah, we, I was on the airplane to Mexico and she was back home packing up the house, selling both cars, quitting her job on our first wedding. anniversary. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, so you know he worked out. She enjoyed it. She hated the first six months and then wasn't ready to leave and it all worked out. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well, I'm glad it worked out. So, so you had a great career at Datastream inside sales. You ran the Mexico office or established in Mexico office. You ran Latin America and then you found you found us we asked for our managers around the world to find acquisition targets for us. Remember, we were trying to buy regional competitors around the world

so we could then claim legitimately to be a global leader. And you found Carlos in Argentina. Yep, Computech. Quite honestly, they were kicking our tails in the southern part of Latin America. because that was their stronghold there out of Buenos Aires. So I sent him a note just seeing if there was a potential to partner. And he's like, sure, there is. And I was like, well, what if I come and visit?

And so we went and visited, and the discussion around partnership changed in terms of more of an acquisition. And so, yeah, it really happened, I would say, in less than six to eight-month time period. It didn't take a lot of time once there was the interest. to bring the companies together. Yeah. Well, what a remarkable man. Oh, he's fantastic. I love him.

I love him. I go down there once a year still and I always see him and do stuff with him. And he's done so well since selling the company. He's, you know, he was not the, well, I'm sure he has a relationship with the current president, but the previous president of Argentina had appointed him to a certain role within the organization within the administration around technology and education. Yeah. And that was just a springboard for him to do so many things.

Yeah. He told me that he, whenever the president was meeting with some technical person from around the world, he'd bring Carlos in, plus the president couldn't speak English very well. I said, well, gosh, that had to be some pretty big, big deals coming. He goes, ah, yes, the bill. Gates, the Jeff Bezos,

the Elon of Muscus. I mean, like, what? I mean, he could pull it off. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know? No, yeah. He was one of the smartest men I ever knew.

Yeah. I don't ever have known. Well, we need to get you back down there. You can check it out. I do. I do. And I'll take Devin this time because I kept telling her the next time, the next time. She's never been?

She hasn't been? No. Well, we'll have to work that out. We'll do that. I'll do that. I should arrange that for you to just pay back. So you went through the Latin America thing, and then we eventually brought you back. And maybe after we bought that company, I don't remember why you came back to Greenville.

Well, we had some leadership changes. Jose Garcia came in. Okay. And there were just different needs and different opportunities. And so I came back to the U.S., really started managing more of the overall inside sales organization where I guess we had four or five regional managers, RVPs, whatever we called them at the time. And they each had teams. And so did that for a while.

Well, I remember that portion of it we had, let's just say, 40 sales reps. Each one of them had a manager, which is kind of a normal ratio. 10 to 1. Yeah. And then I think we were trying to make our numbers look better. Well, I think you were propping it up for sale. Yeah, whatever you want to call it. We're trying to improve.

Yeah, so we were trying to make our numbers look better because we were trying to sell a company, and so we got all those managers to take a seat, to take a number, and then you managed all of them with no help. Yeah, it was 40 people. But they were seasoned, they were good, not only good reps, good people,

an occasional issue here there, but it, I mean, they were, it was easy. They learned, they learned, make your number. Don't cause too much trouble. That's right. So all we're looking for here. You know, that's the thing. Some salespeople don't, some salespeople don't understand.

The manager's not looking for a lot of conversation. We'll help you if you need it. But we'd assume we'd rather show you how to do it. You just do it. I got my number. Nice to see you again. It's not just that.

It's all the meetings that you have. Anytime you're doing something like that, you're meeting with a rep, it's time that they're not either on the phone, sending emails, prospecting, or closing deals. And you have to be conscious of that. Right.

But yeah, preference is, show them the way, show them their number, their territory, and let them go be successful. Yeah. And clear, coach them, but clear the other hurdles out of their way. So we sold the company in 2006, and you'd been there 15 years at that point? I'd been there 14, 14 years. And you stayed? I did.

You stayed. What was your role? like then? Initially it was just focused on continuing to sell the EAM solution and my perspective was they have all these other products that we can just fold right into this model

and just sell the heck out of them. But they didn't, they understood the channel model. They didn't understand the inside sales model. And so they let us just do our own thing for a period of time. And then they started looking and it's like, well, this is making us a good bit of money and not costing us that much money. Maybe we can do more here.

Yeah. And so we hired a guy, Lane Monson, who had done it for Oracle. He had built the inside sales team. And so we had whittled them down after the acquisition, about 20 people. And we grew, Lane came in, expanded the model we had across, more solutions and we had almost 200 inside sales people. What? Yeah.

And that combined with some legion folks, but for the most part, quota carrying sales folks. And those were around the world and we had leaders for each region. So we built that up. So when you had that, how many managers did you have managing those people? It was about this. That was the ratio, about eight to 10 to one.

So 200 people. So 10 to 12 managers. Okay. And then with that many people, like you can't just wander around and ask you know, Steve and Donahue what your number is, you know, you've got to have these metrics and stuff. How did you do that? How did you manage that large of a group? I've never managed something that big. Well, being a company that large, we had a lot of operations folks. And so you set the metrics for the team. and they varied a little bit based on the products they were selling, but you set the daily calls, the number of emails, and then we had operations folks that could collect that information and roll it up for us so that we could have a view on,

I won't say it was a daily view back in. Me as a leader of the North America team, I might, but we wouldn't have a global view at that point. And you typically looked at that on a monthly basis anyway. But you just had some resources. Now, fast forward to today, you've got Salesforce, you've got the dashboards, logs and e-mail calls are logged and emailed, et cetera. So you can quickly at any minute see who's making what,

how many calls they're making, et cetera. Yeah. And so, you know, for the group, you know, Michael has managed large teams in Latin America for data stream in America, in the Pacific Rim. and then for these other companies, you know, including today for smart sites, but for Avanti and for Pitney Bowes. And so my question is, I mean, you've done consistently you've done this same type of job. What are the, what would you say the key four or five metrics are you need to watch to have a successful technology sales team?

So metrics specifically meaning the numbers, then it would be the, the, the components of the daily activities. And that is how many calls you're making, how many emails you're sending, how many demos were done in a given day or scheduled to be done, how much did you sell that given day? Yeah, yeah.

Because typically it's a transactional-oriented business in terms of deal sizes. if you're not doing it consistent daily, it's going to be very difficult to make up the month on the last three days of the month. Whereas if it's some larger deals and a little lumpier, you can make it up and off a one deal. Yeah, that's interesting. It's a software technology sales is a little bit weird because, you know, particularly with the larger deals, like you said, You can have one really good lead come in, do an okay job, sell something really big. Everyone thinks you're great.

And greatness really does come, almost like being a football coach, like Harry, was just, what are you doing every day? And we'll let the chips fall as they may. And over time, the person who does the activities is going to be successful. But in short term, you know. The one thing I didn't mention was the pipeline. How many deals did you add to the pipeline? That'd be another important one. And just recently, you joined my sales team in Austin.

We're in our sales meeting. And I can't say I took the credit for it. Actually, I played the video of Davo Sweeney. Yeah. And he talks about keeping the main thing, the main thing, the eye on the prize, a lot of noise going on around you, whatever it is you're doing. And one of the things he talked about was the goals of how to get to the prize. Well, he set the goals, but he had his team write them down and then tear up those goals

and then have them write down, what do you have to do to get to those goals daily? And focus on those things. And back to your point, the daily activities will lead, and that process will lead. to the successes that you're looking to get to. Yeah. I mean, yeah, right. Everybody wants a million dollars. You know, how do you get it?

Yeah. What do you have to do? Are you willing to do it, you know? And I mean, and you ingrained that early with us. And I, you know, you clearly were learning along the way as well. You didn't know exactly to make 32 contacts a day. It became pretty factual later on because you had enough people doing it and you knew you had data to back it up.

but, you know, call X number of twos, threes, and fours, and therefore you're moving deals through the pipeline. At the time, you know, all I knew was that that's what I needed to do. Yeah. And then the deal started popping out of the funnel. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I've had my share of inside sales management, and, you know, I just noticed there's some people that are just reluctant to have. the conversations with the prospects. They want to do more homework or it's not a good time now.

They couldn't reach them. I mean, all that stuff. I mean, how many times as a rep said, I don't have enough that I can't reach the guy? And I'm like, what's his number? Watch this. You know, two seconds later, they're on the phone. Yeah. But just doing a better job recruiting people who have more proclivity to want to make phone

calls. That's one thing. But then kind of forcing the main thing being you've got to have conversations with people every day. You don't have to trick them all into buying software. Just have the conversation. Yeah. You know, see who wants it and who doesn't. It's the key. Well, that's, you know, you want to have the conversations, but you need to get to the people that have the money. True. And so you might be really good at talking and they talk to the wrong people too often in too long. But that's part of that natural learning curve and gaining that instinct of, I've got the right one here or I don't, or at least not for now.

Right. So if you make those 32 calls a day, you know, six months from now, your call is going to be a lot better just with time. Yeah. And there's so much more that can make those 32 calls that you're making better. today. It's not just, and granted, we had a bit more than just a phone book. You know, there used to be started with the phone book, right? And then we had a little leads list, but now you can really narrow down very tightly, the buying persona that you're calling

into and have enough information at your fingertips to hopefully resonate versus the traditional cold call or cold email. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. about you, but I'm telling you, I get so many kind of form emails from people every day trying to sell me something and you immediately tell

it's form, right? There's like you know, Michael, you know, we make, we do sales calls for free and operate on a so-and-so basis. Would it be okay to do a Tuesday or Thursday or Thursday, you know, a form? And then every now that I get one from someone who just did a little bit of homework

and just says, Big John, I know you because your brother, Dan and I, and I saw him with Carolina, I met him or whatever, something. I've got this thing. Might work for you, might not, but I'd like to have 15 minutes to tell you about it. Yes. Yeah. Every time. Any kind of, even if it said, I see you went to the Citadel.

My uncle Charlie went there in 1976. Is that enough to get a phone call? Yeah. You know, I mean, something. Even if he didn't have an Uncle Charlie. Anyone who has not seen on my LinkedIn page, it's got a picture of me playing basketball with Michael Jordan. Now, if that's not enough to start a conversation with,

I saw that picture, oh, my God. All you got to say is, tell me about that game. Yeah. I'm like, I'll talk right now. I'll fly to you for this conversation. People don't do it, though. No. And, you know, AI is, I use an AI.

outbound lead gen service. It works pretty well. But it's not as good as if you did it yourself. Yeah. Now, they're getting pretty good, though. And, you know, another thing is a lot of studies will tell you that 80% of the buying is already done

by the time you talk to them because of the internet and all that's available by everybody's fingertips. And so you're already late to the game so you better start catching up. Yeah. They already know, like your VPSS at smart sites right now, you have software that does alarms for water, wastewater, manufacturing plants, right?

Is that the way to say the alarming software? You have to do the notifications. Notifications. From the alarms, yeah. So if something was going wrong, if some pump had broken and water was spewing everywhere, and it was Sunday afternoon that what anyone there, without your software, it could cause a major problem. Right.

But otherwise, it's going to hit my cell phone, right? Message, alert, maybe it hits 15 people, fire department, you know, whatever they're going to. Is that how it works? Yeah, it'll notify whoever you want them to be notified based on the alarm types and the equipment. By phone? It'll call them on the phone. It'll send them a text message. There's an app you can use and get your notifications through the apps.

it'll announce it over a plant floor. And so many different ways. And we say we'll get you the right information in the right way at the right time. And so that you don't have to man a given facility 24 hours. You have software that's doing that and we'll just notify if there's a problem. Okay. Yeah. And so I guess back to your point, if I was a potential buyer and someone said,

hey John, find me some alarming notification software and go to chat GPT or whatever and say who the top three players, what are the differences between them, which one integrates with Oracle best, this one, great.

Call that one. Yeah. I mean, and you use chat GPT or GROC, whatever. You know, before it was, and it still is to, I mean, obviously, but you know, getting your name to pop up when they do a Google search.

And now you want it to pop up when they're in chat GPT. How do you do that? That's why they pay Barbara the big bucks. She knows how to figure out all that stuff and get the right people involved. Yeah, that's a good point. Because it really shouldn't be influenceable. You know, it should be just what it is.

But, you know, follow the money, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The Chinese wall. I will tell you, talking about A. and chat GPT. I'll tell you a funny story. So I wanted to create a list of the top 200 bottling companies in the U.S.

And I wanted to have the headquarters, the company revenues, the number of manufacturing plants that they had. And I think those were the three keys, I think I put in there. Maybe there was a fourth, but in any case. So I asked that to chat GPT. It came back and said, okay, I understand what you want. Do you want me to put it into an Excel format? I said, yes.

And it came back and said, okay, I will, and this was first thing in the morning. So 6.37 o'clock in the morning. And he said, I will have you a first look by noon today. And so by noon today I had gotten nothing. So I go back into them like, what's the update? Oh, I'm sorry. here here's a sample of what it might look like and it just had the columns in the spreadsheets with like x's and o's in each column no real data and and I think well I

wanted a company name I don't think of mention that and so and it said and I said that's exactly the format I need great I'll have you something at five o'clock today five o'clock came nothing this is on a Thursday I said what's the latest sorry, we've got the first 10 for you. Can I share those with you to make sure that's what you want? I'm like, sure. So it showed me 10. I'm like, that looks good.

Where's the rest? We'll have it for you tomorrow. So this went back and forth through the weekend. Finally on Monday afternoon at 5, I'm like, I'm done. You can't give me the answer you want. I'm going to GROC. And it came back and said, we hate to see you go. We apologize.

And at one point along the way, It told me you had 50 of them. And so I went back as the last question. I said, did you ever really have 50 of these? And it said, no. I was just trying to buy more time to be able to get the project done for you. And I'm like, I'm talking to a bad employee. Yeah, really?

It was the craziest. So this was the chat GPT bot? Yes. I didn't even know they would tell you we're going to get it to you later. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because all my stuff must be so simple because it comes back in three seconds.

And I taught some other folks, and I said, you can't, I guess you can't give it today. You can't give it too many parameters or whatever. And I think it struggled with trying to find private data versus public company data and whatever. Well, it's a wonderful tool. Oh, it is. And, I mean, think about this, Michael. Think how the, like when we first started using computers, I'm sure you were in high school, but, you know, like the Apple 2E and IBM PC is a, it was.

basic. And it was pretty good. It was pretty fun to use it for stock simulation or a spreadsheet. Remember Lotus, the spreadsheet. Compared to how cool it is, AI, so cool right now. I mean, it's like 10 times cooler than a computer ever was. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So where's it going to go? It's going to be amazing. And you need to embrace it. Yeah. Totally embrace and figured out. Yeah. And we could be Amish. And you're always learning someone, just talk with other people about, I never even thought about doing it, using it for that. And you're like, and then all of it gets in your head

and you forget half of it. And you've got to go back and figure out what it was that you should have been doing that you hadn't done. But yeah, it's been certainly helpful for us in a lot of ways in terms of composing, you know, first drafts of emails or first drafts of job descriptions if you're hiring someone. first drafts of presentations or summaries of meetings.

If you take all the notes and dump it in there, it'll kick out a summary for you. Yeah, and people, you know, people, I'll say, what you use it for? I'm like, like a first draft of a PowerPoint or something or an article or something. And so wouldn't that shooting? I'm like, I've always done it that way.

I've just gotten people to do it, you know? Like, you know, Camille, give me a first draft of a thing, make it look like this, make it green and yellow, and get to me tomorrow and we'll fix it from there, right? Yeah. It's just no Camille. Camille was the best. She was the best.

So, okay, so we, you have a career that spans, I want to say, 30 years in managing sales teams all around the world. Being in sales and managing, yeah. And what's the biggest team you've managed? At one time was those 40 folks at Datastream, but in terms of the overall organization, well, Lane Monson left in four, and I ran that whole Inside Sales organization for them. And that was 200?

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. You're a gym. Some of these people might not know that you wrote a book, The Selling Machine. Three of us wrote the book.

Mike Cannon, Landy Wingard, myself. Yep, that was fun. I had a good time with that one. I remember when y'all did that. You know why I remember it? Why? Because you didn't tell me about it. I was working with them every day.

They wrote this, I guess, I guess after work. No, we took weekends and went up to Hiawasi. Did you really? Yeah, Georgia. What fun, though. I forgot about that. So I got in trouble by you and I got in trouble by Devin because I didn't mention her and the credits. Oh, no.

That should have been the first one I mentioned. Yeah, you should have. You didn't get in trouble with me. I'm glad you wrote the book. It was a good book. It was a good book. It really is a good book. You can still buy it on Amazon?

Apparently, and I've got a box. Cannon was the warehousing all of this at his house and had the flood. I don't know if you remember that flood that came and just pretty much washed this house away. Along with about 300 selling machine books. But yeah, they're out there. And it's just it's like anything you can take it. And I like it as a desk reference just to get back to the basics. I mean, that's really what it's about.

I do think that a lot of sales organizations today, skip the basics and go right to the fancy computer technology and, you know, the fancy call tracker and gong and all that stuff, which some of that stuff's great, but you've got to have the basics first. Yeah. You get, first of all, do you have the right reps? Yeah. You know, that's the first thing.

And then I think do you have, do you have the right compensation structure? Mm-hmm. Does it match up with what the company wants? And that's been one of my biggest challenges. Because your comp structure just at, it has to map to what the company wants. And so the activities that the reps are doing. And at Enfor, it changed pretty quickly and in some cases dramatically. And so you had to tweak it and make sure it all worked out and made sense because

if it's too complex and a rep can't understand how they make and what they make, they'll check out, they'll go somewhere and they can do that. And so there's that fine line between number of changes, complexity of comp plans, getting it geared towards the activities that you want, behaviors that you want. But that's been one of my biggest challenges. I had to learn to get a lot more creative around it. And so In-FOR would change it a lot just based on management changes

that have a different idea. This is the way we do it, and the thing. Well, my take on that is, and of course we don't always get to the side, but, you know, some consistencies important in terms of keeping reps that they understand, like, what we're not,

they don't want to get whipsought. And, you know, some of the best ones I've seen, IBM software actually had a really good one for a long time. they would pay someone a reasonable salary. They'd want to hire good solid people. They had to pay them, come represent the company, and then they would pay them something like, you know, 7% of gross profit or gross margin on the software up to a certain point.

And that point was kind of the point at which the salary and the 7% together equaled like 12%. So they're getting 12% percent. cost to sale. And then from that point forward, everything you sold was 12%. And so they were just shooting for a max of 12% cost to sale. And so every rep wanted to make that line and start selling more. But it wasn't weird. It wasn't like 3%, 8%, 22%, clawback, you know, all that stuff. Right. Yeah, I mean, the minimum, I mean, the fewer components that you have, and tears just make it easier to internalize and understand.

My first comp plan with Datastream, I was the first sales guy, you know. Larry and I, we're best of friends, and we're completely opposite. I'm kind of more of a sales guy. He's more of a really smart, you know, Ph.T. So here I am with Larry. There's four people in the company. He's about to hire me to be a cell, inside sales guy.

He brings me a comp plan. Keep in mind, I'm loading tires at Michelin at this point for $10 an hour. It brings me a comp, it's four pages long. It's got like parentheses and all the, I even know what he's, you know, it's like calculus or something. And I was like, holy cow. And I said, Larry, so let me just, let me see if I can shortcut this a little bit. He said, all right, what? I said, well, how much you're selling now?

He goes, well, it depends. I'm like, no, no. on average, just give me a number. He said, 35,000 a month. I said, okay. Just, you know, I'm making $10 an hour now. So just pay me $10 an hour and 5% for anything over 35. And as soon as you want to sit down, maybe at the end of the year, look at next year.

He goes, okay, that's fair enough. You know, that's a practical way to do it. Yeah, yeah. You just You want to keep them simple And reasonable If the goals are set and they are unattainable in their heads Then it might as well not have the goal

Or you got the wrong person But an interesting thing that we've run into Is when you have younger in career reps And you're also growing a business well, I had four reps last year. I now have eight. Guess what? Territories are in half.

And your number didn't change very much in terms of quota. And so they, in some cases, they view that as sort of a double whammy. But that's sort of the nature of it. Business grows, hire more people, keep growing. And so you have to manage that back down the chain. in terms of not putting all the burden on those folks. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'll give you two ways to deal with that,

and you probably have to use both of them. But one way is a true accounting of how it normally happened, a company grows, as you can say, well, you know, data stream, when they had two reps, you know, they were doing $70,000 a month, and each person had half the country. And then they had 100 reps, and they're doing $100 million a year. And there's, you know, 100 little pockets of whatever.

So if cutting the territory is going to hurt you, how does that happen? You know, typically with the tighter territory, you know every nook and cranny and easier to do reference sales. I mean, it's all kind of reasons why it works. Yeah. And to some degree you have too much territory because you're not covering it all.

Right. I mean, you're just hoping for a good call in. That's right. A cherry pick here there. Well, there's a big difference between like waiting for the leads to come in and actually actively managing a territory. Who are my big accounts, who my secondary accounts, who are my customers. Right. Yeah.

And that's, you know, sales guys don't get enough credit for that. and being able to be business managers because that's what you have to do. You've got to manage that territory and figure out what are my real opportunities this year. And you understand the accounts well enough to know, well, you know what, that particular industry is in the gutter this year. I've got to go make hay over here in the food and beverage because they're having a great year or whatever. And who are my key ones and who can I reference? I don't think sales folks get enough credit for being a smart.

as they are. Yeah. I mean, the good ones that last, I might have told you before, but, you know, heck, I complained in my comp plan for years, you know, and that's just normal. Salespeople want more, right? I want to be easier. And I met these salespeople from Pfizer, and we were out goofing around or something, and I met them in a bar or something.

I was really pissed about my comp plan at the time, and I was like, what do you guys do? They change your compliment. And they said, oh, they changed our complaint. every year. Why do they do that? He goes, well, new VP comes in, you know, whatever. They always change it. I said, well, how do you feel about it?

He goes, what's just, this is part of the job. This is just part of it, you know. I mean, they change it, and we try to find a way to make as much money as we can. And if it ever becomes, like, undoable, then we probably go over and work at, you know, Johnson & Johnson or something. But, you know, that's just, you got to accept it as part of the deal. Yeah. And I also think good managers help.

folks figure that out too, especially ones that are early in career. Right. Well, let's talk about smart sites a little bit more. The notification slash alarming company based out in Austin, you're based here. Your salespeople are kind of all over the place, right? Yeah. Because you want them close to their customers, their distributors. Yeah.

Well, we just, in COVID, we didn't have an office. you know, headquarters office, so to speak, and we needed to have people in territory, and so, and if you want to hire really good people, don't be just limited to Austin, you know, the headquarters is, so expand out. And so I was fortunate to be one of those folks that they hired remotely.

And then we acquired a company, company outside of Boston. And so they were there and they weren't moving to Austin. And so we had an example of we already have folks away. That's John Oskine, right? No, no. That was Sytech, which is now Excel Reporter. Oh, okay.

John's out of Chicago. Okay. And John's company was Sage Clarity. And so, yeah, so, yeah, we have people scattered about. But we also have systems in place where we can monitor. pipeline build forecasting etc and we're getting better at tracking those daily activities that not only I want to know about but they want to know about what what am I doing so that they can understand and then we were able to post

that in there so every rep can see their activity against the others right within Salesforce or CRM so they can quickly see that do you ever send that out like is a link hey hey look at this top leader board or whatever. Well, we'll talk about sometimes in our sales meetings, but it's all right there in front and center on the home page. Everybody, you have to not look at it to not see it. We've both seen the impact of a report like that.

In our case, it was a whiteboard. Linda, update. Everyone's name on it and had much they sold that month. And Linda would update it once a day. Yeah. And everyone will be watching. Yeah. And, I mean, you did not want to be at the bottom.

To go back to your fraternity analogy. Yeah. Yeah, you got RAS pretty good. So nobody wanted to be at the bottom. And some people quit, you know. Yeah. Just, you know, but that's... But it was more of a motivator than a deterrent for sure.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. But people, you know, people always say when you ask them what they, want, they say they want more money. And what they won't say is what they really want, which is recognition. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good thing.

Because it doesn't cost much to recognize people, right? And it makes you feel good. Absolutely. Okay, a couple more questions, sir. what would you say your biggest sales lesson is so far in your career? Yeah, you mentioned it having the right people. I think that's the biggest sales lesson in terms of being a manager. Yeah.

But necessarily technique on a deal, right? But just having the right people. Yep, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you know what? what, it's good for you to have the right people, it's also good for them. You know, if you have the wrong person in there, which I've made that mistake many times, someone I really like, you know, and they put them in the wrong role, and they just, typically, they're reluctant to make the call, ask for the order, you know, because it's just

not in their nature to do that. They're good at something else. But they're also, they have some of the other traits, like they're tenacious, they're competitive, to they don't want to let you down. And so they give it their best go. It's against their grain. Right. Harts them.

Yeah. Yeah. So get the right people. And we can show you how to do that at sterling sales. And then what about leadership? What's your number one leadership lesson? I don't have all the answers. Hmm.

And therefore, there's something I can always learn. And I just have seen a number of folks that come in there that would be one of my leaders that, you know, you can't say something they didn't know the answer to. Yeah. And but sometimes they're wrong. So I just think, and if I take that approach with my team, then when I don't know the answer, but I go and find and come back, you build some credibility. and loyalty there. And I think I can just relate better with the folks. Okay.

Okay. And I think there's something you want to promote today. Not that I want to promote, but, you know, sales for nobs. We talked about being a noob. What was the example a while ago? And I said you were a noob at it. I forgot. I don't have to edit that out of it.

So we talk about being nubes and sales. But throughout life, there are things that you try and you want to get good at that you're a noob at. And so two folks that we worked with that I've seen start to try to do some different things in their lives and challenge themselves, and one is Tommy Pacewick, and he makes leather goods. So he was a nob. He may say today he's still a newb at it, but he had him make me an ammo pouch for bird hunting.

And then also Michael Elliott has gotten into woodworking and challenged himself with that and even can do inlay woodworking. But I just, I think the point was, Well, number one, I'm proud of these guys. Yeah. I appreciate what they did. But you can always, you're always a new,

if you try different things, new things. Yes. Yeah. I think it's, you know, I've done a, you know, I've done a few, I've been a new many times in my life, learning music and writing a book and starting some businesses. And recently I did a comic book. And so why do you write a comic book?

I'm like, who knows? you know, maybe it'll give me the confidence to try something else that's really prosperous. Or maybe I'll learn something writing the comic book that helps me in another adventure. And, you know, Steve Jobs, I got that from reading his book or books about him. Then when he was in college, you know, briefly, he would study things like, you know, the art of writing and how to design certain different fonts. And so that's where that apple, that really strange cursive apple thing came from

was something he learned in a class as a sophomore before he dropped out. So you never know. Right. Yeah. So I encourage people, too, to try things. Yeah, I was impressed with what they had done. Why had Michael give me anything?

I asked him, I commissioned him to make one. Did you? Yeah. and how did he make one for the new Wofford Athletic Director? Oh, that's nice. And so he made one, and I took it to him, and then he surprised me with my mind. I have commissioned him.

We haven't agreed to a price. I'm sure it'll be, you know, reasonable. But I wanted a really big cutting board, you know, kind of oddly shaped, cool wood, you know, something that'll be a little different, and so he's working on that. Doing that? Yeah.

You told me that I would have given you a nice piece of a 90-foot oak tree. that fell over in our house. You still have it? I've got a piece but only one that we'd say to make one for Devin. Well, I think, you know, one thing I didn't mention about smart sites is I was there when Greg Jackson went to work and took it over years ago. And they had one salesperson. And now with him and the work you're doing, I think you're doing, I think you're. You're up to how many?

We have 13 quota carrying sales reps and then some support folks and lead-gen folks on top of that. It's been fun. We've learned a lot. We've also acquired two companies since then. And you basically acquired them to give more products for your people to sell. Right. Through your channel. Yeah, that's correct.

So we're not just now the alarm notification company. We're not just now the reporting analytics company. Yeah. We now, we take those products and we take the most recent ones from Sage Clarity with ABLE Peer in One View. And now we can really provide a comprehensive industrial automation platform that integrates with their existing SCADA systems or MES manufacturing execution systems to help them get more out of the investments they've already made.

Well, I'll add here at the end, you know, I ask you the question. about your kind of leadership lesson and you said, you know, don't have all the answers. But I would say, you know, that you're the key, one of the keys to your success is just consistency. You know, you're just a remarkably consistent person. You can always count on you to do the job, be there on time and deal with people the same way, you know.

And then in terms of your career, you know, you haven't hopped around. You hadn't done this and that and started a yogurt shop. and all this crazy stuff. You're like, you've just, you've been, you've learned the trade of managing people that sell technical software. And it really doesn't matter. You can do it here, you can do it there.

You know, and typically, you stay somewhere as long as you like, you know. You've got long runs. Well, software just happens to be the playing field or the medium, but I mean, I really wanted to be a coach. And that's why I did that, you know, Wofford. And I just found, as I stayed in it longer, that I had the opportunity to coach people.

Yeah. Certainly obviously didn't right out of the gate. I was being coached. Yeah. But I began to be able to coach people. And so that's, you know, when all the other stuff is going on, that's the main thing. You're still a coach? Yeah.

That's it. I figured you out. So when you retire, you're going to be a coach again? A real coach? I thought about that, absolutely. And I had actually planned to do some more things at the local high school where my kids went. But I got this opportunity, and it just takes more of the time than I have to dedicate to the other. Well, lots of players out there appreciate it.

you and I do too. You're doing a great job and we'll follow your coaching career. Well, I'm just looking for any kind of NIL deals I can get. Well, clearly all the fizzy water you can drink. There you go. Appreciate that. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Okay. Yeah.