Battle Scars of a Sales Leader
Understanding the stories of resilience, strategy, and leadership is essential for success in the competitive sales world.
James will uncover the raw and unfiltered real-life experiences of sales Leaders, exploring the ups and downs and lessons learned in the high-pressure sales world.
Battle Scars of a Sales Leader
How to Build a Loyal Community of Brand Advocates with Rob Rae
Rob Ray, a 25-year MSP veteran who transformed from accountant to industry titan by breaking every conventional sales rule.
In this value-packed episode, James discusses Rob's exact strategies to build one of the largest MSP communities and why traditional business growth methods are failing in today's market.
He shared his unexpected strategies that turned regular clients into fierce advocates.
A must-listen for MSP owners, sales leaders, and tech entrepreneurs who want to build lasting industry influence.
I want to sell a product that you could actually use. I want to sell a service that you could actually take advantage of. I'm going to make you money, save you money, something along those lines.
Speaker 2:Rob Ray, the brilliant mind that helped build thriving MSP communities for the last 25 years. What put you in a position to outperform everyone else, even in?
Speaker 1:that early stage, you always got to put yourself in the mindset that we serve them. Okay, we're not peers, right, we're not buddies, we that we serve them. Okay, we're not peers, right, we're not buddies, we serve them. That is our community. We don't survive unless they survive. You know, I think those are some of the things that you can do in order to establish yourself as part of this community.
Speaker 2:And how do you build resilience in your own mindset to keep fighting the good fight and be out there and getting yourself through those tough days? You know what it is, rob, thank you so much for joining me today. It's a great honor. It's a great privilege to have you on the podcast Battlestars of a Sales Leader. You have been a mentor and an idol throughout my career For the last decade.
Speaker 2:When we first got together, when I joined Datto Down Under, you were the first person at Datto that I met and I watched what you did and I was blown away at how you were able to just transform an industry and create this incredible community and, yeah, super impressive that Datto wasn't the first one that you did and it's not the last one. Appreciate you with Pax8 today. So, as part of this discussion, we'd love to tap into your mindsets and the strategies, your philosophy of how you've successfully gone off and built multiple communities. Before diving into all of that, you've been in the industry for 25 plus years. Thinking back to even when you were at school, did you think that you were going to be getting into tech and did you think that you were going to be getting into some sort of sales role?
Speaker 1:Absolutely not. And, by the way, it's an absolute honor to be here with you, my friend, and doing this again. So thank you for the invitation and I'm equally happy to be here. No, absolutely not. You know it's. You know, when you're younger and you're going through school and you've got different ideas as far as what you want to do with your life, and it changes all the time. And by no means was I the best student, so it wasn't like I'd have my pick of the litter or anything like that. And also, you know, unlike today, you know only like the really really smart kids would go on to college or university and then the rest of us would try to figure out how we were going to struggle through the rest of life. You know my goal ultimately I did end up going to university. I ended up starting to go to university. I wanted to be an accountant of all things, which is the exact opposite role of what I do today, and I'm super glad that that kind of didn't work out. But that was the goal.
Speaker 1:But you know, I discovered this passion for sales kind of at an early age. I was working for a bank, for a financial institution, and, um, this is back in the days when you know you would go into a local bank branch to transact, like right before, just as as um, bank machines were coming out, atms were coming out and uh my, my boss had tasked me with um. It's a little bit of a longer story, but I wanted a bet, I wanted a bigger job, I wanted bigger money. And he said, uh well, you have to get into sales in order to do that. So there were rolling everybody into these banking plans, like that per month fee that you would pay for a banking plan.
Speaker 1:He said if you can convert more people to this banking plan, I'll give you a sales job which will ultimately pay me. I don't know, it was like an extra dollar, a dollar a pay or a dollar an hour kind of thing. And ultimately it worked. I mean, I went out, I grinded it out, I was the top person, not only in the branch but in the region, but kind of discovered this passion for sales and then just kind of continued that way, focusing in on that piece there yeah, your initial, your why was I want to grow and I want to make more money?
Speaker 2:and then you were given an opportunity and you read you're more successful. Can you think back to what put you in a position to outperform everyone else even in that early stage? Like what did you do differently to everyone else?
Speaker 1:you know it's, you know, and then you you kind of discover this, this like for sales, and you know it's sure it's a little I mean in the initial stages it's kind of money motivated but then ultimately you figure out that you know you actually enjoy these types of things and you know there's always like there's like those two types of sales where it's like typically salespeople are thought of in a very negative light. Right, we're just trying to pitch something, we're just trying to sell you something. I've always kind of turned around and focused on the relationship sales aspect of it, where I want to sell a product that you could actually use, I want to sell a service that you could actually take advantage of. I'm going to make you money, save you money, something along those lines. So when you convert it over to the relationship sale and kind of focus your energy around that, it takes away from the whole negativity of these different you know connotations around what, what salespeople are and what salespeople kind of like or what their motive actually is. I genuinely believe that the product that I'm selling will add value to you, or I don't want you to buy it. And I think if you go and kind of go in in that approach, then you'll you'll succeed all day long, but for me, you know to answer your question, it was more about challenging myself Can I do better than I did the previous month? Obviously, you know.
Speaker 1:When it comes to sales, one of the great parts about it is the fact that you have, potentially have, peers around you that you're competing against, and what other role in an organization benchmarks you against like quantitatively benchmarks you against other people where you can say I am better than you because I did X right?
Speaker 1:There's not many roles in organizations where there's an actual scorecard and you know when you're focused on that, looking at that and and can kind of prove to an organization your success. I mean, that's where it is, in all honesty, though, james, the only reason why I ended up in sales. That's where it is, in all honesty, though, james, the only reason why I ended up in sales, because I had to drop out of school, so I didn't finish my finance degree. I was, you know now would say, very blessed to have had a child at a very young age. It wasn't the plan. You know you're supposed to finish uni and then start having children, but you know I ultimately had to leave school in order to go and make money and I wasn't qualified to do anything. But you know, sales, sales is one of those roles where you can kind of make a lot of money and not have to have a degree or an education to be able to do it. You just have to have that personality, that grind, that want.
Speaker 2:And how many years were you in sales before you got opportunity to step into people leadership, and I don't know if it was a tipping point in your career, but was there something that excited you about actually transitioning to really driving?
Speaker 1:a sales team, logical step is to be managing people right. You come from an individual contributor to a manager of people and you know that's not always the best thing. I mean, I've had phenomenal salespeople work for me over the course of years, but they are absolutely terrible people manager. And it's this whole idea is that are you better as an individual contributor, just taking care of yourself, living on your island, versus training and coaching other people? And I think there's the other aspect of it too, that you have it set in your mind that you know growing into a management role and managing other people means you're ultimately going to make more money. That's not necessarily true either.
Speaker 1:I'm actually a big proponent that the you know top of your top sales force should be making more money than the people that are managing that sales force. There should be more of a medium mark for that. So you have to have you know, get away from the idea that it is a it is, it's a natural progression to move from an individual contributor to a manager, and also get away from the idea that everybody's good at people management. Right, it is a completely different skill set, and there are days that I love it. There are days that I absolutely hate it. You know I just found a passion for it and you know, fortunately, through becoming kind of the best at the sales role, they kind of default, promote you into it, which again logically doesn't make any sense. But you know that just happened to be where my journey went.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting point because you often see that it is the top person gets promoted and becomes a sales manager and the reality is a lot of teams take a big hit because all of a sudden that big revenue stream that they had has now been depleted as this top salesperson tries to figure out how to motivate and inspire different reps. But you were at Compaq Computers for a number of years and then I think it was HP acquired them at the time and then you transitioned into level platforms. Was that the next step for you?
Speaker 1:There was a little bit of a journey there. It was Compaq Computers, yes. Yes was the first kind of role at it, and the reason why compact actually hired me, interestingly enough, wasn't because of my technical skills. As you know, james, I am not technical in any way whatsoever, right, um? But compact, what they were struggling with back in the day was they were kept putting and promoting these technical people into sales management roles and they were missing the sales management skills Great at understanding the tech and the line card and everything that they can sell, but not so good at managing the day-to-day people. And it was an inside sales group. It was kind of entry-level sales, so it was a high-churn group sales group. It was kind of entry level sales, so it was a high churn group. And that's where they instead turned around and focused on. We need a good sales manager as opposed to somebody that's coming from the technical space. So that's how I ended up in IT.
Speaker 1:I did exit IT because when HP acquired us, I'm out of Canada and the Compact Canada executive team. Most of them were let go. They started a payroll company in Canada and asked me to join them. Knowing my sales background, it was a phenomenal opportunity to go and join a payroll company which, again, finance being a little bit of my background, a little bit of my passion went over there. That being said, I got bored. I got colossally bored with it and needed to get back into the IT space, because IT one of the beautiful things about our space is it's constantly changing. There's always innovation, something's always moving forward and a lot of industries, especially in the finance space, things tend to stay the same. They want them to stay the same and predictable, and it's just not as much fun. So you know, it was kind of cool to have the ability to come back into the IT space and specifically into the MSP space when I came back, rather than going back into the hardware side.
Speaker 2:So you transitioned back into the IT side, into level platforms. You were, came in in the sales role, sales leadership, also business development as well. And you know, I want to unpack this a little bit, a little bit, because a lot of businesses think about their go-to-market strategy and it's heavily around even today it's hey, what's my sales strategy, my marketing strategy? Am I product led? Am I sales led? Have I got some events that I go to?
Speaker 2:But there's a piece that I think is missing with many organizations, whether it's inside the IT channel, whether it's outside, think is missing with many organizations, whether it's inside the IT channel, whether it's outside, is this concept of community, this concept of ecosystem. And I think that you were really one of the pioneers of that in the level platform, dave. Where, like what was it? You know, from your perspective, where you actually identified this opportunity to create a community? I don't even know if it was called community back then, but really bringing together people and giving them a sense of purpose and buy-in. Talk me through what went through your mind and how did you devise that strategy that took the business from relatively small to pretty substantial.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know actually. So you're absolutely correct. It's kind of morphed over the years and I'm sure you experienced this back in your like Autotask Enable days, all those things. You know I was VP of sales at Level, which is an old RMM company discovered, or what we were kind of working towards was the idea that you know, the community, like the people that are in our space, they have a tendency to talk to each other, even though they tend to compete with each other. They have a tendency to talk to each other. They tend to make buying decisions as groups as opposed to is as individuals. You know, if my competitor goes and chooses product A, I'm going to go and choose product B because I don't want to have the same product in the same stack, so that there's like this comparison of price rather than you know who's got a cheapest, kind of thing. We don't deal with any of that. That most industries do Instead, like the fact that these people all work together is very it's a very unusual thing. So you know, we started noticing this and really leveraging that, uh, back in the level platforms days. You know, we didn't like you suggested, didn't even quite, quite call it community, we just had to take advantage of how the market was responding and how we could continue to sell stuff. Um, our product was not the best product in the market, right, and rmm was an. It was an emerging technology. There were other products that were better. There were other products that were cheaper. You know, one of the things that we took great pride in was our relationship that we have with our partners, and we had to have this phenomenal relationship because we weren't going to win on price and we weren't going to win on tech. That relationship build by taking care of your clients, by returning their phone calls, by answering their phone calls, by providing great tech support, those kinds of things. Well, you hope that your technical team fixes all the problems in the background and the price-wise it all kind of comes back into line.
Speaker 1:I think then, when I joined Datto in 2013, and I'll give you and I both worked for Austin McCord for a number of years, you know, I think that's where we can kind of give a little bit of kind of a tip of the cap there to him, because he was the one that kind of recognized that this could be a role in itself. And you know, when I joined Datto, he's like I'm like, you know, my forte is sales. My forte is being VP of sales. I know how to run sales organizations, I know how to run funnels, I know how to do all those things that are necessary to be successful. And he goes I don't want you in sales, I want you to build out the community strong community out there, and they were winning business as a result.
Speaker 1:These people wanted to be a part of this group and I think it's a combination of a couple of different things. It is the fact that our space, it in general, continues to flourish, continues to be massive amounts of opportunity for growth, for sales, for, you know, you see just even the number of new vendors coming into this space Like there's just so much opportunity for, for people in this space to make money that, when it comes to, you know, uber competitive cutthroat, it just doesn't exist. I think the other part of it, too, is, you know, we're in the IT world, we tend to be a little bit more introverted, we tend to be a little bit more nerdy. This is a group that accepts that. This is a group that actually, you know, wraps its arms around it and really relishes in it. So you know we're all at.
Speaker 1:You know the root we're all pack animals. We all want to be loved and accepted. We want to walk in a room and we want to know everybody in the room is excited that you're there. That happens in our space, it happens everywhere in our space and I think for you that happens in our space, it happens everywhere in our space and I think, for you know, for those particular reasons, this is why you know, I think our community in our, in our, in our vertical, here, in our ecosystem, here, a is super, super important, but b I mean I think that's the reason why it exists in the first place and continues to, continues to flourish for those vendors, whether they're in the the msp channel or even even outside of the MSP channel, that may be listening if they're thinking about what does it mean to build a community level?
Speaker 2:what would you say? The core steps are that back and say well, what does community mean? When we say this word community, what are the characteristics of that, so that we actually understand what we're working towards?
Speaker 1:That's a good one, because this is something that we've all been trying to define for a very long time. You know what is the actual community and it gets really really hard to measure as a result. It's almost like, you know, marketing can be measured in certain things like MQLs and SQLs and those kinds of like activities, but ultimately, you know, is the marketing message the right one? Are people feeling it, are people understanding it and they're responding to it? And there's only so few ways that you can kind of measure that in order in a quantitative way. It's more of you know. Gary Vaynerchuk's related it to more of like having faith in God. You just have it right. It just has to be there that you just kind of believe that this is working and that these things are in place because people are responding and you're growing as a result. So you know it's hard when you, when you talk about what community is you know if I'm going to define it. I guess we've talked about reasons as to why it actually exists. If we're going to define it, I would suggest that it's more. When you go to a Reddit, I know as much as a lot of us will shake our heads and roll our eyes, or go to a Facebook group, when you have like-minded people from all over the world sharing information as far as what vendors are using, how they're using them, how they're pricing them, how they're going to market with them, and sharing this in open forums like those types of things. I think that's done a ton of events globally and you see it. You see it, when everybody walks in the room and just kind of there's this common denominator that everybody just kind of gets along, everybody just kind of shares, everybody kind of, you know, has this conversation. I mean I think that's where you know the, that community engagement comes in. So if you think about it from a vendor perspective, is so critical that you have a good reputation amongst this group, that you have a at least decent enough product or own, you know the, the non-decent parts of it, with a, with a roadmap, and here's what we're working on.
Speaker 1:Transparency is a word that I think should be used more in our space and I think vendors that are focused on this and at least recognize that there is this aspect of this community here and are transparent with that community, I think ultimately are the ones that are going to win. And you know you've mentioned this a couple of times right where you know I did it at level. I brought it to data. Pax 8 already had it. I'm just kind of continuing to run with it. You did the same thing with your journey. With it, you did the same thing with your journey, and then you know there's others in our industry that we've seen continue to run in that, in that you know embracing this community aspect, being out there, shaking the hands and kissing the babies and making sure that everybody's happy and, when they're not, like running at it instead of going and hiding.
Speaker 1:And you know you got one shot at this. You know perfect example of this and James, you can relate to this there's a very good friend of both yours and mine, britt MSP, obviously out of the UK, and they used Datto back in 2013 when it was just kind of new, new, new, no-transcript says I get it. It's a completely different team. It has completely been developed, it's been completely changed, the pricing's different, everything is different about it. But I can't go back because we all still have this bad taste in our mouths associated with your brand from 10 years ago. So you know, it's this weird kind of thing where you know you really, really have to take care of everybody that you possibly can out of the gate, because you potentially may only have one shot at their business, not just now, but probably for the eternity of your business. Msps don't tend to leave and come back to organizations. They just tend not to. They'll go and find something else if they're unhappy.
Speaker 2:I want to take a step back, because you were talking about community and how Reddit and people, how they communicate and talk about you almost behind your backs. But part of me thinks that that is part of the community. It's also a cause and effect of how you have created your business and your brand. And one of the things that I always admired about you and I always have laughed at is I said Rob is the guy who will be the last one at the bar until two o'clock in the morning with partners and he'll be the first one doing the keynote at 8 am the next morning. And I don't know anyone else in the world that can do that like you can.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that you do when I've looked at how you operate and I always try to learn from the best um, you know where I think I don't know. You said we're pack, pack animals at heart, like we want to be heard and loved and and I think that there's a lot of underlying psychology in in sales um, and it's how do you make people they often say it's not what you say, it's how you make them feel and and creating a forum of making people feel collected and making people part of something bigger than they are by themselves is is, from an observation perspective, something that I think that you've done incredibly well as well, and it's not easy, and it does take a lot of time and commitment and investment to get there, but, like you said, the the packs speaks speaks, or you know the pack is spoken.
Speaker 1:if they really like something, then they'll go all in with you as well yeah, no, you're absolutely right and and you know this too, because I've watched you do exactly the same thing um, people like to do business with people they like, and if you're not a likable person, then, or if you don't like people, if engaging with human beings just isn't your thing, and that's fine.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people that, so that people can relate to it. They want to be a part of your community and there's a lot of forgiveness that comes in that, which is things like you can drop the ball, bad product release or you know a price increase or something along those lines. If you have a community where people just enjoy doing business with you, they'll pay a little bit more. There's a lot more forgiveness for that, because you know it's not a culture where it's exclusively focused around tech, even though we're in the tech industry, you know it has to work, but you can make mistakes. You don't have to be the cheapest. They're not always looking for for the absolute cheapest. There's a lot of forgiveness that goes into having a phenomenal community where people just kind of want to be there.
Speaker 2:And, just just to you know, we touched on. We touched on kind of getting to look at like, what does a community look like for some companies that are? You know they're, they've had some funding, they're internationalizing and going into new regions and looking at creating some form of community in their different geographic geographies, whether it's in the ASEAN market, apac, europe, north America. If someone is launching into a new market, what are two or three strategies that you can think of that would help to accelerate them building that community, and are there any lessons that you've learned from getting it wrong?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely so. I think a few different things. Number one this does take time, right. Think about it. As you know, anybody that like, think of it as any relationship that you've ever had with a potential partner or spouse. You know you don't get married on the first date and I think that a lot of well, most of us don't. But you know a lot, of, a lot of the relationships in this space are built over the course of time and you know, I think, that longevity piece is is is critical.
Speaker 1:You need to keep showing up and keep showing up and keep showing up. I see too many vendors come into this space, try to sell something. After three to six months it's not working and they leave, and part of the problem is is that happens repeatedly, to the point where in our space at least, in the channel space, within communities in particular, they're waiting to see if you're going to leave. They're waiting to see if you're going to be around for a year, for two years, and only then do they tend to want to buy something, and so so it's this dance that kind of goes on for a while where you need to be there, you need to be consistent, you need to keep showing up and then only then will they will. They tend to have a certain level of trust that they'll actually start buying something.
Speaker 1:So you, whenever I'm talking to a vendor or anybody that wants into the space, my first recommendation is you've got to give this time.
Speaker 1:You've got to give this time.
Speaker 1:Don't expect anything right out of the gate, very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:I think that the other aspect of this is that word of mouth right that your best salespeople are always going to be your clients or your partner, so the faster that you can find these partners as much as I just said, it takes time to find these they're going to be the most critical part of this. So make sure you take care of them, very good care of them, almost an over-caring of them, because an MSP, or even anybody in the channel in particular, is more likely to make a buying decision or factor their peers into the decision more so than ever. And if you don't believe me, go to Reddit, go to Facebook. You can see that people are all the time trying to compare your organization with others, trying to say, hey, I'm unhappy with this company, I'm thinking about this one, and they go to their local communities for feedback rather than doing demos and trying to do the research on their own. So make sure you've got a great online presence, a great person presence, where you can actually have those level conversations.
Speaker 2:What are some of the ways and I agree with you around taking care and really good care of your clients, but what are some examples of how you've taken care of clients over the years that may inspire others early on the early on their journey to to get some quick wins?
Speaker 1:you know what there's? Just, there's a couple different things, um, if I, if I see. Well, so, first of all, uh, you always got to put yourself in the mindset that we serve them. Okay, we're not peers, right? We're not buddies. We serve them. That that is our community. We don't survive unless they survive. So you have to think of them. You almost have to put them one up from where you are, and I see too many vendors talking down to them, and even when I joined this space 25 years ago, I was told that we tell them the way it's going to be that kind of thing. I'm not a big fan of that. We serve, we serve them and I keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:So you know, you need to be very, very humble about the way in which you do things, which means if somebody goes online and decides that you are the worst person, you are the worst company, you're the worst tech, I have a tendency to let them do that. I'm not going to defend that. I'm not going to. You know, I'll reach out and say, hey, if you have problems, I can help, let me go and fix this problem, but I don't get into situations where I get defensive or argumentative. Look, not everybody loves the color blue, right? So you know you're not going to be able to get everybody to wear the color blue. Some people hate the color blue, just understand. I'm not saying this because you're wearing blue, james, but it's just.
Speaker 1:You know the you just you're never going to change everybody's mind and you just have to accept the fact that there are people that are going to get frustrated and they're going to vent about you know. You just got to let that go and not get defensive, because that makes things worse. However, if they are asking for help, this ticket's been open forever. I can't get anybody to call me back. You know things like that. I'll jump in all day long, and you got to look for those things Because they're hoping not hoping, but they. It's almost a little bit of a test to see how responsive you actually are. So be very proactive with those types of things. You know. I think those are some of the. You know at least the quick, early, cheap things that you can do in order to establish yourself as part of this community.
Speaker 2:Love it Through the last few years there's been obviously external challenges have gotten in the way and the slow business has gone good and it's gone slowed down and teams have grown and then we've had to rationalize in places and it's not always been easy. You're a guy that's been on the road for most of your life and traveling. How many days a week would you typically travel?
Speaker 1:These days it's four to five days a week. For sure, I try to be home on weekends and some holidays, but yeah, it's a lot, it is a lot. But again, that social aspect of what we do is super important and I love doing it.
Speaker 2:I do love doing it, that social aspect of what we do is super important and I love doing it. I do love doing it. So, and how do you, how do you build resilience in your own mindset to keep fighting the good fight and be out there and getting yourself through those tough days.
Speaker 1:You know what it is. I'm, I'm, I'm in a bar. Surprise, I'm in a bar in Denver, Colorado, and I have this guy that comes over to me an MSP and he comes over to me and he says you know, we you probably don't remember me, but we met about 10 years ago and you gave me some advice that completely changed my life. It completely changed my business. And he said, and he, what he did, was he actually FaceTimed in his partner, his business partner. And, as he says to his business partner, he says you're not going to believe who I'm sitting with. And he shows, he shows me sitting there and he's like holy crap, that's Rob Ray.
Speaker 1:Like you're not going to remember this, but we met 10 years ago and, and they're, they're honest, I, I, I'm pretty good with faces. I can usually tell if I've met somebody before, but trying to remember the name if we've met once in 10 years is actually really hard. However, the fact that they said you know what? Both of us are millionaires today because of a piece of advice that you gave that we ran with, and I'm like that's like, it's such a humbling experience. I don't believe it. They're the ones that had to do all the really hard work. All I did was just reiterate something stupid that I probably heard from somebody else, and they just kind of listened to it and ran with it. But in all honesty that is.
Speaker 2:Do you?
Speaker 1:remember what the piece of advice was it was. It was actually moving, trying to move away from one-time revenue to recurring revenue. It was something along those lines. It was something about the transformation of, of managed services, firing bad clients. You know that, that kind of stuff. It was something along those lines in In yours, in yours, in my mind, because you know we both come from that PSA or RMM. This was advice that we would give out every single day, right? So in our mind it wasn't anything life breaking, revolutionary. Let's write a book about it. It was literally probably some of the most basic stuff.
Speaker 1:But again, james, and you know this, us vendors we kind of sit there and wait for everybody to call us and buy our crap, rather than us going out and providing education and providing support and having conversations about their businesses that maybe have nothing to do with our businesses.
Speaker 1:It's being again part of that community. It's trying to find ways in which you and I get an opportunity to talk to tens of thousands of msps or vendors every single year from around the world. Right, there is strength in that knowledge. Why not share that with everybody that's out there? Yes, you're going to have some people that are going to say don't care, you're wasting my time, you're just trying to do a bait and switch, trying to get me to buy something. But in essence, you know when and it happens more often than not when somebody comes and says you changed my life and I know we're not talking about you know life critical things but making money, running a successful business, growing a business providing employment opportunities for other people who could do those same things for their families, like when you look back at this at the end of the day, especially in the industry that we're in, that's growing like crazy.
Speaker 2:These are big wins.
Speaker 1:So you know, when I'm sitting in that hotel in Detroit, Michigan, on my 15th day on the road and I haven't seen my wife or my kids and I hate my life, those are the things that kind of come up for me, which is there's a purpose to all of this and it's beyond just making money and selling more of my stuff.
Speaker 2:I've really picked up some of the key things around community. It's around delivering high quality service. It's around really helping people to grow their business and really being proactive and going out there to look at where there may be an opportunity to improve things. Here's a question for the organization and vendors that are on the way up. They've got, maybe, the traditional go-to-market, they've got sales, they've got marketing, they've got digital, they've got some events, but what is, from your experience, a pivoting point in their strategy where they should really create a KPI or a job description for?
Speaker 2:someone to go out there and fulfill all of these things that you're doing, and what does a KPI or success look like if someone is going to start to give this responsibility to someone like yourself?
Speaker 1:You talk about hiring a channel chief.
Speaker 2:Yes, I guess the channel chief is the end goal, but there's a lot of companies that may not have necessarily the budget to have a dedicated person solely in channel chief type role. Maybe they do. Yeah, is what is your opinion on when? When should you get that person? And if you can't afford a dedicated person, how do you begin to compartmentalize that role and responsibility and determine success?
Speaker 1:yeah, so that's so. It's a. It is a great question and and and I'm I'm agreeing with you Not everybody can. So having you know we've talked a lot about this how personality is so important in this, and having an individual that can relate back to your potential customers, prospects, partners, having somebody that can actually you know and is interested in doing that there are so few and far between right in doing that. There are so few and far between right. You know, probably in the MSP space alone, there's maybe identifiable 30 or 40 people that can actually do this, which means you're going to pay a premium to hire somebody that can come in and do that. There are fractional operations where you can actually hire a company. We all know a couple of those right, james, who can come in and potentially help with those kinds of things or have the leverage and experience, knowledge, connections. I mean that's, in essence, what you're paying for before, ultimately, you have to find, and particularly find, an individual that can potentially do this. The other option is find somebody that you can grow into this position. I mean, we've been hiring people. You know what I find. You know we've been hiring people. You know what I find, you what I find, if, if so, so the best people I find for this particular role I don't know where this trend comes from or where this tree comes from is somebody that's really, really, really enjoys sales, somebody that's been doing a sales role, and they can go through the entire sales process.
Speaker 1:But you know what's the final step of the sales process? The final step is asking for the business, and that has a tendency to be some of the more difficult conversations, because human nature says that we fear rejection. We don't want to be rejected, we don't want to get kicked in the teeth, we don't want people to say no to us. We want to be loved and admired everywhere we go, wherever we go, all the time. So we avoid situations that put us into situations where we're going to get rejected and in the sales process there's going to be a point where you're going to say, are you ready to buy? And there is opening that door where somebody goes no, so you've got that rejection piece. So there's a lot of really really good people that are out there at taking a sale right through the entire process, but really bad at asking for the business. They want the, instead the prospect to come to them and say, all right, I'm ready to buy. So they never actually asked the question. Instead, they just wait and kill them with kindness and phone calls and emails, waiting for them to be the ones that say, okay, I'm ready to buy, rather than us asking for that business.
Speaker 1:What I find is the best people for this role are really good at the entire sales process, but maybe miss that one final step, which, in my mind, is actually okay, because what is our job? Our job is to get people interested in our organizations. It's to get people interested in what it is that we're doing, the journey that we're on. Why do you want to be part of our community? Why are we the cool vendor in this space and why do you want to be part of all this? And then I'm going to hand it over to somebody that's going to say, all right, let's get you on to buy something, or let's get you a certain product or onboarded or those kinds of things. So even if you have somebody in your organization that you find like and we see this all the time really, really nice people, but they're, you know, but they're just not hitting their numbers. You know, maybe those are our ideal candidates to be the ones that are out there shaking the hands and kissing the babies as long as they're passing those leads back over for somebody to actually close.
Speaker 1:There will be a point where you know all this is so necessary and a lot of times it's usually the founder or one of the senior executives that kind of has to start it. Pax 8 is very similar. One of the most identifiable people at PAX 8 is our president, which is my boss, and when I first met him he was channel chief of this organization. I now work for him. But you know he's now evolved and moved and hired enough people and can afford to hire enough people that he doesn't need to do that anymore. But sometimes that person is the identifiable person that goes out. You know Artie Bellini was the was the first person out doing ConnectWise meetings. Or Austin McCord was the first person out doing ConnectWise meetings. Austin McCord was the first one out doing those Datto meetings. So sometimes it does need to be a senior leader or the creator of that tech to start, but then ultimately you'll find enough success that you can bring somebody else in to do that.
Speaker 1:And how do you quantify success? Dollars, revenue generation. You know there has to be a certain amount of revenue generation. Ebita, of course, is always, always the great measurement. But you know you don't need to focus necessarily on that part of it until you're starting to get really serious about raising money or selling the company. But how do you measure success? I would you know. I would suggest it's it's got to be, it's got to be revenue. Right, it has to be.
Speaker 1:My wife runs a small business that she started probably about four or five years ago. She's up to about five employees Right now. Every dollar that she gets she's investing back into this business. So right now she's at a net zero revenue. We're not losing money, but we're not also making money on it. She is paying herself, which I find that a lot of entrepreneurial small business owners have a tendency to ignore. That's super important that they do pay themselves as part of this, but the fact that she's running at zero, we're okay with that right now. There will be a point where we're going to turn it into a profit, but right now it's just kind of investing as much as we can into the business to grow it when you think about looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:you've got an incredible name of what you built for yourself and your career so far.
Speaker 1:But looking for the legacy that you want to be leaving in the next few years, when you look back and say this is my next big milestone achievement, what stands out the most in terms of something that you want to leave behind? There's some, there's a okay, bear with me here, james there's a, an incredible speaker that I, an incredible human being that I met a number of years ago. Um, now, I was born and raised in canada and, uh, in in canada, we have a Canadian football league, not football soccer, but football, like American football. Um, it's a second class sport in comparison to American football. Um, it's not overly I'm sure a lot of Canadians will hate me saying this, but it's not overly loved in Canada. Um, especially in Toronto, where we're used to having like real high end teams, not not, uh, you know, kind of subpar teams. Um, anyway, he played for the Toronto Argos for a number of years and you'd think, okay, what is a stupid football player going to say to you? But he was actually one of the most intelligent, caring individuals that I'd ever met in my life and, um, beyond trying and spending a lot of time with him and ways that he impacted my life, one of the things that he always said is kind of resonated with me.
Speaker 1:We are, we as employers, as coaches, as managers, as mentors, as as individuals. Our goal, our legacy, should be to leave the world in a better place than where it is when we came in. And you know the opportunity when. You know when he, when he talks to managers or people that are running businesses, you know he talks about how our responsibility is, you know, not just to take care of ourselves and our families and our mortgages and our bills. It is everyone that works for you and all the people that they care about. Like you kind of have to have that extension and that thought that everything that we do in business, we need to start thinking about how it impacts all of those individuals. You know. So you have the people that work for you, but their partners, spouses, husbands, wives, children you know they're almost as important as your own from that perspective that you are responsible for them. And when you take that responsibility for them, it's absolutely incredible what you can build by caring about everything and everyone around you.
Speaker 1:I'm a big believer that the universe is, you know, kind of imbalanced and you give what you know, give what you take out of this and you know, I'm constantly pouring more and more into this universe and the universe arguably universe arguably has taken very, very good care of me and I'm I'm ecstatic I lead a very, very blessed life.
Speaker 1:But I think it's because of that balance, like we continue to push out into into the universe, share as much as you possibly can, be sincere with everything that you're doing, care about all the people around you that business will come to you. People will recognize that, people will want to come and do business with you, which will allow you to hire more people and change more lives. And, and you know, that's uh, I think you know, in my mind, at the end of the day, if I have people that are, are, what's the term? It's saying like, uh, you know, be the, be the person that people are saying nice things about when you're not in the room. I think that's all I really care for at the end of all this. I love it, rob.
Speaker 2:Well, look, thank you so much for taking the time Just in closing. For any aspiring leaders out there that are on their journey at the moment, they're looking at how they can build their own legacy, their own business, whatever that may be. What tips or life lessons can you share as a closing point?
Speaker 1:wow, that's a. It's a big question, james, and there's a million different kind of things that kind of filter into it. But give, just give, give as much as you can look for opportunities to give. You know, uh, the the universe gives us these, these opportunities where we can contribute back to the greater good. You have to take advantage of them. And again, I'm a big believer that these things have a tendency to come back and pay off, and I've seen it repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly.
Speaker 1:Where you do something kind for somebody, whether they're an existing customer of yours, whether they're giving you dollars or not, and I, and uh, I'll leave it with this a perfect story. Um, we're in national tennessee, there's a hockey game that's happening. It's a really, really important hockey game. It's a playoff game and, uh, there's an msp there that is a huge fan of the team that's coming in and playing. I particularly don't care about them. Um, so I have a set of very expensive tickets that I gave to him and he's he was not a customer of mine, but I knew he was a fan of this team and like a massive fan, and I said no, no, no, I want you to have these tickets because I know you're a fan. I'm not interested. I'm not going to get as much pleasure enjoyment out of that as you will. And he's like. He kept telling me I am not going to buy anything from you. This is not you know. Don't expect me to turn around tomorrow and start buying your product. I'm like. It's not about that. It's about you enjoying this team and getting more pleasure out of this than I will. Please take these tickets.
Speaker 1:And he did. And he did not buy anything from me, probably for about five years. But you know what happened. We became BFFs, best friends. We have ongoing conversations. He has long successfully exited his business and we continue to have conversations to this day. You know, we've always been friends as a result of these gestures. And again, you will find ways of making money and doing business with these people over the course of time just by being kind, because you know people want to rally around you and want to see you succeed. You live money and doing business with these people over the course of time just by being kind, because you know people want to rally around you and want to see you succeed. You live by this. I know you live by this too I I share a similar philosophy.
Speaker 2:I'm a big advocate of the go-giver is trying to get as much as you can and um, yeah, uh, do it selflessly. But typically the universe um will return something. Um, not necessarily what, not necessarily in the direction that you thought it would come from, but typically it does come back to you, rob, great. Thank you so much. It's been awesome to chat, great to see you again and really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely my pleasure, James. Always good to see you, my friend.
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