Stop Doing Your Own Sales. Seriously. (with James Hayden)

If your best salesperson is still you, this episode will change how you think about your next hire.

On this episode of The KeyHire Small Business Podcast, Corey Harlock sits down with James Hayden, managing partner at Hayden Marketing Inc. and fractional CRO with 30 years of experience fixing broken B2B sales engines. James has worked with more than 140 companies and helped generate over $1 billion in revenue, and his focus is on helping founders and emerging leaders build sales teams that do not depend on one person to function.

James and Corey break down how a founder can tell when they have become the bottleneck in their own sales engine, why the same passion that built the business also creates blind spots, and what actually needs to happen in the first 30, 60, and 90 days after bringing in a first sales leader. They cover the difference between a sales leader and a salesperson, how the type of sale determines the type of hire, why category-creating products face a harder sales cycle, and the risk of hiring someone whose only experience is inside a big company. If you are still the primary driver of revenue in your business, or your last attempt to change that did not work, this conversation will give you a clear framework for how to do it right.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Every founder eventually becomes the bottleneck: the passion and drive that built the business also create blind spots, and the very thing that made a founder a great salesperson can make it harder to build a team that sells without them.
• A sales leader is not a salesperson: the first 90 days should focus on building repeatable process, an ideal customer profile, and a shared sales lexicon, not booking meetings, and owners who expect calls in week one are setting the hire up to fail.
• The type of sale determines the type of hire: someone who filled inbound orders for an off the shelf product has a completely different skill set than someone who can run a 12 to 18 month relationship sale, and founders who hire based on impressive numbers alone often end up with someone who cannot do the actual job.
• Selling something the market does not know it needs is the hardest sale there is: founders with category creating products have to build demand before they can even compete on why their company is the right choice, a challenge most off the shelf sales hires have never had to face.
• Big company experience can be a red flag, not a green light: sales leaders who have only sold inside a recognized brand often have not built the muscle to create demand from scratch, and owners can get won over by polish instead of the tactical work the role actually requires.
• Do not hire for the business you have today: hire someone capable of running the business you want to have in five years, not just the one on your P&L right now.

LINKS & RESOURCES

Connect with James Hayden: https://jamesbhayden.com

Connect with Corey Harlock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyharlock/

Learn more about KeyHire Solutions: https://www.keyhire.solutions

Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-keyhire-small-business-podcast/id1643962763

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FT9oqXSek3jMfiKrZPLQs

EPISODE CHAPTERS

• 0:00 – Introduction: why every founder eventually becomes the bottleneck
• 2:49 – How to know if you are the ceiling on your own growth
• 6:32 – Why the founder's biggest strength creates blind spots
• 14:06 – The first 30, 60, and 90 days after hiring your first sales leader
• 19:17 – Building an ideal customer profile and a shared sales lexicon
• 22:29 – Sales leader vs salesperson, and the impatience that sinks new hires
• 29:17 – Category demand: selling something the market does not know it needs
• 33:50 – The product adoption lifecycle and finding your early adopters
• 35:04 – James' top advice before you hire your first sales leader
• 39:44 – Why hiring from a big company is usually a mistake

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

If revenue depends on one person, that's not a team. That's a dependency. And if that one person is the founder, you don't have a sales engine, you have a sales bottleneck. Today we're talking about how to get out of founder-led sales without watching revenue stall or even worse, fall off a cliff.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the Key Hire Small Business Podcast, hosted by Corey Harlock, creator of Key Hire Solutions, where small business owners learn how to build stronger teams, simplify growth, and scale confidently. Got feedback or topic ideas? Send us a text. If you're listening on a handheld device, tap the link in the show notes to message the show. Subscribe or follow on your favorite platform. And follow Key Hire Solutions on social media for more insights and updates between episodes. To learn more about how KeyHire can help scale your business, visit KeyHire.solutions. Connect with Corey on LinkedIn through the link in the show notes. Mention you're a listener, and he'll accept your request. And now, on with the show. Here's your host, Corey Harlock.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Thanks for joining the show. If you had a chance to listen to last week's uh round table, we had a great discussion, great discussion with some excellent uh people around how to build leads and get BD. Uh, it's timely that we're following up with this particular conversation. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the round table, go back to last week's episode and check it out. It was an amazing conversation. Today uh we have James Hayden with us. He's a managing partner at Hayden Marketing Inc. Uh he's a strategist and fractional CRO with 30 years of experience fixing broken B2B sales engines. He's worked with 140 companies, generated over $1 billion in revenue, and specializes in building sales teams, driving company exits, and accelerating go-to-market execution for founders and emerging leaders. Matt, let's welcome on James. James, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Hey, great.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Good to be here. Good good to good to have you. Last I we were just joking last time we talked. I think you were sitting in Ireland just finishing up a trip and you said you were gonna go have a McAllen for me. Um, I did, just for you. How many? It's delicious. How many did you have? It's hard to have just one.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Uh just um, but they were they were uh we they were we drams. Just there you go. Very cool. Good trip. It was an excellent trip. We were in um in Europe in the UK for two months. So oh wow, good for you. A lot of it on on business and that. But yeah, we had we had a fabulous time.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Very cool. Well, today we're talking about founder-led sales and how they can be the bottleneck. Um, walk us through in your experience, maybe. We always like to start with definitions. So if someone is listening to this and they're thinking, hmm, I'm a founder and I really like sales. I wonder if I'm the bottleneck. How would they know if they're the bottleneck to their growth and their sales engine?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Eventually they will be.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Right. At one point or the other, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, it at some at some point, and I I know that because I resemble that. The um it's it's happened to me. Um, and I'm happy to talk about my experience here too. So the um what that what that looks like is like all all the rocket fuel it takes to get a company off the ground off the launching pad, a founder has. And so there's tremendous reinforcement um that they've done a great job. And a lot of us founders feel that nobody can do it like we can, right? So, you know, uh a couple critical points happen, and I'll point to some companies I've worked with and what I've seen specifically. Um, in my own case, I I've worked for uh worked with about 140 different companies, various aspects of their go-to-market. Um, usually it's emerging or startup companies or companies that hit that 10 to 20 million in revenue, that founder-led inertia and want to go to the next level. They have the same issues. So, what what occurs is a founder gets that reinforcement. I know I did when I was going in turning around companies. What happened with me is my business partner, Hal Thorsvig, came to me because I used his utilized his sales methodology. I stumbled into it. He teaches it. So I brought that into a number of organizations. We wrote a book together. He was having difficulty writing the book, and he said, Look, um, when you go into companies and you turn around the revenue, tell me what you do. And I said, Well, you know, I just there are patterns. I see things in this company and that company, and I put them together and and it works. He said, Well, that's great. So tell me what you do. And I couldn't. So I was, he termed the coin or coined, termed the coin, coined the term, uh, that I was an unconscious competent. And by sitting down and writing the book, I'd become a conscious competent. And I did. Took four and a half years, and I would quite say humbly, I'm more conscious. I can't take the credit for being fully conscious about what I what I do at times, but I learn and I have have an approach to it. So what happens with happened with me, it happens with other founders is you hit a point where um you need to scale the business or you're bringing bringing up the business, and it's in your head. Translating that to a sales team, uh, you know, if you're the primary revenue generator, and I've run into this in a couple of companies in the last six months, where the founder is the best salesperson. And I would say that is a massive red flag. Um, if that's the case. So what it's difficult to step back from it and go, I've got to let somebody else do it.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

However, because in the in the beginning, they have to be the best salesperson.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

They they have to be. And so many founders I work with say nobody can sell it the way I do.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Correct. Because no one has the passion, the knowledge, the knows all the in and outs. They don't have, they just don't have the passion of the product and they haven't built it from scratch. Exactly. No one will ever have that amount of information and knowledge about the product.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

That's true, and it's not true. Um, you know, there's there's parts of that 100% true. The the there are blind spots in that, and the blind spots are because they're so passionate, sometimes they can't see objectively what a client is looking for. That it's right, it's a solution. I've had founders in meetings where they're presenting and it's like, shut up. Just right, they're they're they're going to buy, but they feel they have to keep going through the whole process of how um the sausage is made, right? Right. And and there's there's no issue. So every founder has blind spots, no question. And the key is, and where where an advisor or consultant can come in is identify those blind spots and work with them on what they need to do to either take the business to the next level or take their own game to the next level. I'm working right now with a company in building management software where it's an engineer and has an engineering approach to sales, but not um not the emotional intelligence or doesn't know how to read the room. And, you know, that's but he recognizes that. So, you know, I first of all having that awareness, recognizing what your limitations are, and then bringing people in to augment that or supplement that is critical when um another organization was looking at scaling up, um, their CEO knew the sales intelligence system, the CRM, fired the whole sales team. They just weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing, weren't following the process. They had no sales methodology in in place. And it it sounds counterintuitive to have process or methodology, but it's it's really it's really a game plan. You know, for example, like a a hockey team, a soccer team, a football team will have a plan in place going into a game. And they make adjustments based on the other team they're playing, the conditions, and that. But a lot of it is is improv improv when they when they get in the mix, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

But they have well, yeah, because you have to answer objections or ask, be curious and ask the right questions. But you can't scale an owner.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

You can't scale an owner. Now, where owners can be more effective, in my opinion, and what I work with owners on is first of all, an awareness and a vulnerability that they don't have all the answers, that they they need other people if they really want to grow the business. If they just want to be a single proprietor in a business, fine. But even at that, and and the one company I'm working with is a single proprietor, um, recognizing where you can improve is is critical. I mean, really, the science behind this, if you look at companies the way they scale, the last few years, especially, you'll see um like CEOs come into companies when they hit a certain point. And they're they're based on certain skill sets they have. So, you know, what is it? CEOs have uh, seems like about in big companies, about the life of uh fruit fly, or maybe maybe a little bit longer, but they'll they'll come in when a company needs like their operations are a mess. They'll bring in somebody like a COO with an operational background. When the finances are a mess, they bring in a CFO, when the revenue is a mess, they bring in a CRO or CMO to bolster the company. And it's it's they bring in the right players at the right time. So how can how can a CEO have all those skills? Generally, they don't. One of the one of the recommendations I make is uh journaling for for a founder. At the end of the day, sit down and write um what you accomplished that day, where you're stuck. You don't have to solve it that night, but but write those areas that are your top priorities, where you're stuck, um, what you're working on, what you want to resolve. Get that down either in a keyboard or or writing. And there's there's a magic to writing because you have to think through what you're doing. It can't just be, you know, I'm not getting this new product off the off the launching pad. It's why you start questioning more, and there is there's a cognitive shift when you put it down on paper. And I found that to be true for myself.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

So if we're looking at this through the context as a small business owner, say you know, we like to talk to five five to twenty-five million dollars in revenue. So they're not going to bring in a CEO, a CEO. They don't, you know, it's it's a it's an owner and they have some managers, maybe some directors. Yes. And they've been leading the sales uh initiative. And the let's say revenues have stalled, and it's time for them to bring in a maybe it's their first sales professional, sales leader within that company. And we've already addressed they're not gonna sell like the owner, and the the owner probably has they have a unique approach because they're the owner. And when you bring in a sales professional, as you alluded to, they're gonna want to put a sales process in place, depending on what kind of product we're selling. Is it a short-term sale, is it a midterm, is it a long term, is it a relationship sale, all that stuff? So they're gonna want to put these if they know what they're doing, they're gonna want to understand what our sales process is and our touch points and and how long this should take. Uh but oftentimes, in my experience, an owner will get uh anxious because they've just put out maybe paying more money than they've ever played, paid an employee to bring in a director of sales, and they're not selling on day one. They're looking at the process, the procedure, learning the product. And if it's if it's a long tail sell and it takes 12 months, you're not gonna see ROI on that individual for 24 months. But you have to you have to understand what they're doing to build the pipeline. And so I see owners sometimes get impatient because, well, they're not out selling, they're not talking to my clients yet. They they're they have they're not booking any appointments. Well, how long have they been there? Three weeks. Okay, well, what are they doing? And so maybe walk us through that process. If I were a small business owner and I just hired my first director of sales, what should I expect for them in the 30, 60, 90 days that they start with me?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Let's start with with um the end in mind in terms of 90 days. By by the end of that 90 day period, by the end of that three months, there should be um you should see much more activity in the top of the pipeline. No problem. Um, so getting getting to that point, how do you get to the point where you start filling the pipeline? Um first, I mean, first of all, and I would say a big caveat is um how do you hire the right person?

SPEAKER_02 14:37

So the hardest position to hire for salespeople.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

It is. And there's there's not a clear there's not a clear line in terms of what makes a good salesperson. Some of the some of the worst hires that I've seen have been companies who've said they know everybody in the business. They, you know, they have the biggest network, or we used to call it Roland X, right? And that's not necessarily the best person. Somebody who has um has their own approach in terms of, I would say, a methodology, a way to generate business. And especially it's evolving now with uh the infusion of AI into our day-to-day lives. AI can be tremendous assistance at the top of the pipeline. So making sure you have this the right person, what what that person needs to be doing, as I mentioned, at the end of 90 days, you your pipeline should look so much better in terms of what's at the top of the pipeline. One of the first things they need to do is get some of that information out of the head of the founder who's been doing all the selling. You know, is there is there a particular approach that works within the organization? Everybody in the organization should be on the same page in terms of a sales lexicon or language. So a sale at 30% that's 30% probability that's considered consideration. There are certain objective criteria that that you've met at that point. Usually that doesn't happen in a company right away. As a founder of a company, because of what I do, I would I would set that up and it has to be objective, not subjective. So for example, it would be have you identified all the decision makers in the process? Do they have a need for this solution and do they have a budget? Those are, you know, before you move to a proposal, that has to happen. Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Those are like go-no-go type questions.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

100%. And then also within that, most buying situations tend to be a bit complex. I go back to what's what's in our book or what's in like Miller Hyman, where there's um in strategic selling, there's an economic buyer, a user buyer, technical buyer, and a coach within the organization. Each one of those are defined. I could go into more detail, but that's a little bit off off topic to this. So defining how customers buy, that in the first 30 days, that person should be looking at why are they buying? What are we solving? Um, how do we present ourselves? How do the leads come in the top of the pipeline? And working with that CEO to define one of the things I love is building an ideal customer profile, ICP. Um, that's super important. What do our customers and prospective customers look like? What are the personas or the roles that are buying? And then what roles do they take? So, really, it sounds like a bit of engineering, and it is, but uh a CEO or a founder, in my opinion, should be doing this themselves from they at this level they don't though.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

They don't, they're they're so busy fighting fires, they don't have time to sit down and do all this, right? So they're they're shooting from the hip generally, and I think you've proved my point with all with all of this work that you've outlined. When I said they'll hire this director of sales, and in the first month or two, they're not out making calls because they're doing all of this stuff. You're doing they're laying the foundation, they're creating the process, they're creating those profiles, the different steps. How are we going to measure these sales? There's a lot of work to be done. But if you hire a director of sales, the idea would be then to have salespeople underneath them. So they need to be able to teach them the process and how we sell. And that has to be pretty clearly defined. And I what I've seen, one of the biggest problems that a an owner will get who's in charge of sales, they'll go out and hire a bunch of the people from industry like you outlined, right? And turn them loose. And they're all doing different stuff. Yeah. And they're all saying different things, and they're all selling a different way, and they're all making different promises, which by the way, puts a ton of strain on the operation because you have all these people out there promising timelines and deadlines. And this is where it gets really important to hire that leader first to create that structure so you can then start filling the top of the pipeline. Yeah, I mean it's exactly and that's where the impatience kicks in. And that's you you outlined it really nicely because a lot of uh the owners will say, Well, I just I'm paying this guy 150k a year plus uh a 50% incentive, and he hasn't made a sales call yet, and he's been here a month. Okay, but there's stuff to do. I always use the example. I had a client and I got him a director of operations, and I checked in after 30 days and said, How's the director of ops doing? And he said, Uh, good. And I go, Oh, that doesn't sound and he goes, I don't know if he's focusing on the right things. I said, Well, let me go talk to him. So I went back and I'm like, Hey, how's it going? He goes, Oh, great. Go, what have you been up to? And he goes, Oh, let me show you. There was a bunch of safety hazards when I started here. So I've fixed this and I fixed this, and there were some exposed wires over there, and I've reorganized the warehouse because it was lean and it was dangerous, it wasn't leaned out and it was dangerous. So I went back there and I go, no, he's doing exactly what he should be doing. That's what you hire. You're not seeing it at the front end yet. You're not seeing the efficiencies, but he's laying the foundation because if you had got a um uh a work injury because of the safety hazards out there, you would you would have the business would stop. So he's doing exactly what he needs to be doing. The outputs will come, but but someone who's a professional and knows what they're doing, they take some time to get things set up so then they can put the push.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Well, the the the objective is to build repeatable scalable processes, right? Correct, yeah, perfect, yeah. And the um yeah, the first month is critical. I I would say, and and I would put it in um SLAs if if I was involved in it, that SLA, um that it's a um an agreement, essentially. Okay, okay, okay. Um have an agreement by the end of the first month that sales leader is making sales calls. They're in front of clients. Because you can't really build an effective, um, you can't really build an effective um ICP or or ideal customer profile and processes if you're doing it in a laboratory. You've got to be in front of you right lungs or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

So that that sales leader, I would also look for that person may be riding solo for a while in terms of revenue generation before they hire salespeople. I don't believe a a CRO or VP of sales should be brought in to most organizations until they're over 10 million.

unknown 22:00

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Of course. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

And the um, so that that person really needs to be a practitioner that's grounded in methodology and process. They know how to build that. And then they know the the, then they have an idea of the kind of people to hire for the rest of the sales team.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Exactly. And I think that's a great prelude to some of the mistakes people make uh when they hire a sales leader, an owner. And one you just alluded to, which I find is it's a it seems to be logical, but it's it's not. People will go hire a director of sales and pay them a lot of money. They could be the highest paid person in the company when they bring them in, right? This professional, and say, we need you out making sales calls. Well, part of the reason you hired them was to create the process, the repeatable process. Right. And when they build a team, they'll make fewer and fewer sales calls. They'll be involved at key moments of sales calls, but they're not a salesperson. They are a sales leader. And when they come in, they'll have to do a bit of both. But in their mind, I'm growing into a leadership role. And sometimes in the owner's mind, it's they're not making enough calls, they're not out there panning the pavement. They're not, well, that's a salesperson that you're thinking of, not a sales leader. And there is a difference, a massive difference.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

And that sales leader, and I'm glad you brought that up. That that person's responsible, their role in the company is finding that realistic product to market fit. And uh a salesperson, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

You want those those listening posts in the market and get that one or two weeks training, and here are the keys to your car and here's your laptop. I don't want to see you and back in the office until you have a sale, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah, go get them.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

The um, but this the sales leader, and and especially today, the go-to-market approaches have changed dramatically, and the sophistication of a sales leader is much, much different. So, you know, the other, the other answer or other question is how do you utilize all the tools that are in the in the marketplace today? AI is an example. I hear it every day. People wanting to know how to incorporate that. And it's changing, it's changing almost minute by minute. However, what I know as a fact is the AI-enabled sales teams are going to be more effective. They're gonna have more in the top of the pipeline if it's done the right way. And so somebody, a sales leader needs to understand technology, they need to understand the organizational structure. And a lot of times what I've seen in those uh founder-led organizations is the COO sees the business one way. They have one picture, the CFO has another picture, the CEO may have another picture of the company, sales has another picture. So it's it's also you know, a bigger part of it during that first 90-day period is integration of the different parts of the business. So operations plans so they can deliver whatever that solution or product is more effectively. The CFO can plan the finances as they need to and have an accurate picture. There was an organization I was speaking with, the the COO, uh new COO, and the company said they're they're not utilizing this great CRM package we have. So I'll find out two weeks before we're supposed to deliver a solution. We have to deliver it. How do I scale, how do I scale my team up and down where I don't have that kind of information? So, really the integration, you know, flying by the seat of your pants and getting getting the company to a certain point, there just aren't many people that can do that. So, you know, here's to the founders, it's amazing. Taking it to the next level involves, I would say, some awareness and vulnerability. And if you look to larger companies where there are examples of it, um when Steve Steve Jobs founded Apple, I mean, these are big companies, but the same is true with some of the smaller organizations. When the company got to a certain size, he went through a bit of turmoil, but he brought in John Scully from uh PepsiCo to build the structure, build the processes to scale the business the right way. Um, up in my neck of the woods in Seattle, um, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were running Microsoft. In the early days, they realized they only knew so much. Bill, avid reader of business biographies, brought in John Shirley, who at that time was the head of Radio Shack. I'm not sure if it exists anymore, but at that time, you know, big big electronics retailer, because they needed to scale the business and put in scalable, repeatable processes. The same is the same is true in the organizations you and I work with mostly, too, is you need to have some structure so when there are people that come in, they know exactly what they need to do, what their mission is, what their charter is.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

You need to you need to hire a professional to build those for you. You do. That's that's the bottom line of this. And what you know, we're talking about mistakes. What I've seen, tell me if you've seen this. Understanding sales cycle means a lot. And the person who sells uh widgets off the shelf and most of the calls are inbound, they answer the phone. Oh, you need 500? I'll ship them. I'll send it right. That's a different kind of sale than the 12 to 18 month relationship sale. And I've seen owners get tricked because the widget salesman will come in and say, Oh, yeah, I sold eight million dollars last year. Holy shit, you're in our industry and you sold eight million dollars. I need you on my team. But all they did was pick up the phone and fill orders, and they never dug down to say, Well, how did you do that sale? Well, I make eight sales a day and they average however many thousand bucks per sale. That person gets that endorphin rush every time the phone rings. When you put them in a long tail sales where they might not sell anything for 12 months, they it doesn't work for them because they they need the relationship, the hunt. They they the people with the relationship sales appreciate the work and the maneuvering and the strategy that goes into that. You put them in the answering the phone, they get overwhelmed too. And there's those are extremes. But I I have seen people who they haven't explored that enough, or maybe they don't understand going in an owner, and they'll hire the widget salesman to sell their long-term sale, and then after, like, well, they haven't gone out and made any calls. Well, they don't know how to make calls. All they know how to pick up the phone, like answer a call. So there's a big difference in the type of sale and the personality it takes to make each of those different sales.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Well, you, I mean, you hit on a massive point, a really, really big important point. And and that also is the value that that first salesperson, sales leader can bring, can bring to the organization if you're looking for the right person. It's the the the type of sale it is, the complexity of the sale, how it's done. So so many founders I work with have a great idea, right? It's a great idea, it's going to be the next, you know, big, big opportunity. It's going to be the next Amazon or whatever it's going to be. And and that's great. You know, it's it's ground, it's groundbreaking. And where you have something like that, and you're going to to buyers to go after that, that person who has been picking up the phone, you know, the SDR BDM who's picking up the phone, taking, uh, taking orders, doesn't have a clue on how to get that done. What I mean by that is most founders I work with are going into a battlefield, if you will, of sales where there's not a budget for their solution. In many cases, the the prospective client doesn't even know that a solution like that's available. So what you have to do, the process is if you found somebody who's done this, and I think what you're talking about is understanding the sales process your hires have gone through, and then hire to that is important. So you've got to step back. So what I mean is this great idea. Um, it's something that organizations haven't thought of. So you have to build a category demand for that solution.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Which is the hardest sale to sell something people don't know about? Absolutely. What do they say in sales? You never want to have to start the conversation going on in someone's head. You always want to join the conversation going on in their head. And if they don't know about your product, uh that conversation hasn't started. You have to start.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

You you do. And then creating the demand, then in that client organization, do they have a budget for that? You may have to wait until the next fiscal year or the next calendar year to get budgeted in. But then you have to convince the rest of the people in the organization for that demand. So let's say you've you've crossed that first hurdle of creating category demand. Then the second thing you have to answer is why our business? And in my opinion, that's the easier part of that's the easier part of the sale. But there's there's two big hurdles to clear that I see most of the founder-led organizations I work with, because most are in technology, um, you have to answer those questions. And it's it's complex. And as you mentioned, it could be a very long tail on the sales cycle because you're convincing a number of people within an organization there's a need for this.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

And that usually has to do with complexity of the product and pricing. If you're are you selling into the capital cycle, are you selling into the day-to-day budget of your item, whatever it is? It's but I think people get a business owner can get excited when they hear a guy or a salesperson who says, Oh, I sold 12 million dollars last year and I work, oh, and you're in midstream oil and gas, or you're in our industry. Oh, yeah, we got to get him, get them on the team. But they never took time to consider what they were selling and how they were selling it, and how does it relate to their product?

SPEAKER_01 32:55

And then, I mean, then the other piece to not to make it complex, but the other piece to look at too is a mistake I see a lot of founders and early excuse me, early stage organizations making is um is this let's spray and pray to the market. There is absolute science around, and it it sounds scientific and it's not theoretical, uh, product adoption lifecycle. It's covered in the book The Tipping Point, and it's covered in in a in my one of my sales Bibles, which is crossing the chasm around technology sales. That to build a market, the first market you have to go after in that ideal customer profile, identify who the early adopters and innovators are. Because you won't move to a mass market until you hit those those early stage adopters.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

What and what and they are and they are about 5% of the population.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

And it's it's different messaging. Um, it's going to be your most expensive sale um in terms of your cost of sale. But to move to the mass market, I mean, humans are herd animals, we are, and we'll follow the leader. It's the reason you see product placement in movies. You know, Brad Pitt drinking drinking a Pepsi, it's like, I'm gonna drink a Pepsi because I want to look like Brad Pitt. People do follow that, and it's the reason that happens. And that's another important piece that a founder needs to take a look at, part of that process to build a sales organization to the next level, as well as your revenue.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

For sure. James, this is a great time to move into some advice. So if if if I'm a business owner and I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, yep, I do all the sales, I don't have any processes in place, I'm just run and gun. And I and I wanted to consider hiring a professional sales leader. What are the top three to five pieces of advice you would give them to make sure they're starting off on the right track?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Three to five pieces of advice. First, first of all, um, do you really want to scale up the business? I I know and I've worked with founders who they're happy with status quo. They they don't want they don't want to improve. They're pretty happy with their cash flow. And you know, if it goes, if it goes upside down in a couple of years, they're fine. So why do you want to do it? Um, and the the second piece is can you identify where you're stuck um in the in the sales process? Um, who who are your defining who your customers are? And where do you see you need the greatest support or assistance? Um those are some of the things I'd look at. I mean, really be diagnostic in terms of who who you're looking for, um, where you're stuck. Is a sales engine really stuck? Do you have other issues in your organization around delivery um or support that are that are holding you back? Are you churning out more customers than you're bringing on the on the top end? So you know, those those things need to be evaluated. Um but yeah, I mean, really being introspective, taking a look at where you want to take the business. And then are you willing to take your hands off the wheel a bit?

SPEAKER_02 36:29

And that's the so you brought up two really good points. A lot of times a business owner might think they need to increase sales when their operation is already at the red line and running at almost max capacity. And by injecting more sales into that operation, just like a car, if you redline it too long, that engine's gonna melt. Yep. And your your push for sales isn't. And I've had clients where I've had to talk to them and say, it's not sales is not the issue here. Operations are the issue. We need to level up operations before you go hard on sales because if you do sales now, your quality is going down, your OTDs are going down, you're gonna get someone hurt on the job because you know you don't have your safety or you're not leaned out, you're not using 5S, whatever it is. So that's a big one is making sure it's sales is the need. Um, and then the second point you raised was are you ready to take your hands off the wheel? Let Jesus take the wheel, right? Yeah, like exactly are you ready to hire a professional and let them do what they do, even if it's not the way you do it.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Not an easy thing to do, especially it's the hardest thing for a business owner to do. Because look at the reinforcement they've had in building a business that far. Super, super difficult. Um, but you know, I would I would encourage the business leaders to take a look at other examples of businesses that have scaled, and you find the same thing. Generally, a founder-led business gets to the point where you need to bring in somebody to lead the business who understands how to scale a business from 10 million to 50 million or whatever it is that's had um had those chops. And you you brought up a really, really good point. Understanding the sales process, uh salespeople have been through, I'd take more time in the interview process because if if you're selling something tangible, if I'm selling you know, thermal mugs, that's gonna be that's gonna be a different sale because I can say, like, you know, look at this.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

It's quick and dirty.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah, this keeps things warm, yeah, cold, and you know, here's the temperature specs on it, blah, blah, blah. All of that, as opposed to you're selling something that's conceptual or new to the market, is very different. And, you know, in some cases, a lot of a lot of the experience I've had has been in consulting sales, technology consulting sales. And we brought in product people from different technology product companies, product people and people who've sold services. It's a very different approach, you know, conceptual sale versus a product sale. Those are things a founder really needs to dig in and find out before they hire the right person. Don't hire the person with the biggest network necessarily. A lot of a lot of times those people will be lazy and there's a lot of um baggage they bring, bad habits, lack of CRM use, uh, keeping all their contacts on an Excel spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

That's why they have so many contacts that they can bring to your business because they haven't and if they've done it to someone else, they'll do it to you.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Um, and if I could just add uh one final one there, and you touched on it when you're getting ready to hire a sales leader, talk to your people, talk to networks, talk to someone like me or someone like you who can maybe help you in that process because hiring a sales leader, hiring people is tricky because we're people and things can go sideways. Okay. Hiring sales leaders is the hardest thing to do in your company to find that one that's gonna be great uh and you're gonna be happy with and is gonna grow your business. So don't, as a business owner, right now with all the layoffs and shit that's happening in the world, I've been talking a lot about yes, there's a lot of people on the market, but the industries that are hiring, the people from that industry are not on the market, and the people that are on the market are not from the industries that are hiring, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

So if you have an ex-government employee who is in sales, and I'm in oil and gas, and my neighbor says, Hey, I got a good buddy. He's uh used to be the director of sales over at wherever. Man, you should hire him. He just got laid off. He'd be great. And they're like, Oh, shiny penny. He comes from what company? Yeah, let's get him in here. They don't put him through the proper process, they don't kind of figure out what exactly it is they need. They come in. Uh, a lot of small business owners will get uh wooed or very impressed by these highly corporate people because they bring the corporate speak and they're polished and they sound so great, and they think, oh, we we need that in our business, someone who can talk like that. But when they come from these big organizations as a sales leader, they're not doing a lot of the tactical stuff we've been talking about. So they come in, they sit in their office and they don't do much because that's what they used to do. And they don't know your industry, they don't know your market, they don't know your product. But we can get impressed by these people and think, oh, if we could get them on our team, they could have such a big impact. We make an investment in them, we get no results, and now we get this skewed vision of, well, I tried to hire this big time player, this professional, and they didn't do anything. So that's I don't think that's what I need. So they prove themselves right by making a bad hire and then saying, Yeah, those people don't work in my in my company.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

That I mean, you hit on another really, really important distinction.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Like I'm like on a roll here, James. I think that's two or three I've hit.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Yeah, no, it's this is great. And that's that's the other thing. I especially the audience you have that are emerging companies, and that um hiring somebody from a big co generally is a mistake, too. And I I had a couple of years of experience. I worked at Microsoft and that, and um, I was responsible for um the wireless carriers in the US, had a team of three, massive, massive amount of revenue. But to to get a meeting with somebody and you're at Microsoft is a little different than um Jim's widget company, right? Right. Um completely different. So it's it's a different skill set. And most uh founders, I would recommend fire find somebody who's had that smaller company experience. They've built, they know how to build, like we talked about earlier, category demand and then demand for your solution specifically. They've done it before. And in a big company, they don't have that, that they've never developed that muscle. I'm not saying they can't do it, but they just haven't had the experience. And you don't have, you really don't have time. You looked at that critical 90 days that we talked about at the beginning of our conversation. You don't have time to educate somebody on how to do that. Either know how to do it or you don't. So it's it it again, it's a very challenging hire because you want somebody who has the latest experience in terms of technology uh people, uh you know, they know how to hire the right people, processes, and that that combination, and they're a practitioner, they get out and do it too. Yeah, that's that's not a given in every person who's a revenue generator.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

And I think that's a great spot to end it. That was perfectly put. So let's end it there. Uh, James, if people are listening to this and thinking, hey, I would like to know more about James or maybe have a conversation with him, how can we get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Um, best way is on LinkedIn um, or uh my website is jamesbhayden.com. There you go. It's up on the screen. And one other thing I'd say I'd add to is I've discovered a sales assessment tool that's that's tailored to companies, transaction size, complexity of the sale, uh developed by a group out of MIT that I have a license to, and it's under $500 per assessment. If anybody's interested just in that, it will give you about 40 pages of coaching on how to coach that sales leader or salesperson. It's a it's an amazing tool centre. So it it takes some of the guesswork out, and I found it to be very effective in hiring as well as a very effective tool in coaching people. You know what you know what you're getting in terms of behavioral tendencies and that.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Very cool. Well, hey, thank you for your time today. I am glad you were able to get us on your calendar to record this. It's been a great conversation. All right, there you go, James Hayden. Uh, just to follow up on what he was saying on that last point, the big company people, that's something we work with a lot. Which, especially for sales, ops, whatever it is, we're always looking for people that have started in a small company, have gone to that big company, and they they get the experience, the process, the procedure. We always want people that have big company experience, but the entrepreneurial spirit. And that is the key. They have to have that entrepreneurial spirit. They have to understand and have worked in small business before to know that uh one day they daily they're changing hats. If they have a plan, they're trying to develop your sales process. People are going to be knocking on their door and asking them questions, or they might have to grab a call, or they might have to go on a run with the business owner, and they have to be okay with that. One way to hire uh hiring for capacity is one of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is they hire for today's needs and not tomorrow's needs. So here's the mind shift for you when you're especially if you're hiring a leader for your company. If you're a $10 million a year company, do not hire someone to run your $10 million a year company. Hire someone to run your $50 million a year company currently doing $10. And if you can shift that mindset, you'll be well on your way to understanding and looking for the right experience to someone who can help you grow and scale your business. That's all I have for you today. My name's Corey Harlock. I've been your host. And until next time, stop grinding, start growing up, and then we're going to do it.