76: Morals and Ethics in Sales, with Customers, and Business

According to Gong.io's research and analysis of over 2 million sales calls using their artificial intelligence platform, they find out that the top reps spend 12.7% more time talking about next steps with the client at the end of the call than average reps do. Next steps are one of the most important things you can get at any stage of the sales process. You don't want to just leave a meeting and say, okay, we'll touch base next week. They're never there next week. You have them in that moment, whether it's on the phone or in person, you have them. So lock in that next step and plan it out together. This maps out the decision-making process. You can build a mutual plan together regardless. Make sure that there's a defined next step on the calendar before you get out of any meeting because it really also works with the rule of reciprocity, which is a psychology around human conditioning.

And it says that when somebody asks us for something, there's a fleeting moment that they actually feel obligated to give you something in return. And if you ask for it right then and there, it's actually quite easy for them to give you. But the longer you wait, the harder it is to get. So for instance, let's talk about send me information. When you're cold calling and you have a good conversation with somebody and they say, send me information. Usually the way it works is great. When do you want to follow up next week? Fantastic. Touch base, check in, touch base, check in. And they're almost never there, even if they're serious. So instead, I like to use the what, when, why approach to send me information.

What information would you like to see? When would you like to see it? And why? Because people were genuinely serious about you sending them information. Those are easy questions to answer. People who aren't, those are hard questions to answer. And then when they answer them, I say, great, thanks so much. So when would you like to schedule a call so we can follow up on this information and see if it makes sense for us to take the next steps? They'll say next week, when next week. And then do this with a really nice tone of voice. Go, actually, you know what? You got your calendar in front of you? And then shh, wait for it. There'll be that little awkward pause where they realize that you got them.

Because if they say no to that, they are blatantly lying to your face, right? And by the way, if you ever do that to a VP of sales, you'll literally hear the smirk on the other end of the phone being like, damn, I wish my reps would do this stuff, right? So get that because it's so much easier to get them to commit to that next step right then and there than it is to chase them next week. It's the same thing after a qualification call, after a demo, whatever it is, get it defined on the calendar and work with the prospect, work with the client to map that out so that you're in it together. Again, the best reps spend more time, 12.7% more time talking about next steps than the average reps do, right?

So talk about next steps, get it defined and make it happen. If you enjoyed this tip, check out more of Gong's research at gong.io slash john. Good morning, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays, even though this is on a Wednesday, I think it is. We're doing this a little bit off Mondays because I thought this was an important topic. I'm really interested to have this conversation. I'm sitting here with Dave and Denise. Dave and Denise from Expel. Say hi to everybody. Hey, everyone. Hey, everybody. How are you doing? So, Denise, you reached out to me and this was kind of the preface for this podcast specifically and this topic we're talking about here. Could you explain kind of what caught your eye and why you reached out to me?

And then we're going to talk about Expel specifically and what you're doing as an organization. Yeah, absolutely. So I think it all kicked off and it has for a lot of people around that blog that you posted a couple of months ago around the, you know, hey, we have to talk. The discussion around how to build sales culture and even bringing that to the forefront about why sales culture is so important in the mix, not only to build great companies, but also in terms of how we're dealing with customers. And it really resonated because I just started this new position at Expel and this is one of our major cultural attributes is all about how are we doing things transparently and openly in a non-bro culture, right?

And doing things sales done right. So when you posted that and I'm in the middle of actually getting ready to join this company and it all kind of came together and I said, hey, we need to all be talking about this and helping people understand what needs to be happening in this world to make sales a better cultural place. And that was, I mean, and then we got on the phone and started talking. You had actually sent me the job description from Expel and I was like, whoa, this is a different job description. And as we talked, you said, okay, not only are we, you know, changing, but the founders actually started Expel for that exact reason. They wanted to start a company that wasn't your typical, you know, go, go, go win at all costs.

And Dave, that's where, you know, you come in here as one of the founders. Could you explain to the audience here, you know, why you started Expel? I mean, first of all, what is Expel? So everybody knows. But also why did you just start, decide to start the company the way you did and what's it all about these days? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I'm happy to. So, so the super short non-nerd version of what we do. So we're in the cybersecurity space and we help, you know, enterprise businesses, you know, deal with, with their security infrastructure. I'll just keep it at that. It's probably enough for, for these purposes. Why did I, why did I start Expel? My wife will still ask me that question from time to time.

The reason I started it at the time is my co-founders and I had left our prior gig, which was, you know, a great outcome. And we saw an interesting opportunity and we looked up and kind of saw a small set of people, not a large flock, but a small set of people that were on our short list of people we really wanted to work with again, because we knew they were of a like mindset. And that mindset, I guess is best described by things we hate. I know I'm sorry. I'm Irish. This is how this is going to go. It's like Peter Griffin, grind my gears. Yeah. Yeah. It's that kind of thing. So, you know, I, I wasn't a big fan of the information security industry, not the practice of InfoSec because I did that for a decade, but the industry kind of how it walked and talked, how it behaved.

I really didn't like enterprise sales. I didn't like kind of the default experience either as a buyer or as somebody that was sometimes supporting those, those sales teams as a, as a business unit owner. You know, I didn't like, uh, either of, uh, uh, of those things. And, you know, I was also, you know, never a fan of, uh, how internally, you know, different parts of, of cultures were built in, in the business, kind of how folks treated employees and, and, and sort of some of the broken disconnects, particularly between like the sales team and the rest of the organization. And we sat around going, gosh, I wonder if we can do it our way, uh, and still be successful. And, and we had a good idea and our, the market timing was reasonable and we were able to get the funding.

We said, well, let's go see if we can do this our way. And if we can bully for us. And if we can't, you know what, nice. Uh, but, but the, the opportunity was there. So let's, let's take a swing. Um, and so we did, we, we brought the initial team on board, uh, and started looking at, you know, what, what was important to us and how do we codify that so that we can, we can get everybody together and scale it. And there were a couple of key things that we, we used to anchor the business. One was, um, actually my, my co-founder, Yannick Korf, uh, brought this, brought this in. He always was a fan of this, this phrase from Richard Branson. If your leadership take care of the employees, employees take care of the customers, everything else works itself out.

So that's sort of a founding. Here's an anchor. If you're sitting around wondering if you're doing your job, right, look at this. And if you don't feel like you're anywhere in that list, something's wrong. And the other thing that was a key anchor was, was a concept around transparency. And it goes from everything in terms of how we treat our employees to how we treat our customers. I would always get frustrated in some prior experiences where for no good reason, you wouldn't tell people stuff. How many shares outstanding in the cap table? Well, let's not share that with the employees. Why not? They can just go look at your fricking filing in the state of Delaware. The answer, like, why would you not take the opportunity to build trust and just answer the question?

Cause it doesn't matter. How much money's in the bank? When are we going out of business? Like I would just not share. So, so we do, unless it's your personal information about your health or your money, that's your business. You want to share that's on you. Then we're going to by default, just tell you. And, uh, if there's something I can't tell you for whatever reason, we'll be sort of transparently not transparent. Hey, I'm not going to tell you that. Here's why. And tell you later, here's when. Uh, and so we took that as sort of an anchoring management philosophy. And then we're pushing that through everything all the way to the customer, you know, radically transparent with the customer in terms of how we deliver value, radically transparent when we sell, meaning the prices are on the website.

Guess what? They're the actual prices. How radical. Um, and so, so those were some of the things that, that we said, you know, this, this feels right. Maybe we'll succeed and maybe we won't, but you know what, we're probably going to enjoy the journey a heck of a lot more and we'll be able to look back at it and kind of look ourselves in the mirror and be, be proud of what we attempted. I love it. Can I ask you like tactically, um, you know, a lot of companies, when they start, they do the mission exercise and the vision exercise, and then they put it up on the wall and whatever. Um, when you talk about those, those pillars, if you will, um, transparency and that type of thing, how specific were you with them and how do you translate them?

And the preface here is, you know, I don't know where it came from, but early on in my career, um, I sat down and I wrote down my, my guiding principles. So I had 12 guiding principles of how I, how I live my life, you know, work hard, you know, work hard and smart, find your passion or find something else to do. What goes around comes around that type of thing. And I wrote them down. And when, when new hires would come on board, I would tell them, I go, look, this is how I live my life. I'm not saying this is how you should live yours, but these are my principles. Okay. So when you get feedback from me, understand this is where it's coming from. This is the lens that I'm giving you feedback from.

Okay. And I, and I, and I tried to really, you know, present that for me personally, we didn't do that as an organization. We did the typical mission vision statement type of stuff, but I personally from my team did that. So how do you, how did you codify that? I guess, how did you put that down and live it without just saying, Hey, these are our pillars. Let's, let's go. Yeah, we, um, well, we, uh, we first start with a philosophy that when, when you, when you're building culture, uh, the first thing is, it's the thousand little things you do in a day. Um, not just a set of PowerPoint slides, but it is important to provide some context when people start so they can kind of orient, like, so you can guess what I'm probably going to say before I say it.

Yeah. We did write it down. So we built, um, kind of our, our version of a culture deck, um, which we have cleverly called the palimpsest of employee wisdom. And if you don't know what a palimpsest is, it's a great word. Look it up. I was going to say, what is that? It's a, it's, it's, it's, it's like a, it's like a tablet that you write on and then you might erase and write on again and adjust. Okay. See it's, it's actually really relevant to, to what the deck is because there's what's important today. And then there's how that's going to evolve as you bring more people to the group minded, but maybe help expand your vision of, of what's right for your culture. Your culture is organic. It's not static.

It's not the state. I'm not going to say just what it was when we started expel in 2016. It's hopefully additive as we bring more people to contribute. Uh, so we, we started with a base set of, of those kinds of things. So for, for a couple of reasons, one, so people can kind of see where we're coming from. So we just be upfront and two also, so we could talk about where there's some things that are aspirational because we're not perfect. Uh, actually we need everybody else coming to the table to help us maintain and, and, and hold that culture true so that people can call us out when we're off course. Uh, and we did that both around sort of big company, you know, sort of value things, you know, things that we believe as people.

And then we also had a more redacted version in terms of how we built product. Like how do we think about product and care about the customer? Because that was a little bit more specialized version of, of sort of guiding principles to exactly what, what you mentioned, which is folks hear all that when they come in. Uh, and then we try to be very active as a management team and referring back to those as we make decisions so that we, we keep it fresh when we go back and we re-examine, is that still relevant or is it not relevant anymore? Uh, are we making a mistake and we need to re-emphasize that. I love it. And, and Denise, with your, with, with your journey here, right. And, and what you were looking for in your next employee, because you kind of give a little bit of backstory of where you were coming from before this and then what attracted you to expel in the first place?

Like, what did you see? And, and, and, and through the process of, of coming on board, how are you sure that, that, you know, uh, Dave and his team were, were real about that stuff? You know what I mean? Because I think a lot of people talk a really good game and they make the company sound so fantastic. And then, you know, kind of, as we were talking before we jumped on, on, on, on live call here, which is, then you get in there and you're like, oh shit, you know, I mean, you know what I mean? Like this never happens. I, I absolutely do. Oh my gosh. Clearly, clearly I'm not going to name names, but, um, I learned early in my career that culture, you know, there's a saying, right. That culture eats everything else for breakfast, right.

If you're, if you're not building the right culture in every aspect that there's absolutely no way that everybody can be successful, right. I've been very, very focused. And I was lucky actually to have some of my early career at an organization that was really focused on, you know, training employees and ensuring that the right kinds of things were put in place. And I actually thought everybody did that. That was like my first sales job. I was like, this, this is great. This is what it's going to be like for the rest of my career. And then, you know, left that company and found out that's not the case. And as you point out, right. Um, everything sounds good. And, and, you know, I've also been fortunate enough in my leadership positions to be able to impact the, not only company culture, but, you know, specifically sales culture and how we go about, uh, uh, with our customers and what that relationship looks like.

But I have found that it's much more relevant. And, uh, for me at this point really only makes sense if there's an alignment with, what the culture of the company is from an actual foundation perspective. So as I was going through my journey, um, I don't know if you remember our second conversation, we, we talked almost the entire hour about trust, you know, so Dave was like, Hey, you know, what do you want to talk about today? And I'm like, actually, the thing I want to talk about today is tell me how you build trust across the organization. Cause it was, you know, highlighted for you. I think what was really important for me. And at that moment, I didn't know that it was also something that they were, you know, obviously really, really, uh, found important as well.

So we had really great open conversation. So it was a test of ache. We have an open conversation about it. And then a test of the philosophies and the cultural attributes match up. Right. And then I had, you know, like you let, I'm a list person. So I had a list of things that I was looking for, um, around trust, around collaboration, around transparency. Um, so it was a lot of asking questions, not only of the person who I'd be working for, but the rest of the team, give me examples, right? Tell me about a time where there was a difficult conversation and, or difficult situation at the company. And the thing that, that won out had to do with cultural values. I asked every single person that question.

And I got very similar answers across the board. Right. You know, tell me about, you know, yeah, everyone will say that people are important and employees are important and customers are important. Give me examples of that. Right. So I went through, as I'm sure the team now teases me about it. I went through kind of a laborious process with all my questions to ensure that there was a match because we've all seen that there isn't right. It's really sort of sad out there. How many, how many times you get lied to about, yeah, you know, don't worry, you know, our clothes are attainable or don't worry, you know, our, our salespeople, we don't care how much we pay them. We're willing to pay whatever for the deal.

Um, don't worry, you know, that we treat our customers like gold, you know, until it comes down to some difficult conversation and you find out that's not the case. I was looking for all those things and, and found matches across the board. So I sort of feel like I got really lucky, but also I think we're at the forefront of really not only taking transparency from a security perspective and helping customers understand how we do that for them, but then also doing it on the sales side. Really, I think it's the step two, right. Having the pricing on the, on the website, right. It becomes a totally different conversation. You don't have to ask. We don't have to go through the whole thing before you find out what the pricing is.

It's up on the website. Just take you through it. Right. Let's, it's just a totally different way to go about sales and our customers time and time again, talk about how important this is to them. It's kind of like, I bought a Tesla recently, you know, two years ago, I bought my first and, and there's no, there was no negotiation. It was no going into dealership and okay, I'm ready to go to battle. It was go online and configure your computer, John. Do you want that option? And I, you know, and it was pricey obviously, but I was just like, it was just a better experience. I'm like, I don't, I loathe going to like buy a car and go through that. Just the feeling of it makes me want to throw up.

Right. Yeah. Um, you know, that's what I'm like, yeah, I want that. And you know, no options as far as like, okay, we're going to discount by X amount of dollars, like your price is your price. That's why it kills me. And they, and I actually wanted to, you know, Dave flip this back over to you. Why do you think, you know, you said a few things early there that, that struck me because I've, I put another post out there a little while ago that, you know, why, why is transparency such an issue? Right. Why is, why are leaders afraid to share what you said earlier about the business and those types of things? I'll give you a quick example. But I, when my little, I started an outsourced IT services company, right.

And we, we grew it up and we ended up selling off to Staples and Staples was, you know, and it was just a different world. And we were fighting the acquisition. Like my, our team, they still wanted to be this little tiny company and, you know, startup fun, fun, fun. But now we were part of the mothership and we try to play both sides of the equation too often. And I ultimately got fired because I couldn't fit into the corporate worlds. Uh, now I work, that's why I worked for myself. But when I left my CEO, when I left, I told my CEO, I go, Jim, you need to stand up and tell everybody, look, everybody, here's where we are. We are no longer threat networks. We are Staples. And here's the vision of where we're fighting with this.

And here's what we're going to do. Now, if you're not on board with that, we totally understand because look, we sold this. You were the founders. Okay. Let's figure out some nice transitions so that y'all can, you know, maybe work four days, look for a job the fifth day, that type of thing. And then if you find one else, you know, give us a month transition, whatever. But if you are on board, shut up because now we're, this is where we're going to go. And I don't want to hear you complaining. Why do so many founders fear, um, telling their teams that we're going for an acquisition and pretending like they're not, or we're going to make, we're going to build this company for an IPO, but no, no, no.

We really want to make sure that we're treating our employee. Like, why are they so afraid to do that? Yeah. I, you know, one of the most common manager leadership dysfunctions I've run into is, um, people in general will shy away from hard conversations. That could be a small thing, like some feedback when you, you know, did the following set of things. It had these bad outcomes. What can we do about that? Like that simple conversation alone is difficult. And so, uh, when you then look at the fact that as you get kind of more and more senior in leadership, all that happens is those conversations get more and more difficult. Like you started with a bad foundation to begin with. And, and there's also, I think sometimes a misconception about what makes employees either happy or comfortable or safe, or at least certain.

And I ran into this myself in an acquisition scenario. Again, I won't, I won't name names, but the situation was, you know, we got bought. Um, my organization was very clear was, you know, I wasn't going to continue working for me. Like they weren't going to give me their engineering organization. Like that wasn't going to happen. I knew what was going to happen. My team was going to transition. You know, my role in the future would be uncertain, but whatever we got bought. That's fine. I don't care. Um, and there was some reluctance to kind of move with certainty about moving my people to a new work structure. Um, I did it in 45 days and people were a little bit freaked out by that. Oh, you're going to freak them out.

We should just go slow. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. The outcome is not what freaks them out. The uncertainty is if you tell people what to expect, they can now make decisions for themselves. Does that mean you might lose some people? Um, you know, some folks might be unhappy. Yeah, of course it does. Uh, but that's going to be a little bit of turbulence that lasts for a much shorter period of time. And now you can just get on with it and manage whatever that outcome was that there's just not, uh, frequently an understanding of some of these foundational aspects of management and leadership. And it, again, it's a common dysfunction. I don't think it's because people are inherently evil, you know, doing Bernsie and fingers, trying to hide things from now hide things from the masses, you know, don't, don't, don't tell everybody.

Um, I'm not so cynical as to think that's the case, but I do think there is frequently just some bad basics around how do you lead and manage people and what gets you the best outcomes. And then sometimes a lack of fortitude to just have a direct conversation. Yeah, it's, it's funny. So I'm, I'm guessing both of you are fans of, or know of Jack Welsh, obviously G E Jack Welsh. So I worked for Jack for a couple of months to get his online MBA program off the ground. And one of the things he he's always been criticized for being so draconian and the top grading and all this other stuff. What was really interesting to me, the way he explained it to me is like, you know, the whole, you got 10% A's and you got 20%, you know, 60% B's and then 70% C's and you're constantly top grading.

You're constantly firing the bottom 10% of your company because that raises up. Everybody took that way too literally. And what he said was what's worse. Okay. What's worse me giving you mediocre, say you're not good at your job. Okay. But I'm afraid to have that conversation with you. Like you just talked about today, right? And so I'm going to give you mediocre performance reviews month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year. And then all of a sudden the economy is bad. So we have to do layoffs and everybody knows that the first people that get laid off are the people that's, you know, are the bottom of the barrel, right? The people that are not good performers. And then they move upstream as much as possible.

And for, for the most part. And so now all of a sudden you come to somebody who's been in a job for a couple of years, getting mediocre performance reviews and say, sorry, we got to let you go. And it's almost like now they have this complex, like, wait a minute, you've been telling me I've been good, like decent, at least for the past couple of years here. Whereas Jack's like, Hey, look, you don't suck in general. You just suck here. Why don't we figure out how we can rip this bandaid off and go help you find something that you're great at, because you're going to be great at something. You're just not a great at this and you'll never be great at this. And why like candor, those types of things.

I, I think everybody, just society has that problem, but I just, I, I think it's always, and when it does come across because we're not used to it, it comes across as harsh. Like there's a big difference between being direct and being rude, right? Yeah, absolutely. How do you be direct without being rude when it comes to that type of feedback? Does it start from like the expectations from the start of when they're hired or, or can you instill that? It's a skill. It's a skill. Uh, uh, we, um, are you familiar with, uh, we talked about, are you familiar with manager tools? Are you familiar with those guys? No, I'm not actually. So, uh, I don't know if it's manager dash tools.com or manager, um, but they've, they actually have a, uh, they have this, um, kind of a, uh, a structure around thinking about a few managerial kind of basics.

Uh, and it has things like one-on-ones feedback coaching, you know, there's like this holy trinity of, of, of things that are foundational and there's 8 billion other podcasts that talk about things of other nuance, but, but some of the foundational stuff, like some of those basic skills, I frequently find we don't, we don't take the time to teach our leaders. Like, and, and so, so I think it really starts with, you know, two things. One, if you, if you do have leaders working for you, caring about professionally developing their skills is a deliberate act. And if you are a leader, a manager, and you have people working for you and nobody's leading you down that path, go seek it. Uh, because you can improve yourself just by seeking some of that knowledge and thinking deliberately about it.

If you find doing some of those things, like giving someone direct feedback just makes, you just find irks your soul. Maybe that's not the thing you're great at to your, uh, and that's okay. That's, there's nothing in the world wrong with that. Uh, but I think it's, it's a lack of foundational skills, um, and a lack of, uh, either seeking it when you should need to find that knowledge for yourself or providing it when you're, when you're, you know, caring for the careers of the leaders in your organization. And discipline, right? It's discipline about doing it on a regular basis, right? Yeah, that's right. Making sure you, you don't miss your one-on-ones, making sure those one-on-ones are substantive and have feedback built in and observations and goals for, for next steps.

And, you know, have people feeling, you're getting that real feedback. So. I agree. You gotta, you have to live it. Like, I, I, like, that's why I brought up like the mission statement. I can't tell you how many times I see that the mission statement thrown up on the wall and then they don't live that mission statement. They don't live that on a daily basis. That's it. Yeah. That I've, uh, I've, everybody's got PTSD. I've seen that, Hey, we're going to build culture and somebody builds a slide deck and you're like that you, Oh my God. Yeah, exactly. It's not colors. It's, it's the thousand things you do in the day, not the slide deck you made. And if the deck doesn't match the things you already do, the thing that's going to win out is the things you do.

That's your culture. People are watching for it, right? They're looking to see, do you, do you act and do you, do you walk the talk? Right. Yep. All the time. No, I think it's great. And, and, and actually, Denise, you know, let's kind of angle that towards sales a little bit, you know, walk, talk in the talk, walk in the walk, you know, from a sales perspective, you've said that you changed the game a little bit, you know, pricing's on the website. It's transparent there. What are some of the other things that, that from a sales culture standpoint, you're doing to, or your team is doing from an interaction with a client, how they sell, and then how you lead that team to, to change the perception of sales and also the results, right?

Cause I think ultimately, if we do this right, the results should actually be a lot better, both short-term and long-term. So what are some of the other areas that, that leaders or sales reps could look to you to say, Hey, here's, here's some things we're doing differently. And this is why they work. Yeah. And, and, you know, it's not rocket science, right? None of this stuff is, it's just about making sure that you're aligned with those principles. So, so if you sit there and say, okay, we are making sure that our customers come first, we're making sure that we're transparent with them in every single conversation. So that means if we have a specific thing in that they're looking for, from a product perspective, we'll tell them, you know, Hey, we don't have that now, but Hey, Hey, here's what we're working on.

And here's our process to get there. Right. We're very transparent about it. We're not doing the, you know, Hey, you can have this in a month and, you know, sign here. Right. We're not, we're not doing that motion. Um, we're, we're trying very hard to be, uh, collaborative and consultative with our customers. Like, let's talk about how do we solve that? Let's not talk about the, you know, the feature of it. We're trying to figure out what's the business value that's associated so that we can really, from the very beginning, start a partnership, not be looked at as a, you know, this is a sales process, right? We're really trying to create long-term customers. So let me ask you, because, you know, this is a chicken in the egg question, right?

I always wonder who lied to who first, like the client to the client, lie to the sales rep first or the client first. And, and so, cause my point is this, I think we have gotten into such a state in sales where there's such a distrust of sales reps and that, you know, because they, they all sound great, you know, kind of like companies, Hey, we're fantastic culture, culture, culture, but you get there. Holy shit. This isn't what I expected. Same thing with sales reps. We promise like, and we're talking small stuff like, Hey, I just want two minutes of your time, you know? And then 30 minutes later, the sales rep's still throwing up all over you or, you know, Oh no, no, no. Like, you know, what, all these little things.

So how do you break through that barrier of trust trust or lack of trust through the sales process? You know, are there specific things that you do to try to break that down outside of your actions? But we all know, and there's one more piece I'll throw into this, which is, you know, unfortunately negative ads win. You know what I mean? In the sense that it's like, what are the pinnacle world? I don't want to get political here. But the reason that all those really horrible negative ads are still going is because unfortunately they work. And so we have competition out there who straight up talk shit all day long about us. And I come across so many sales reps, like, what do I do? I don't, I don't want to talk shit, but it's working.

You know, the client has doubts now of our solution. So A, how do you break through the trust, the lack of trust barrier? And B, how do you deal with all the other negative, bad sales reps out there that are doing those negative things and probably taking business away from us, even though we're trying to do the right thing? Yeah. What a great question, right? Because it's been going this way for so long, right? One company, one sales call, one, whatever is, it's not going to be the Holy grail, right? We just have to stay consistent with it. And, and I don't, so my philosophy is, I don't worry about what the competition is saying. All we can control, right? The control message, all we can control is how we behave, how we act, what we say, how we respect our customers, right?

That's the only thing that I have control over. So to the extent that we are upfront with our customers and telling them this is how we're going to behave. And then we show them that this is how we're going to behave. That's the only thing that we can manage in a day. And we can't manage the fact that, you know, frequently, and unfortunately, this happens a lot, right? In purchasing organizations, especially in an enterprise sort of situation, they're taught to behave a certain way. You know, they're, they've gone through this training that says, you know, Hey, this is how you're going to deal with sales. Right. So we've had to just be really clear and say, look, our pricing is on the website.

We told you this from the very beginning, this is your business. No, we're not going to do that. Cause that's not, that's not building a sustainable business. And, you know, there's deals that we've walked away from because it doesn't match with our philosophy. Now, you know, we try not to make that a regular thing, of course. Um, but ensuring that, you know, we are being true to ourselves, I think it comes through from the customer side, right? We have so many customers that say to us, I've never been dealt with this way. I've never had an initial conversation that sounds like this. Um, so, but I'm trying not to focus on the negative. I'm trying to say, this is how we're going to do it in a better way, right?

These are the things that are part of what we're going to do that. I don't care what everybody else does. This is what we're going to do. I love it. And that leads to, you know, back to you, Dave, from a leadership standpoint as an organization, I mean, I think we're stuck in this world of go, go, go, go, go monthly numbers, hit the, that type of stuff. And that's where that pressure comes from. Cause when people are lack, when we are, you know, sales is the most uneducated profession on the planet, right? It's the default profession. I'm not saying the most uneducated people, I'm saying the most uneducated profession, right? There's still only about 60 or 70 universities in the United States out of the 4,000 that you can actually get a degree in sales in.

So it ultimately is the default profession. And when you are, when you are not educated in your profession, and then you were put this monthly quota on you, you do some unnatural things to get back. Because look, at the end of the day, I love my company and all, but I have to feed my family, my, you know, my wife, my daughter, my bills, that's really important to me. So unfortunately, somebody, a lot of people take a lot of shortcuts to be able to hit those numbers so they can survive. And, but it's all, it's a company culture thing. So how do you balance the drive for growth? Like, Hey, we need to grow here as a business to survive. And, and we're not just doing this to, you know, have everybody kumbaya here, but also to, that, that reinforces positive, uh, actions from the sales team, not negative.

Like I, you know, I discount 50% just to get this deal in at the end of the quarter. How do you enforce that? Or, or what are some of the things you've done from a business standpoint to, to help? Uh, well, there's no magic. Uh, I can think of two, two things. The first I'll go back to talking about culture. So the thousand little things we do in the day are all consistent. Um, and they're consistent around, you know, going back to our mantra, uh, of our job is leadership. Take care of the team. Team takes care of the customer. We're going to be transparent from, from back to front. And, uh, there's a way we want to run this business. And if we can't succeed doing it our way, I don't want to do it.

So, so that's kind of a framework. And there's a thousand things that happened in a day, not just in sales, but throughout the rest of the business reinforce that I'm really not kidding. Uh, another, I'm not, yeah. I tend, I am, I am terrible at bluffing. It's not my thing. I'm no good at it. Um, I lose a lot of poker games. The, uh, uh, all right. I'll say three things. The second thing we did is, um, when we brought Denise on board, um, we, uh, so we were really deliberate in our search. Like we knew, I knew that the person that I wanted to run this team, like wasn't already in my network. Not that I didn't know, you know, some, some great salespeople and some good sales managers. I'm not saying that.

Um, but there's a big difference between that and someone that needs to come be, you know, the, a member of the executive leadership team that needs to, to, to drive what we've built in the rest of the business into the sales team. And I had never worked with a person that I felt had enough of a shared vision in addition to sort of the, the operational capabilities from a sales standpoint to do it. And so we had to look out way past our network to find, you know, a, a broad set, a diverse set of talents so that we knew we were finding the best person. We weren't just drawing from a little pool that we had direct access to. And I, we've actually found somebody, I didn't realize someone like Denise existed.

So that person, so super excited, just so much, so much alignment between how she views sales and how we view our core culture that, that I actually think it is possible to take those thousand things expel dozen a day and have sales walk that same walk. Uh, and then the last, I made up a third item, but I thought, thought of it as we were talking, I think it's important. Um, I think it's really important for sales and the rest of the business to not be sales and the rest of the business. Thank you. And, and I have seen so much of that previously, whether it was sales was ostracized or whether it was a sales driven culture with very sort of boiler room, negative culture stemming in, you know, coming out of the wake sales behaving in ways that frankly aren't compatible with what I want.

Uh, and so, uh, what we've tried to do from the beginning is, is not just get the right sales team on board and the right sales leader, but as we built the rest of the business, make sure that they know, no sales as part of the team. Like we don't, we don't exist as a business. If we don't make the money to continue to exist whose job, it primarily is to bring us in, to build new expel clients as the sales team. So we're trying to build a lot of, uh, yeah, again, a thousand things we do in a day and how we talk about sales, how sales has access to the rest of the organization. Um, because of the kind of sales people we hired initially and now leader to, to drive them forward. Um, they have relationships that are, that are, that are very beneficial as opposed to something that feels toxic and other, but now that now we have to, oh, now we have to do is scale it.

Oh my God. So that's the hard part. Uh, and so that's, that's what we're trying to do. And again, we'll, we'll, we'll see if we're successful, like we're early days here, but if we can't do it this way, I don't really want to do it. Yeah. I'm, I'm there with you, man. To me, it's, I always said, I'd rather lose a deal with integrity than win a deal by lying, cheating, stealing my way there all day long. Um, just, we, you know, there's just too much of that energy going around in lots of different ways. And, um, you know, in little pockets, we need to do something about that. So we're going to take our swing. And I, and so, and I'm going to end with this, uh, question. Cause I, I, I threw this one out there too, cause it was a little while ago.

This was actually before the, the bro culture video that I did, I was really, I was looking, I was thinking about like uber, uber successful people. Right. And my post was, does, do you need to be a complete douche to be like super successful? And I mean that, like, if you think of like all the ridiculously successful people, I mean, the Steve jobs of the world, those types of things, like insanely talented, but that guy was an asshole. You know what I mean? Like Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. He's a nice big philanthropist right now, but that guy's straight up stepped on people to get to where he was like his best friend. He slit his best friend's throat to get to where he was. And I just, you brought up Richard Branson.

He's like one of the Richard Branson. And I think, um, you know, Mark Benioff are two people that I look at that, you know, they probably did some, you know, some things, not so good things to get to where they are, but ultimately the positive way outweigh the negative on them. But it just depresses me to look at such super successful people. And I, and I wanted to just get both of your perspectives on this to say, you know, when, when society looks at success, I think we all have our definitions of success, right? But when society looks at success and they see somebody like X person in a certain role that I won't talk about right now, but whatever, or in a corporation that is like, does, do we have, who, who can we look at to, to be at that level of success that gives us hope that what you're doing right now, it's, it's the right thing to do.

Do you want to go for it? Go for it. This is a hard question. I, uh, I guess I, I guess I have to start with the definition of the word success and I got a metric crap ton of money. It's not really my, my evaluation of that. Um, and nor is it my aspiration. Now I didn't just say money is not great. Sorry. It's it, it, it is, it is an amazing thing to be able to care for your family, to not have certain stresses. Like it, it, it's, if I said it's not important, I'm, I'm, I'm lying. I'm, I'm, I'm a product of a capitalist society and I've had a lot of advantages given to me and I've gotten the chance to take advantage of those. And I'm extremely thankful. Um, I, I just, um, it's not worth it to me though, to, to go down, you know, to add a whole bunch of zeros to the end of the net worth, to go kind of off in a direction where I can't look at myself in the morning.

I can't look at my wife and my kids and I can't, you know, be proud of what I did. Um, and so I think we have to take a look at what that definition of, of, of success is, um, in, in, in, in, then maybe changing the pattern of, of people. We, we, we look to that, that can be our heroes as opposed to a whole bunch of extra zeros. Can I look for, um, people involved in the community, people that are successful and they're successful financially, but a lot of their motivations are motivations about changing lives and, and, and having, having some cause beyond just sort of business of the moment. Um, so maybe it's less the, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the Benny Hoffs and Bransons, which, you know, I don't know enough about their backgrounds to, you know, some headlines that I would agree are positive and maybe there's negative there as well, but is there, can we look a little bit harder, uh, for perhaps less headline gaining folks to find better examples in, in patterns or things that maybe people can emulate or would be, you know, good stories or role models, but that means we need to do the work we got to do.

We have to go look. We can't just eat the headline out of the, you know, off of a, off of Twitter or out of our newsfeed. Like we've got to be more actively involved in trying to find the things that are good because there's so many things that are projected at us that are bad. Stop there. Cause I'll start to preach. And then we could go on for a whole nother day. Uh, Denise, any thoughts on that? Uh, you know, the, I think what you're looking for, right. Is there somebody that, you know, you haven't thought of, right. That we can point to that says is doing these things in the right way. And I think what you're hearing from us is it's hard to find those people. Right. Um, they, the, I'm sure they're out there.

Um, they're not, but they're not getting their recognition like some of the other scenarios that you pointed out. Right. Um, and, and I do think it's upon us and where we are in society right now to be pointing out more of those positive scenarios. Right. Um, I tend to look at like you, right. I look at myself every morning and say, you know, Hey, does this pass my own personal integrity meter? Right. What would my kids say if they heard me say this? Um, and I've always asked my teams, Hey, is this, you know, does this, is this integrity, right? If integrity is a part of what we're all about, does this pass that integrity meter that you have? Does it, does it, is it team first? Is it, are we dealing with our customers?

Right. Like, let's ask those found those principles and say, what are these all about? But it's hard to, you know, I'm going to have to think about that. I may have to come back to you on that, John, see if there's something that comes to mind. I think you, so you hit on, I mean, I think we hit on a couple of things that's wraps us all up, which is, I think the first thing that we need to do as individuals is look at what are our guiding principles, if you will, or what are, what are the things that we see as, as critical to our success, whatever that definition is, right. And then based on what our morals and ethics and values are, go look for those type of success and related to those. Now, obviously some people consider success making shit loads of money.

So fine, you know, Grant Cardone's of the world type of shit, which would make me want to throw up, but okay. You know what I mean? But I really do agree with you, Denise, that says there's so many people out there. You know, one of my frustrations of that post as well was when I said, I feel like the, the, the Grant Cardone thing was a, was a tipping point for me because I had seen the bro culture starting to rear its ugly head again. And, but ultimately I actually don't think it's worse than it used to be. I actually do think it's better, but the problem right now with social is that the loudest voice gets the attention. And usually the loudest voice is the most obnoxious voice. And that's, what's getting the, Oh, check it out.

Stacks of cash, stacks of cash, as opposed to the company that's doing it the right way. And just doesn't feel like going out there and telling me, look at how awesome we are. You know what I mean? So I think about defining your values, looking for those values and then living them is a way that hopefully we can kind of rise all tides here. Right. So we can all try to level up a little bit and try to make a difference. So. That's what we're doing. Cool. Well, look, this has been an awesome guide. You know, we could have this conversation for another five hours, I think it's interesting. And it's, but I also think it's important. I really want people out there to realize, you know, who are listening to this, that you can build a company, um, based on real morals, real ethics, and, and still be successful and not have to be the go, go, go all the time, stuff it down their throat, specifically from a sales perspective, there's a better way of doing this.

So I appreciate it. We certainly think so. We certainly think so. Thank you, John. Thanks. And just, uh, just to throw it out there, like where can people, I know you're looking for fantastic people to come on board. So where can people find out more about Excel? Um, and, and what you're up to, uh, yeah. So, uh, company website is www.expel.io. So that's probably the best place to start. You'll find us, uh, on social media, uh, you know, all the usual places, but, you know, just start at the website. You can dig through, see a little bit about what we're about job postings, blog posts, how we're marketing and talking to our customers. Uh, and if you're interested, reach, reach out. Awesome. Well, thank you again for taking the time.

I know it's early over in, in Texas. Where are you again? You're in, uh, right now we're in Dallas. Dallas. Fantastic. Well, enjoy the rest of the day. And thank you so much. And, uh, everybody else make it a great day. Go try to make a difference for somebody. Make somebody smile today. All right, let's make it happen. Thanks. All right. Thanks, John. Bye. Bye. Bye.