Alex Buckles: Becoming a Problem Solver Through Partner Relationships

One thing that I also hear is partnership teams complaining about budget. I personally feel like it's a bunch of whining. You know what actually works? I don't care who you are and what organization you're in. If you show up to that meeting with close one deals, you have the entire room's attention. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's conversation is with Alex Buckles. He's the CEO of Forecastable. He's also a Marine Corvette, 19 years in sales, primarily in enterprise sales.

He's got two exits under his belt and he's been building Forecastable since five or six years at least at this point. And he's got some fun stories to tell. He's also the founder of Pathways for Autism, which I think is extremely important. And if you stay to the end of this podcast, there's some information that you can help out. People with autism and such an incredible cause. But this conversation was driven by, I saw him at Inbound recently. And if you've been paying attention, I've been talking a lot about how sales reps need to start really getting back to what sales is all about, which is being problem solvers. And one of the ways to do that is, you know, when you're talking to a client, you're not always trying to sell them on your solution.

You need to become a problem solver. And sometimes, quite frankly, that problem that the client has isn't something that you can solve. But if you develop a partner ecosystem, you can bring value to almost any engagement. And this is actually what Alex does. He's operationalized this in a lot of ways. And so it was easy conversation because we're both exactly in the same spot as far as our thought process around quality over quantity, playing the long game, but also driving short term revenue and relationships. So we talked about, you know, his idea of building a partner moat, which is finding all the partners that are relevant to your ICP and your personas and developing relationships with them so you can bring them in and also get referred by them.

Talked a lot about slowing down to speed up. And he's got two plays. One is an account development play. And then the other is a standard partner development play that he walks through in detail and helps clients work with, but also you can do yourself. So this is one of those things where this is the new direction that sales is going. Uh, well, new, old, I guess what's new is old again. What's old is new again, whatever that is. And, and this is one of those things I think if you want to stay in this profession and become valuable and create a moat around yourself, so it's not always about just cold calling and that type of thing, you need to pay attention to this one. So hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

Well, let's make it happen. Alex Buggles, welcome to make it up Monday podcast, my friend. How you doing? I'm doing excellent. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. It was good to see you at inbound the other, it was a couple of weeks ago now. Yeah. Back when I don't think you could say it was inbound at the time. Oh yeah, exactly. That was funny. I was getting paid sponsored to do Dreamforce and there was like a moratorium. I'm like, I couldn't promote competitors for like two weeks based on them sponsoring me. So I, I had to keep saying, I'm going to another conference in Boston, uh, for another CRM company, but I just couldn't say their name. So yes, that was funny. But, uh, Alex, you know, how long, when did we first connect?

I was trying to figure that out. That was probably four or five years ago. I mean, we started for gospel seven years ago. And so we connected pretty early on in the journey when I was focused on just the sales organization, you know, uh, and then we hadn't kind of made the pivot yet into partnerships. That was back then. Yeah. And it's been, I mean, yeah, I was going to say it was definitely before COVID. I just didn't know how far before COVID, uh, and shit, a lot has changed since then, my friend, a lot. Oh, without a doubt. The whole world has changed. Uh, probably feels like a couple of times over. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, COVID was one shift and then the beginning of 2023 was a whole another shift.

And I think it's for the right, as painful as it has been for me and for a lot of people, I think it was for all the right reasons. Right. And we're going to get into that as far as quality over quantity and relationships. And, you know, for those of you listening, you know, we're going to get into this, this angle of partnerships and be becoming problem solvers. But before we get there, uh, Alex, uh, let's go back. I always love asking the origin stories here. So talk to us about kind of where'd you come from, right? Growing up parents, like where'd you catch the bug to be an entrepreneur, those types of things. I always love listening and kind of where the sales bug come from and all that stuff.

So give us a little color on where Alex has come from. Sure. Um, so I've, I was born in Newport, Rhode Island. Uh, I moved here when I was nine years old into Orlando, Florida. Uh, I've been in Florida since, uh, since 1993. Um, in terms of the sales bug, I always just kind of grew up as like, uh, you know, I could go down the street and sell popcorn to the neighbors. I always, always did well on those things, you know, and I would tell the neighbors, look, Hey, my mom's have another baby. I'd use anything to go to go like make a conversation, have things happen. And then, uh, ended up, you know, a nine 11 happened and I joined the Marine Corps like less than a year after nine 11. Um, you know, was stationed in Japan and then South Carolina didn't, I got lucky.

Didn't end up going anywhere, anywhere dangerous. And, you know, a bunch of my buddies did. And then when I got out, I didn't know what the heck I needed to, you know, what I, what I wanted to do is 2005. Um, you know, and so I didn't have a degree and, and, uh, I went and got a job at Radio Shack. If you remember what that is. Oh, I do. Yes, I do. I got a job at Radio Shack in the mall. And, uh, and, and there was when they started selling cell phones there, like a sprint next to all that stuff. And I got, I, I would make the most commission selling cell phones. And so I did nothing. I don't want to sell gadgets or trinkets or anything like that. I was like, you want to buy a cell phone? You need one.

And you need a backup. I got the plan for you. And so anyway, so I got the bug there. I realized I was good at that. Got a job at Sprint. And then, uh, uh, in around 2007, um, I, I ended up starting working for my father. I had no idea what he did at the time, but, um, I never paid attention to it really. And he was, uh, he had a lifestyle business. He ran a software company. He was a CEO of his own software company for 20 years. He sold it about right as COVID started. And, um, and so I started out as a junior, like very first job in professional world was enterprise sales rep, you know, 36 K base, 5% commission. And here's the list go. There you go. Love it, man. Um, let me ask you on the, on the, um, the military stuff.

Do you have military in your family or was, it was nine 11, just a trigger for you that you said, I got to get involved here. No, there's not a lot of military in my family. There's something like my grandparents side in world war two. Um, but I w I actually went to an all boys military high school and high school. Um, so I kind of, um, you know, good at good and bad reasons for sure. Um, my parents will probably tell you one heck of a story as to why I went there, but, um, but anyway, so I went to, I was, it was a wonderful education. Uh, and I just fell in love with it when I was there and I ended up getting a full four year army scholarship to the Citadel and they only select two of those scholarship recipients every year.

And I got, I got one of those and then, um, decided I want to be a Marine and decided that, you know, after going to the Citadels, you know, I'm going to listen to the Marine Corps. I'll be a better officer. Uh, if I live the enlisted life first, my dad didn't even want to see me after that, for giving up that scholarship. And then I got in the Marine Corps, I realized I didn't like listening to other people. And so I was like, man, isn't a good fit. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close to cover all aspects of the sales process.

It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. I was going to say like the reason I asked is like entrepreneurship and military are somewhat conflicting in a lot of ways because it's like you are literally being told what to do. And I do not have that book.

Like I, I can't fit, I can't even fit into corporate man. Like somebody telling me what to do is if you, I've, I've done this exercise of going through core values and everything and freedom is literally on the outside of family. Freedom is the top of the list. And when I say freedom, I'm like, I just want to do whatever the fuck I want to do. And I don't like having people tell me what to do now. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind taking direction. I don't mind taking advice or, or feedback as long as I think it's valid, but you telling me what to do is, is just anti everything. So a lot of that entrepreneurship versus military, I'm kind of curious that you kind of realize I'm very aligned in that regard, but see, the thing is I didn't realize that until later on in life.

And so I get in certain roles and I'd, I'd kill it. I always go in and just put, I'd give it my all everywhere I go. But then I'd eventually hit a point where somebody wants me to do something that's really illogical. And I'm like, that's stupid. Why, why would I do that? And then the second you ask why it's like, well, no, because I said, so that doesn't fly with me. I don't, I don't like that. No, it flies as a parent. Like, I think we should get back to that as parents for like kids. Like, cause that, I think that is a totally valid thing these days. Like, because I can said, so like, shut up. I'm the parent. Like you're a five-year-old kid, eat your beans or whatever. But as an adult, the do what I say, just cause I said, so, uh, you are very aligned on that too.

Parenthood is like, no, do as I say. My job is like, I love you. And my job is to prepare you for this world and the world is not going to be nice to you. And so you need to, I'm preparing you. That's part of why you're doing what I'm saying a little bit. Uh, one more before we dive into the topic today, what's the, talk to me about the autism advocate. Uh, where'd that come from? So, um, my, so I have three children, two girls and a boy, uh, ages 12, 13 and 15. Uh, my youngest Adam 12, he's 12. And, uh, so he was diagnosed with autism when he was two years old. And I realized pretty early on, like, I didn't know what it was at the time. And, and I knew that, that it was becoming a lot more common.

And I kind of made the assumption that like, Oh, sure. There are programs out there. I'm sure there's like, when he graduates high school, he's, there's going to be a path into the workforce in some fashion. And there really isn't. Um, and, and so I just made that my life's purpose and said, like, after, you know, when we're done with forecastable, like I'm trying to get out of here and everywhere else I'm at as early as humanly possible. So I can go the rest of my life focused on this because you never know life short. Like I could go and get cancer and die in six months. And if I don't finish the things that I want to go finish, it's like, what's the point? Love that, man. Nah, well, here's to expediting that process, my friend.

And, uh, if there's, uh, if there's stuff that myself or my audience can help with on that regard, just, uh, feel free to at the end here, point us in the right direction. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right, man. So let's get into this. Cause, cause we connected it in balance and, you know, I've been preaching this for a while now, again, you know, going back to the fall of SAS and in early 2023, you know, COVID was actually a blip on the map for SAS and it just exploded. And then we just continued with this grow at all costs, you know, throw money at problems and, and let's just, who cares? And we were able to get away with it. Um, and then 2023 hit. And I think it all came crashing down and, you know, shame on me.

I, I, I didn't, I'm not an economist, but I'm also not stupid. I didn't realize how interest rates really impact everything. You know what I mean? Like I figured out my mortgage, Oh, who gives a shit, you know? Okay. I can't refinance. But then when I realized that the VC industry basically came crumbling down and all the investments stopped, it was like, Holy shit. And again, I think it's for all the right reasons, right? It is like, we got way over our skis and, and, and we, we got really lazy. And now I think it's coming back to quality over quantity in a, in a lot of ways. And one of those ways is, you know, how do we generate revenue now? How do we get introductions? And even though I train cold calling, I train outbound prospecting, I know it's fucking, it's, it's, I don't want to say it's, it's useless because it isn't.

I think it's, it's more of a marketing function at this point in the sense that it's a touch point, right? And it's, and it's, I think it's extremely important, right? But it's not the days of like cold calling somebody, somebody picks up the phone and you get a deal going. Relationships are everything. Almost all business that I have coming in these days is based on either somebody who knows me or relationship or referral that I got. So I've been telling reps to stop, stop being sales reps and start really for going back to what sales is, which is being problem solvers. And sometimes, unfortunately, the problem that the client has is not something you can fix. But if you start to surround yourself with other sales reps who sell other things that are complimentary to what you do, then you can actually bring them into the equation and help the client out while building your relationships.

And that givers gain mentality tends to come back around. So that's what I've been really just encouraging reps to do by themselves. You know, I've got a, I just read it right out of there, if you don't mind for a second, like right out of the gate. That's it. That's something I used to do organically. So I didn't, I wasn't like trained on co-sell or anything like that, like going on as a younger enterprise, when I got into the SAP ecosystem, which ended up being like my first like real enterprise role, I realized, and I was working for a small services company. I realized that the SAP reps weren't going to care about me, you know, unless, you know, unless I was helping them retire quota. Right.

And so that's how I started falling into the, into the, into that world. But then, you know, to your point, it's like, I couldn't always fix a problem. So then I landed in the, in Marketo, Marketo land. I was working for Marketo Enterprise AE. We had just been acquired by Vista, you know, and before this, before the Adobe acquisition. And so there was a product out there when I was a marketer, I used a product that was called Knack and they've, they've since raised capital. They're trying to do a bigger company. Now it was a tiny little company and it made it really easy for me to like build my email designs. And when I would get into deals with, with companies early stage, I'm doing discovery, trying to qualify this thing.

I'd run into people that are like, oh man, I just, I don't know if we have the, I hear Marketo's got these design challenges. We don't have design chops. And I would, even if I didn't have any skin in the game, at that time, or it was an existing customer, I didn't have a cyclone at that time. I would say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, you should go check out Knack. It'll probably add value to your life. Even though I got nothing out of it, by doing that here and there, when it did come my time to sell something, or it did come time to say, I got something for you, they like wanted to buy it from me. Yeah. That's, and I think that's what the challenge I have in the swag, I'm as bad as painful as it's been.

I'm glad we're where we are because in the short term, like, you know, gratification world, that doesn't work. You know what I mean? It's like, I got to hit my monthly number. I got to hit my target. So I want to talk, you know, a little bit later about the management component of this and how, you know, slowing down to speed up is something I think is really important for us to think through right now, because it is that kind of what goes around comes around mentality. And I found in my career, the more I do to help in the short term without my benefit, the bigger my long-term gets. Yes. Right? Because all that stuff, because I did the same thing as you. I never got trained on this stuff, but when I was selling IT services, we would get into relationships or clients would be asking us like, Hey, do you know any accountants?

Do you want any lawyers? And I was part of, I don't know if you're familiar with a BNI business networking international. No, no. So BNI is probably one of the best, um, the intro to networking groups that you get. Every town has one. And what it is, it's a small group of people. They all meet, you know, once a week at like seven o'clock in the morning, some office downtown, and there's only one vendor per, um, like there's no competitors basically. Right? So if there's only one lawyer, there's only one accountant, there's only one insurance guy and whatever. And what you do is you stand up and you say, Hey everybody, you know, I'm John Barrows, give you my little 30 second pitch. And I have some referrals for Alex, Alex, this client needs what you have, blah, blah, blah.

And it wasn't just like, Oh, you should call them. It's no, they were expecting your call. And that was almost like the ecosystem that I had. So anytime I was talking to a client, you know, and we'd just get into conversations and they'd be like, Oh, well, you know, whatever this, that, and the other. Oh, well, you know what? You should probably talk to so-and-so and you should talk to so-and-so. And so I created this, what I called the small business resource guide, which was all these vendors that I knew and I had relationships with. And then I started to proactively meet with them. And it would just became to your point. If I didn't help them in the short term, nine times out of 10, when they needed what I had, it wasn't a bidding situation.

They would come directly to me and say, John, now we need what you have. Let's talk. So, cause the trust was there. So how do we foster that? I guess, long, long setup here for this question. How do we foster that in this environment specifically? Like in the SDR, BDR, AE environment, where reps are only in territory for six months to 12, six to 12 months and relationships are kind of transactional in a lot of ways, mainly because of the model that we're in, not necessarily because of the desire. Can we fix this? Yes. So one talking, let's start out with that analogy that you gave, which I think is, is actually completely applicable to B2B. So in thinking about like that BNI and the local networks, you got one doctor or one lawyer, one account, whatever, whatever that is.

And really what you're building in that environment is you're building your own partner moat almost. And if you have all of these friendlies around you that are, you know, and they're, and they're on your side, they know you're referring them stuff. You're looking out for their interests and they're referring you stuff. And you've got that wonderful relationship. Anytime there's a prospect point of entry into any of their pipelines, you know, that you probably going to get a shot at that business at some point. And by building that partner moat and attending those meetings and building those relationships, not only will you fill that top of funnel with a bunch of, with a bunch of activity because you've got all these friendlies, but you're also going to protect yourself on the bottom too.

Why? One, because now let's say your competitor comes into the mix and they try to network their way into your little circle. It's like, nope, sorry, buddy. You can get the hell out. John's in here. And, and he's, he's the one that we go to for this stuff. And so that partner moat is, can be built in the B2B world. And it's what we, it's what we talk about in practice. So like, as an example, you know, let's talk, even like we can talk about CRM, you know, technology providers, it's like, or, or, or service providers. If I, let's say, I am a, let's say I'm serving a niche market and I'm specializing in, let's call it credit unions. And I've got the best credit union store in the entire HubSpot or Salesforce ecosystem.

And I'm a services provider. And I know that when I install these three technologies and do and sprinkle in my magic sauce, that credit unions have wonderful results. Right. And so as part of that, I need to go figure out who needs to be in my moat to guarantee my position in this market, to ensure that my top of funnel is filled and that any new entrants were trying to like, they're trying to sling this credit union story. They're not going to get anywhere because they're going to try to go to my partners and they're going to tell them to pound sand. And like that, that's why I, in a lot of what I teach, I started focusing on, it's not about growth at all costs anymore. Yes. We all want revenue.

Yes. We all want leads. Yes. We want all these things. But at the end of the day, as a CEO, I, what keeps, allows me to sleep at night is market position certainty. If I wake up every morning and I know, even if I don't have to be number one, if I'm number three and I know I'm keeping number four at bay and I'm chipping away at number two, right? Um, then I'm happy camper. Like I can sleep at night. The revenue follows when you've got market position certainty, but to guarantee it, you've got to have that competitive moat in market with friendlies that are, that are looking out for your best interests. So how does that relate to talk to me about competition? Because obviously there's like one-to-one direct competitors, right?

Where it's like, you know, HubSpot and Salesforce, right? It is what it is. Like we're going head to head. I got no love for you. I'm going to slit your throat. If I can, I'm going to build my moat around you. But like with what I do, I don't really consider, I don't have too many competitors. I'm my competitor. Like I play the infinite game and I know where I'm great and I know where I'm not. And where I'm great, I win the majority of the time. Where I'm not, I tend to refer to all of my competitors. So what do you think about like, how do you look at competition in this, in this ecosystem? There. So it depends. So if you're like in your situation, you're doing the right things. It's like, I think when you've got a lot of potential competitors, then the, then the focus is to get as niche as possible.

How can I get really focused? Like you said, I'm good at a few very specific things. I can do a lot of things, but I'm really, really good at this. I do about anybody else. Like that's where you want to focus on. And so same thing, that's the same messaging. I, when I'm talking to a professional services organization in any, in any ecosystem, whether it's Salesforce or HubSpot or Adobe, it doesn't matter. It's like, okay, yeah, there are a lot of services partners in HubSpot that can go implement HubSpot and do these things. But like, where are you truly unique and double down on that? And, and you can't just be broad and ambiguous in general anymore. Yeah. I think that's the, the, the, the flaw that most sales reps have.

And I think right now to, to much to the dismay of, I think many organizations, I keep pushing these sales reps to, you know, I wrote a blog called sell to the 20%, which is my fundamental belief that, you know, pick any product or service you own. I guarantee you only use about 10 to 20% of the functionality, whatever that thing is. And your job as a sales rep is to like, look, if, if everybody else can do it, don't talk about it, right? If it's table stakes, it's table stakes, who cares? What's the part that's most unique about your solution that aligns with their priority and go all in on that. And if you can hit a home run there back off and give some, and tell somebody else to like, be like, you know what?

We're great here. We're average here. This company over there is great at it. And I know how painful that is, but regardless of the short-term revenue, you might be able to gain from closing that deal for, you know, however you want to use whatever techniques, if you do average work these days, it, it stands out like a sore thumb, right? Like if you're not hitting a home run across the board, renewals, aren't going to happen. Reviews, reviews are going to be bad, everything. So how do you, how do you coach organizations leadership to swallow that pill and realize that your whole suite of services is not what's going to differentiate you? This is what differentiates you. And, and tell your reps to stop selling all this shit and really just focus on what makes us great.

Um, I would say, I mean, the results are really what motivates leadership the most. Like when I, when I first started getting into this and I started talking about partnerships, like it was, um, I started, you know, I started running into sales leaders who were coming, coming, just coming out of the growth at all costs, you know, my growth at all costs, like phase of their lives. And they're so used to instant gratification. Yeah. I can just put like more money in the machine and like other, we're going to get more leads. You can't do that anymore. And then when I talk partnerships, it was almost like I had this like, you know, instant stigma of, uh, yeah, I don't have time to wait for that to happen.

Like if it's not happening this month, this quarter, I don't care. And so like, for me as a business, like that I've had to overcome lots of hurdles over seven years to figure out, you know, where, where we are today. But, um, for me as a business, like it was getting, like it was getting partnerships down to the point where they could get those results in 60 to 90 days to give them a little bit of that satisfaction. And there are ways in like, when we can guarantee that pipeline in certain scenarios, we have an underwriting process for that stuff. Um, and so in some cases you can do that, but in other cases you simply can't, like if you don't have prior wins and you don't have a success story, like we're not going to blow smoke.

It's like, look, we got to go figure that out first. I can't put a timetable on that. Cause I don't know your value story, how long it's going to take to go figure that out. But one thing that is like, I also hear as partnership teams complaining about budget all the time. I don't have budget. My, my leadership doesn't understand the value of partnership. I can't convince my CRO to care about me. And I personally feel like it's a bunch of whining. It's like, Hey, you know what actually works? I don't care who you are and what organization you're in and what role you're in. If you show up to that meeting with close one deals, you have the entire room's attention. Do that. Start there. Yeah. And, and again, it doesn't, you don't have to put a lot of money behind that type of thing.

You just have to find the right people in those other organizations that have this. And it doesn't have to be a partner manager, quite frankly. Like I tell reps, like figure out who your ICP is, figure out your persona that you sell to. And then who are the five vendors that, that touch that persona in that ICP that compliment what you do. And then literally go find the top company in each one of those categories, G2, whatever, call them up and literally say, Hey, uh, can I talk to your best sales rep, please? Like, I just want to talk to your best sales rep. Well, why? Cause I'm best sales rep over here. I want to talk to your best sales rep over there and be like, Hey, Alex, look, here's the deal.

Um, I need like five minutes of your time. Look, I, I work with a lot of companies that you and I are, you know, I've heard you before and dah, dah, dah. And a lot of clients might ask me for what, you know, stuff that you do. And I just need something in my backpack so I can offer him a solution. If I can't give it to him. I was wondering maybe if a, you'd be open to it. B, if also you'd be open to maybe once a month, we just get together and whether it's in person or over the phone and just shoot the shit about what you're seeing out there in the marketplace, what I'm seeing out in the marketplace. And if I get any leads for you, I'll send them your way. And if you happen to come across anybody that fit my, let's do that.

Right. That takes zero budget, zero dollars and nothing but a phone call and a little bit of, you know, uh, searching for the right person to have that relationship with. Right. That, that is exactly it. I mean, that that's how it works. I mean, that's how I started doing this manually. When I first got into the SAP ecosystem that I talked about before, um, you know, at the beginning of the year, I'd go, you know, I'd have my list of SAP reps that I've got relationships with and I'd, I'd get, you know, everybody would do their normal account, you know, shuffle. And I'd immediately instantly call, Hey, did you get your account list this year? Mind sending me your account list. Let me see who I know and what accounts, things like that.

Hey, we're both covering Coca-Cola. You want to compare notes and let's see who, you know, like, you know, I'll tell you what I've got going on. And that's how, you know, how I used to do it just as an individual contributor. Um, and I say like, what you, what you said is like to, you know, to another point that you brought up is like, you don't necessarily need a partner manager. I didn't have one. Um, and in fact, when I did have them, I rarely worked through them because I got more done just by calling other reps than I did by working through my partner manager. And that's the thing. It's like, I think we, one of the things that I get frustrated with right now is, and look, I think you and I are both cut from the same cloth in the sense of the ask for forgiveness over permission that, and there's just so many reps right now that are just waiting for permission to do something or to be told to do something in order to do it.

And, and I don't quite frankly know how to get them out of that mentality. Cause I think if we look at like the distribution of talent, right, the 10% is always going to be the 10%, like the top 10, they're going to do this shit regardless because it's just innate. They, they understand it. There's the 30% that are never going to do shit. And then there's the 60% that are kind of in the middle waiting, like wanting to do better, but waiting to be told to do better. So how do you break the mindset of, of that waiting to be told what to do? Is it, is it kind of, and I don't want to say this, like, but the rock bottom scenario where they have to basically miss quota and be struggling really hard to realize that they need to do something different.

Or is there a way that, that, you know, we can wake people up a little bit to get creative and take it upon themselves to start doing stuff like this? Um, so they don't have to hit rock bottom, you know, or, you know, if you do are hitting rock bottom, like it's the, you know, it's not too late. It can be in some situations. It may be too late for you. If you're hitting rock bottom, depending on your specific situation. Um, but you can recover at a rock bottom if you're there. Um, in general, like how do you jumpstart this, you know, stopping asking for permission is it's a mindset shift. It's really, it's like at the end of the day, like when I wanted to, uh, let's say I'm with a small services company and I want to co-sell with a bunch of Adobe reps.

And there were 40 enterprise reps that I know have a bunch of accounts that I want to go serve and traditional like rules, you know, standard operating procedures says contact your partner manager at Adobe and tell them that you have these accounts and these customers, and they'll go do the right mappings and they'll get the right sales teams lined up. And then maybe 45 days later, I'm going to get the, oh, I forgot about that. Or, uh, we, we didn't, Johnny doesn't really want to talk to you. He says he's already busy with a couple of deals over here and you're not really going to add any value. And so I just, I got tired of waiting on that. Like my year, my number, my commission check, like my family, what I want to accomplish in my life, isn't going to wait on somebody else for one, period.

Um, and, and two. So then I'm like, well, how do I go around them and do it tactfully? And so then I started thinking, well, if I'm that rep on the other side, it's about me putting myself in other rep shoes. So if I'm that rep on the other side, like at what point would I actually care if Alex buckles called and said, Hey, I got something for you here. And so, and so for me, it's like, I stopped that permission. I'm no longer going to go through partner managers. And I started getting really focused on if I got in touch with this rep, what am I going to do to add about, what am I going to give that rep to add value to their lives? So they think to themselves, man, that Alex guy is really leaning in helping my accounts.

Maybe I should recommend their services company in these, in these couple of customers I have to kind of reciprocate. And if you happen to get a win or make something great for them, then you've earned the right to ask for instead of just hoping that they're going to reciprocate. And I think that reciprocity factor, right? I think there's reciprocity, natural reciprocity where you're doing things because it's the right thing to do. And then there's doing things because you're expecting something back. And I think that's also kind of the evolution, if you will, of people, I think getting into this. It's like when they give, that's why I loved BNI because their whole philosophy was giver's game.

And the whole idea was the more you give, the more you're going to get back, but you shouldn't expect it, right? I think if you come from a sense of, I'm trying to service my customer, period, right? I'm trying to help the client solve problems, period. And if I bring somebody in, that's the benefit to the customer, not necessarily the benefit to me. And if that partner ever refers me a piece of business, I'll be excited, but I don't expect it. The idea is to your point to build a moat and add as much value as you possibly can to the relationship. And I know, again, it's hard because we're all metric driven, monthly, daily, weekly, whatever. But man, I have example after example after example of things that I did a shitload of networking and helping people out early in my career.

And then later on in my career, when I was in deep shit and I needed help, I could tap into that and be like, hey, you know, I need some help here. And every one of them wouldn't even blink. You know, yep, John, what do you need? Sure. Here you go. Let me help you. Oh, you need referrals? Let me call five people I know that probably need what you have, right? So I'm worried that we're in this world of transactional stuff and also this virtual worlds that we're losing the relationships. And I'm trying to figure out how to get them back. How to get back to A, giving a shit, B, having real relationships that aren't just transactional and my expectations of you. So, you know, frameworks, you have a couple of different approaches here where you talk about kind of playbooks, if you will, right?

Where it's the standard partner development play and then the account development playbook. And I'm wondering in those playbooks, is there a framework to use to slow down a little bit and focus on what matters? And if you could walk us through those, they'd be great. Sure. Um, so focusing on, let's start out with, um, let's start out with the account development play and then we'll go into partner development because the account development play is more sales focused and more something that an individual seller could take on even on their own and start running with like right out of the gate without reopening a single playbook, just listening to this conversation. Um, so, uh, I ran the account of, I was working for a professional services company in the Adobe ecosystem.

And we, when we decided to, to double down on that relationship, and I wanted, um, more referrals from those reps, I decided to run the account development and I, and I was, this is a small company. You don't need a big team. We didn't have a partner manager. We were, you know, 45 employees. We had one, uh, frontline manager at our organization who was a player coach and we had two sales reps. So really small sales team. And we, like I said, over 40 different enterprise account executives at Adobe with whom we needed to co-sol I wanted business from. And what I knew that they wanted to do, what I, you know, what I, capitalized on, especially having come from there is like, you know, reps always want the easy button.

At the end of the day, if somebody comes to me and says, you know, if somebody comes to me and say, Hey, I did a bunch of account development work and I, and I, I did a bunch of research on your top 10 accounts and I've got to lay down a silver platter. Would you like to have a conversation about various points of entry? What idiot would say no to that? Right. So, so I, so I told my reps, I'm like, Hey, we're going to go build this process and I'm going to go, we're going to go to these reps and we're going to ask them for the top 10 accounts. I said, I don't care if you haven't broke. You have no relationships. You got no traction. The ones that you're banking on for year, year, those are the ones I want to hear.

Those are the names I want to hear. Cause those are the ones that reps care about anyway, right? They've already in their mindset, man, I really want to close that. And so they give me that list. And step two is we built a process for doing all the account research on them. I told my team, I was like, we're going to be better at developing accounts and selling then all of these reps over here. And we're going to do their jobs for them if we have to. And so for every rep, I went ahead and hired an offshore team. I'm talking next to nothing in terms of resources to get this done. Had an offshore team. I had them doing all the account research, following a process that I developed. We built visual org charts of the different buying committees that we thought were involved in the different stakeholders and took notes on each.

And then I told the reps that book one hour meetings with each of the reps from these teams. And I want you to just simply go through the stuff we did. Now, before we even close the single net one, every single rep took the meetings, uh, two, when the second, their managers and second line leadership found out that they had a partner that was leaning into this fashion, guess what? Now leadership was like, Hey, why isn't everybody working with this company right now? So that was a benefit. And then three, uh, before we even close a single net new deal, I had a bunch of referrals from install base from their customers saying, Hey, Alex, uh, I got like two accounts right here that have all kinds of pain.

Can you help them? Absolutely. Because I leaned in, in a way that no other partner was leaning in to helping them develop accounts. And if you can do that for your partners and help them develop accounts, like that's a way to get the attention of a sales rep 10 times out of 10 all day. And actually now with AI, it is so much easier. It is. I mean, it's, it's almost, it's almost insultingly easy now to build account plans. I mean, all you got to do is have like sales navigator for crying out loud and take the, you know, because the amount of, the amount of reps that actually go through that for their own territories is like, I don't know, 5%, 10% that actually build out org charts, buying committees, understand where the white space is like, you know, that type of stuff.

They, they just kind of go in, they get their champion, they start to develop relationships, but they don't document it. They don't map it out. They don't have any strategic plan to it. And now with basically like two clicks of a button in sales nav, you can build out a full blown org chart, influencers, connections, all that, and then just print it out and put it in a nice little pretty presentation. And there you go. I know I would, I would take that phone call. You know what I mean? If somebody came to me and said, Hey John, I know you're working or used to work with Salesforce. Like here's how I've mapped their whole strategy out. And here's from Betty off down. And here's the buying centers.

And these people have moved. I was wondering if you, you know, grab a call with me to, we can talk this through and see how we can help each other out, dude, I'd be on that call in a second. Yeah. And then that's part of what the realization as I pivoted into our business, into a services business, like we run that play for people now. It's like, Hey, go tell you what, like, do you really want to train all of your reps on how to do this account research? And they're really expensive to begin with. So why would you want them doing that? Um, and so we'll go run the place, like, give me a true 200 account target list, which partners you want involved in the deal. We'll do all the research and we'll even schedule the meetings with our sales assistants.

So your reps literally just show up and talk about accounts and that's it. Yeah. I, I mean, if you're a rep's not going to take that meeting, I don't know what, what meeting they would take quite frankly. Um, so that that's the account developments. And then you get the standard partnered. Is it the standard part? Yeah. And so the part of development play is actually the same exact thing. As we think about it, we, you know, from an account development perspective, I'm looking at a net new prospective target account, uh, visualizing the buying committee and all that stuff. And I'm coming up with, you know, a plan for how I'm going to engage that committee, which stakeholders am I going to get in touch with who do I need to like introduce to get executive alignment in place?

And you kind of plan all your strategy around that visual, uh, when it comes to developing partners, it's really the same exact thing. And that's what we do as part of the service. Now it's like, I'll go in, let's say, you know, you're selling with Salesforce and you really want the attention of the enterprise financial services sales team. And, and that organization, let's say has got one frontline manager and a reps. We've visualized that org. And part of our best practices is, and again, I'll tell you exactly how we do this. Cause anybody can do this without, you don't need us. You don't need anything else. Like the best practices, even if you already know that frontline manager and you have an existing relationship, get a discovery call.

Step one, get a discovery call with a frontline manager overseeing that sales team. And you want to ask very specific questions. Like of course, make it around what it is that you do. But in general, it's like, well, what's, what's, you know, what are your targets for the year? Is what's keeping your team from hitting your numbers? Do you have any reps that are struggling with ramp? Do you have any reps that are on plan? Uh, are there certain deals where you lose all the time? And that gives you angst when a certain competitor enters the mix, like get a feel for the pains that that frontline manager is going through every single day. Keep it to 30 minutes, go back to your homework. And you tell that, that manager, you say, look, I've got a bunch of different plays we can run with your team.

And we solve a lot of these different things. So I'm going to go back and do my homework. I'm going to put together exactly how we do this, reach your team members. And then you think I can get on one of your team calls coming up where I can get, 30, 30, 45 minutes. And I can kind of tell them exactly how to leverage us to overcome these pains. And guess what? They nine times out of 10, they're like, yeah, I'm happy to do that. Do you want me to run that by you? So you can see it before I present to your team nine times out of 10, they say, no, it's just like, no, no, no, man. They don't want to waste their time. They're like, you know what you're talking about. I'm sure you're going to give a good presentation.

Now your job is then to go back and build a deck that is not full of fluff and BS. And, uh, nobody cares about how many office locations you have. Uh, nobody cares about how many accolades and all this good stuff. That's all credibility stuff. Like they're assuming that you're coming to them and you've already got customers. Now, like you can deliver what you say you're going to deliver. But at the end of the day, when you get to that team, team presentation, most people celebrate like, yeah, that was what I wanted to get to. I wanted to go present to that Salesforce team. No, the, that is not the time to celebrate where the whole purpose of that presentation is to drive one-to-one engagement with that, those team members, the individual contributors after that meeting on an ongoing basis for as long as you possibly can drive as much the upload as possible.

How do you do that? That is a lot of operation. There's a lot of, you know, that, you know, it's, it's really simple. It's like we can hire an offshore resource to do it, do lots of follow-ups, but it's about intentional process. Um, and that's how you went. I think it, you know, to your point, the easier you can make this for them, the, the, the more it's going to happen. So for instance, when I would network with people or even like, let's just take the very basic thing that most reps don't do, which is ask for referrals. Like referral selling is literally, uh, I even say it on a cold call, like seriously, like what is the harm? Like say I cold call you, Alex, and we get into a decent conversation and you're like, you know what?

Look, I appreciate what you're saying here, John. We're just not in the position to do this. Or maybe call me back in six months. Hey Alex, no problem, man. You happen to know anybody else that might need this, that I could maybe give a call to and use your name. Like just something simple as that. Right. But to be going to your point of being more intentional, a lot of times people meet, you know, at events or they, they network and that type of stuff. And they'll say, Oh yeah, let me go back and see who I know. And you see who, you know, and we'll maybe make some intros and it never happens. What I used to do is literally, I would get my top 25 list of accounts. Like here, here are the exact companies that I'm trying to get into.

And so anytime somebody would say, Hey, you know, Oh yeah, make some referrals. And no, no, no, I don't want referrals. I want, do you know anybody on this list? And I would have a one page or two of who my exact ideal customer profile was and the questions to ask to uncover whether I might be a fit. Right. So I would be a one pager that I would hand to every partner and be like, look, here's the deal. Here's the top 25 clients that I'm trying to get into. If you know anybody there, I'd love an intro. If not, here's the profile of the exact type of companies that, and if it falls outside this, don't send them to me, but these are the ones. And if you just maybe ask one or two of these questions would open the door for it.

And then I can take it from there. And I would just make, I would literally make it like that easy for them. Even asking for referrals when I know that you were connected to somebody. So this is just sales one-on-one stuff, but Hey, Alex, I see you're selling to blah, blah, blah. I've been doing some research on them and I noticed they're doing some really interesting things. And I'd love the introduction because right. Give a reason. Don't just be lazy and say, Alex, could you make the intro for me? And almost like ghost write the email. So all you have to do is forward it. Right. So getting to the point of, of making it easy, right. Uh, of the relationship of the partnership, I think a lot of people would say to both of us here, well, John, that sounds great.

I still got to make my 50 dials today. I still got to, you know, like, I still got to hit my numbers, man. That all well and good. What do you say to that kid who thinks they're too quote busy and don't have enough, you know, time to invest in the longterm here? I would say it's not even an investment in the longterm. Like it is a short-term investment. Like, uh, and it's just that you don't know, you don't know what you don't know today. And until you see it done in real accounts, like you're not going to believe me. And, and, and so like, you just have, you just have to see it done. You have to kind of see the results. And so, um, there's a couple of ways like to go about like kind of getting started on this.

I wrote down a couple of things as you were talking there, like one, like if you want to one tackle thing anybody can do today is, you know, you, you see, like you take John's approach and say, look, I'm going to find the five companies that I know are serving my ICP or serving the accounts that I'm going after on a regular basis. And you want to see like, you know, what, what customers do they have today already? You know, that maybe already be on my account list or what open opportunities are they in right now where maybe I can help them win their deal or our story together can, can, you know, make magic happen. And how do you find that out without calling, you know, about calling your partner manager or making a million calls into their sales.

And so for those that don't have it today, there's a platform out there called cross beam. You may already have it running internally. It's free. Uh, and if you're not, you know, just ask somebody internally, if they, if you guys already have cross beam installed and hooked up to CRM, and that's one way, if it's already hooked into CRM, you can just start seeing, you know, in, in your partners who has open opportunities around your ICP. So for those already running that, I recommend asking internally for that and just like pulling the data and check it against your account list. You might find gold in there and be like, Holy crap. I had no idea that partner a has six open opportunities with accounts on my list.

Like that could change your world or change your year. Absolutely. And then on the account centric approach, like you mentioned talking about, you know, Hey, I've got 25 accounts and this is what I did. Like, and then that's how I view the world. Like my, I view the world through named account lists. Like these are the accounts I want to close. I don't make any money for closing account number 26. I make for these 25 right here. And, and yes, you can go through and talk to partners and things like that. But one additional item that we brought to the service is the professional network data. And so I can go to LinkedIn sales navigator and which I love, I've used it for a long time. And I can go to LinkedIn sales navigator and see like, let's see, I might go look at somebody like, I've got 120 common connections.

Where do I even start with that? I don't, I don't know half the people I'm connected to anymore as it is. And so we started bringing in, uh, we leverage a platform called Tom sore and where they started bringing relationship strength into the mix, which was a new for me. So now when I look at the 120 people, I can see that, Oh, John has a very strong relationship strength with this person. How do I know that? Well, because John hooked up his email inbox and we know that they communicate on a weekly basis and they meet twice a week. And now I don't see the details of that, but I know that that strength is really strong. So that gives you a kind of another layer deeper. And so I think for any rabbits on the line, like little economical solutions like that, you can dig into your, you know, your network data a lot.

Dude, I've been preaching about that strength of connection. I'm like, cause I'm on the LinkedIn insider group and I've been just been begging them. I'm like, could you please show me strength of connection? And all I'm looking for are a, you know, have we in mailed back and forth? You don't even have to connect to my email. Okay. Like that'd be great. But a, have we in mailed back and forth and B, have they engaged at all with any of my content? Right? Because I'm, you know, and I, this sounds like a humble brag. It sucks, but you know, like I'm at 400,000 followers and 30,000 connections. I don't know fucking anybody. You know what I mean? Like I, I feel stupid when people reach out. Hey John, I see you weren't connected to so-and-so.

I'm like, I'm sorry. A, I probably don't know you. And B, I definitely don't know the person that you're reaching out to well enough to put my name on you. So like if I could, cause I'd rather have out of those 400,000, I'd rather have a hundred thousand and like, you know, 5,000 connections that were actually meaningful and engaged so that when you reached out to me, you could see, Hey John, looks like you're a 90%er with Alex. So it looks like you guys actually have a pretty, or at least Alex knows you really well. Cause he's been engaging with your content for a while here. You know, would you mind making an intro? And then I can be like, yeah, as a matter of fact, I can't, but that strength of connection, I think is the biggest barrier on LinkedIn.

And so this, the tool that you're talking about, what was it called again? It's called ComSor, C-O-M-M-S-O-R. They raised 65 million a couple of years ago. They're like poised to do it. Like they, they have the capital to go do it. Um, and, uh, and I just enjoy it. So like when I first started using their tech, like you, I just wanted to stop like the intros, like the intro request. And so the first thing I did is I took out, it sucks in all your LinkedIn network. And so I took it and I immediately built a will take call list. These are all the people that I know, whether it's close relationship or not, that would pick up the phone and take a call from me. If I call anybody that asked for me an intro to anybody outside of the list, it's like an instant.

I don't know them. Sorry. If they will take a call, then it's like, how well do I know you? And then I decide. Yeah. I think that's the lazy again. So here's another rant on my, you know, LinkedIn, what, what I'm concerned with, or what frustrates, I'll say this, what frustrates me is, you know, I was member, let's see, 36,541 on LinkedIn, like super early adopter. Right. But even before LinkedIn came out, I was, I went to the events. I was at almost every networking event every night. I was at groups and all this stuff. So I knew what it was like to build relationships. I also knew what it was like, where if I met you in person and I shook your hand and I immediately started to pitch you on my product, I could literally feel and watch your body language just be like, ah, okay, how, how fast can I get out of this conversation?

So I was, I was smacked with, oh, I can't just jump into selling. I have to develop a relationship here. So when LinkedIn came out, it was really natural for me to develop relationships and use it the way I think it should be used. Now, most kids jump right into sales. They don't go through the face-to-face networking at all. They, and they jump right into LinkedIn. And so they see it as a sales tool. And I vehemently, I like fundamentally disagree with people who think that LinkedIn is a sales tool. It's a relationship tool. It's a, it's a branding tool. It's an education tool, but it's not a direct selling tool. But yet I get a million emails from sales reps. Hey, John, you want to buy my shit?

You haven't earned that right yet. Or John, could you make the introduction? I don't know what the fuck you are. Like, how do you have the balls to ask me for an intro to a CEO of a company when you and I, when you connected with me three years ago and maybe was maybe in one of my trainings eight years ago? Like, I don't know you, you think I'm going to put my name on you? My, my relation, my brand, my personal relationship. You think I'm going to put that on? You could be an ax murderer for all I know. You know what I mean? Like shit. So is that, is that just going to get worse because of the direction that we're headed? Or do you think we can center back on relationships mattering? I think we can center back on it.

And so as I started playing with new tooling around, like, you know, taking advantage of the network, I started asking them like, okay, so what's the deal here? Like, are you guys going to get into like the automated intro business again? And like, we're going to try to jump back to automation. And I hope the answer is hell no, no, like we need, everybody needs to get back to relevance still actually matters. Even when you're going into a warm introduction, you're asking for the intro, why should that person intro you? And why should their contact actually care that, that this intro is being made? And so do the research, ask for warm intros from people you actually know. And, and you're in great shape.

Oh man, I think, I mean, you and I are in violent agreement on a lot of this stuff and I'm hoping that, you know, there's still enough people out there that give a shit enough to, to not try to skip too many steps here. And, and also again, you know, management's and, and I'm going to start with the venture capitalists, you know what I mean? Back the fuck off. Let us grow in a way that that's meaningful, that, that means long-term relationships that lets these helps, let these reps develop the way that they should and stop trying to skip to the end here. Cause it's just feels like everybody's trying to skip to the end game here. And, and we've become so transactional in our relationships and it's starting to really show it in sales and results and society and everything.

And so, you know, appreciate this conversation, man. I hope, I hope more than a few people listen to it and start to kind of make that conscious shift to, to quality over quantity, which we need to get back to. So. Likewise. Thanks for having me. Of course. Anything else you want to leave with the audience? Well, first of all, tell us where they can find out more information about what you're doing right now and drop the autism thing where we can help out on that. And then any other way to connect with you on this? Sure. So on the, on the partnership side, if you want to go access your network and taking more advantage of, of your professional network to get those warm intros, we run a managed services that help sales teams drive more leads from partners.

So you don't have to learn a bunch of new things and train out a bunch of stuff. We get right into the weeds. And if you have prior success, we can guarantee pipeline at 60 to 90. Um, on the, on the autism side, um, you know, I would recommend anybody that's here in sales that needs a new LinkedIn headshot. We get all of our funding, uh, a hundred percent. If you go to rapid shots.com, you can get a new LinkedIn AI headshots for $49. Um, we get great results in a hundred percent of the profits goes to pathways for autism, which is my organization. That's what we use to fund all of our initiatives. Love it. So pathways. And is that the website pathways for autism? Pathways for autism.org. Autism.org.

And then rapid shots.com rapid shots.com. Awesome. All right, my friend, uh, it's been awesome catching up with you and talking through this, man. And hopefully, like I said, more people listen to this and, and start to take this approach and, uh, hopefully we can, you know, make a little bit of a difference here in relationships these days. So thanks again for coming on board, man. I appreciate it. Likewise. Enjoy your week. Absolutely. And everybody else, uh, like I always say at the end, all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, make somebody smile. You know, you had a good day in the world. And there's a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day, just like you go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today.

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