Zoltan Vardy: The Brutal Truth About Tech Founders and Sales

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Today's conversation is with Zoltan Vardy. He is a B2B sales advisor, author, and speaker who helps tech founders grow revenue by sharpening their focus and building scalable sales structures. Based in London, he's closed $2 billion in sales over 30 years as a C-suite executive and entrepreneur and has helped 200 startups and more in 26 countries close high ticket deals using the launch code, his founder-led sales framework, and recently published book, which is what we dove into. So for you founders out there or you want to be founders out there, this is the one to listen to. I mean, I've talked a lot about this stuff that we discussed and he reinforced it and gave me some new perspective on a few things.

So grew up in Pittsburgh, has a Hungarian background with parents. That was a pretty interesting trek to get to business for him, as always with his origin story that we talk about. And then just dove right into why founders, especially technically driven founders, look at sales as a necessary evil, or they ignore it and try to do it without it. And why I'm just baffled that there's so much information and data out there at this point. And so many examples of how companies fail, not because of product market fit, but because they can't sell it. And yet still we see it over and over and over again. So we dove into that, talked about how if you are a founder and you're not absolutely passionate about solving a problem, do not start a company because entrepreneurship, however you want to frame that, is a brutal road.

And a lot of people think it's sexy. It is not. And if you are not massively passionate about what you are doing, you are going to get out real jobs. So then talk about his problem solution connection, right? How most founders talk about, oh, I can do everything for everybody. And you really got to get super tight on your ideal customer profile, really understand the problem you're solving. And, you know, talk about like, what problem do you solve? Who has that problem? And what is your competitive differentiation, which is hard to come by these days. So we unpack that a little bit. And then, you know, when founders try to figure out like when they have the aha moment where it's like, hmm, maybe I should stop pitching my shit and listen to the client.

And sales actually matters here. And then my favorite topic of just being a problem solver. How do you do that? How do you make that mental shift from being sales, sales, sales to, no, I'm actually trying to solve a problem here. So with all that, hopefully you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Zoltan Vardy, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing great, John. Doing great. All right, cool. Looking forward to having a conversation right before we were touching base on this. We realized that, you know, you're over in London and you're facing a little bit of the same woes as I am here in Boston as far as weather is concerned here in the spring, right?

Starting to wear on you a bit. Yeah, it is. I mean, May was not a great month for weather across Europe. And certainly, you know, UK is not known very well for its great weather in the first place, but it was particularly bad. But the sun is shining now. People are out on the park, so all is good. I was saying, like, we're going on 15 weekends in a row or 14 weekends in a row of rain. So a lot of times it's the middle. And of course, it's gorgeous in the middle of the week. Yeah. So I've gotten to the point where I just take my, like, if it's really nice out, I just take my laptop. I go outside. So I'm doing all my meetings outside and people are like, wow, you're learning a nice little outside.

I go, look, here's the deal. If I don't stay outside here now, I'm never going to see the sun. So yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Take advantage. We're going to take, so, you know, we just talked a little bit about the self-published book that you put together here, which has some really cool stuff in it that we're going to dive into with the launch code. But before we get that, I always love to hear origin story, man. Yours is pretty interesting. You come from a, I was doing a little bit of research here, Hungarian parents and born in Pittsburgh, live in London. And I'm curious about that and the impact that it's had on your mentality, your career, and a lot of your choices too, related to sales and business and entrepreneurship or leadership, those types of things.

So walk us through some of the stuff we can't read on LinkedIn. Okay. Well, I think it's safe to say that very little of my childhood predestined me to become a global sales leader, close $2 billion worth of deals. You know, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as you mentioned, in the 70s, 80s with a funny ethnic name, which was not fun at the time, although it's been a point of difference for me now, which is nice. And yeah, I grew up in an academic household. My parents were professors, but my dad was a quite accomplished historian. My mom was a novelist and a literary professor. So, you know, our conversations around the dinner table were about politics and culture and history, nothing to do with commercial thinking or business.

In fact, you know, one of my favorite stories is, you know, when I was a kid and inevitably you'd get cold calls from various people trying to sell you something in the States. And my mother would pick up the phone and put on this fake British accent and pretend to be the maid and say, you know, the Vardy family and move to Europe. So never to call back again. And so, and then she kind of put it down and she put the phone down and start cracking up. So, you know, that was kind of the environment that, uh, that I was raised in, uh, for better or for worse. And, um, yeah, basically I, you know, I started my career as a journalist, uh, tapped into my love of television to move into the commercial side of the business.

And, you know, essentially started, uh, building my career in sales, first selling ads on Cartoon Network in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia and Poland, Hungary, some of these emerging markets in the early nineties. And then I, you know, kind of grew into a, you know, typical corporate ladder, you know, raised, uh, my, my stakes and grew into more and more senior roles until basically about 10 years ago when I, uh, kind of retired from my last corporate job where I was SVP of global ad sales for NBC Universal's international TV division, overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for 30 countries and 50 channels around the world. So very, very, uh, you know, global role. And it was there that I kind of decided I had enough of the corporate environment.

I want to do something interesting. And one thing I didn't mention is that over the course of that kind of 20 years of building my career, I kind of had a couple of off ramps. So back in the late nineties in the.com era, I raised some money and launched my own.com and sold it. Um, also, um, there took a bit of a break and started investing as an angel investor from early stage businesses. So I kind of had a bit of an entrepreneurial bent, um, much, uh, different than a lot of the people I worked with. And so I was kind of sitting there mid 2016 thinking what's next. And I just started volunteering in these accelerated programs and started working with some early stage founders. And yeah, I met these really, really passionate people who love their products and were over in the moon in terms of the features and stuff they were selling, but they literally did not have any idea of how they're going to actually make money from this.

Right. So, um, I just started sharing the insights and, and, and tools and the strategies I'd basically picked up along the way. And much to my surprise, they were like, wow, that's pretty awesome. You know, you can actually create a value proposition that people understand, or, you know, there is such a thing as an ideal customer and, you know, on and on and on. And, and what I ended up doing is I just like one day I thought, you know, I got to put together something that captures this, this insight, this stuff that I can share with founders who, who basically are not very comfortable with sales. And that's what basically I did. And ultimately turned into what I call the launch code, which has gone through various iterations.

And as you mentioned in the introduction is most recently a book, um, that kind of captures all the experience I've had working with over 200 founders from 26 different countries. 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 that 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. Why in today's world? Cause I mean, I think you and I both live in this world of sales and we grew up in it and we, I mean, ICP is of course, and personas, of course, and messaging and succinct. And, you know, I think you and I, I don't know if you do, but I've always said, you know, I've actually, I think I read it in part of your thing where rarely does a company fail because product market fit, the product's not good enough, whatever. It almost always fails because of sales.

They can't sell it. So why do you think with, with so much of that out there in a content that it's still this, holy shit, wait a minute, ICP per like, wow. You like, why is the engineer mindset, the founder mindset on the engineering side, so blind to sales? Is it because of the perception and the disdain for it that we have as a culture or is it something fundamentally different? Yeah, look, I think that, you know, there is that kind of caricature, right, of the used car salesman who's trying to kind of force some, you know, elderly couple to buy a clunker they don't need, right? So that is in kind of the culture that, that, you know, exists out there and we both grew up in it. So, so I think there's an, there, there's a certain aversion to that, but I think it's also true because, you know, a lot of founders just believe that, you know, you know, sales is not necessary for them to build a business because their business is, their product is so awesome.

Their features are so great that it's going to sell itself. And, you know, one of the fundamental things that I always talk about when I engage with founders is, you know, nothing happens until somebody sells something, right? Peter Drucker said this, you know, that, that, that process of actually going out, talking to customers, putting your product in their hands, getting feedback, iterating your product so it meets a problem that customers have and they're willing to pay you to solve it. That process is what ultimately leads to product market fit and is enabling you to build not a hobby, but a business, right? And so I think there's a natural aversion to that, that what I call the pain of sales, right?

That like that iterative process where you go through and you hear rejection and you hear know a lot, but I just don't think you can build a business without it. Right. It's just, you know, and, and the great thing is, and by the way, this is what I always say is, and the good news is you can learn how to be good at sales, right? It's not like you're, you know, I didn't come out of the womb and I'm sure you didn't either, you know, with a clear, you know, closing system and a discovery call, you know, protocol, right? I mean, you, you kind of learn the process trial and error. And the same way that I did, you hopefully meet a couple of good mentors along the way and you can ultimately actually be pretty good at it.

And I think that's the challenge I see. I, you know, I wrote a post or I think it was an article a while back called the founder's dilemma. And, and effectively what it is, is it's usually engineering founders or technical founders who come up with a product or solution, whatever it is. And because I, you know, I always think that, that sales is, somebody told me this early in my career, that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, right? Like if you believe in what you're selling, it's about transferring that enthusiasm over somebody else. And so you have these founders who have created something that they are passionate about, right? Cause they, they, they fixed a problem. They did a thing and they, right.

So now they're passionate about that product. Then they usually go out and reach out to friends, families, and fools, like their, their first ecosystem. Yeah. And, and, and for feedback and almost inevitably the feed, unless the product is dog shit, inevitably the feedback is pretty good because not only is it probably solving a solution and they're a friendly audience, but the founder is describing it super passionately like, oh, this, and he's, he or she is transferring that enthusiasm to that person. And so inevitably those people are gonna be like, wow, positive feedback. You might even get a couple of customers. And then the founder is like, oh man, sales is literally, and I've heard this from multiple founders, sales is easy.

Everybody, like the, my first technical, like when I was doing it services, I knew nothing about it services. And I brought my CTO with me. He was a friend of mine and he legitimately said coming out of a meeting with me, oh dude, I don't know why sales is so hard. Everybody needs this. And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Right. I'm like, literally, do you have any idea what it took to get this meeting? And do you have any idea what it's going to take to close this fucking thing? So they, they get this idea and then they're like, oh, oh, let, let me just hire a VP of sales. Right. And that VP of sales comes in with no structure. Nope. Not the same amount of passion, not nearly as much, you know, knowledge of the product and service.

And they inevitably fail miserably. And then the engineer is like, oh yeah, I knew sales was fucking brutal. You know what? Let's go marketing. Let me, I'm going to try to marketing and you know, that might get them to a certain point and then it levels off and like, shit, I got to do sales again. And it's like, I don't understand why there's example after example, after example of this. And yet we, I still see it over and over and over again. I mean, you, you unpack some really interesting things there. You know, the first thing I, I, I recognized is what I call the, I know a guy approach to selling, right? Which is basically, Hey, I know this guy that works at this company. I'm sure he'll buy what we're selling.

Or, you know, my uncle used to work for this guy and you know, we'll go in there. Right. So you kind of go through the, I know a guy phase where, where, you know, by some miracle, you might actually get a couple of customers. They're most likely not the people you want to sell to. Your network is obviously not scalable, right? Cause there's a certain limit to how many people, you know. And so I think that sends people down the wrong path, right? Exactly what you said. But another point I think you unpack, which is, which I talk about a lot about with the founders is that, you know, there's currently a culture out there of the 20 something guy with the orange Lamborghini and the model girlfriend promoting, you know, the, you know, the hack that's going to get you a hundred K a month of recurring revenue just by sleeping, you know, four, you know, 12 hours a day.

And, you know, and that's kind of the mentality, right? It's like, I want this today. And, and what I really talk about in my work with founders is you better be working on a problem that you are fricking passionate about solving because first of all, you know, what you're seeing on Instagram, that's not real life, right? That's not how life works. You know, in the same way that some people hit the lottery, you know, I guess some people get the orange Lamborghini, but you know, you can't, that's not a strategy. And the second is you have to understand that the process of building a business and selling is going to be so hard. You're gonna have to go through so many rejections and so many things.

If you're not passionate about solving a problem, you're just going to give up. I've got a great example of this. I do these pitch competitions. I'm a judge often in these startup competitions. And this one kid got out there and, and he says, well, you know, what I'm building is an app that is, you know, you can kind of point it at a tree and it'll tell you the health of the tree. Um, I guess through some sort of algorithm, right? And I'm thinking to myself, God, who the hell came up with this idea of looking at a tree and putting it, you know, I guess the camera on it and determining the health of it. And then he kind of goes on and said, you know, there are, you know, a typical mid-sized city has hundreds of thousands of trees that are looked after by municipal governments.

Right. And what happens is literally every year, thousands of trees are unnecessarily cut down at an incredible cost damage to the environment because they're misdiagnosed and they don't know, you know, what the nature of that, the status of that tree is. So he literally had found the solution to a problem I didn't even know existed, but he was like passionate about it. And I haven't checked in with them lately, but this guy literally has built a business on the back of this. And I'm thinking to myself, what a crazy idea. And here's this kid who's like saying, you know, this is a real problem. Here's a solution. I'm going to build a business on the back of it. And I have tremendous respect for people like that because it means to me they're, they're doing it for the right reasons and success and money and all the, you know, the, the trappings of, of success come as a result of, of the process.

Right. You don't do it to get rich. You do something and that makes you rich. Right. And that's a big difference. I was going to ask you that what you're, what you're, cause you brought it up with like the founders who want to build something and then sell it. Right. So, and I always cringe when I hear, oh, we're going to, you know, in two years, we're going to sell to Salesforce or in two years. And I'm like, are you fucking crazy? Like, do you, do you realize the likelihood of that happening? I mean, unless you legit know Mark Benioff and you're part of the Salesforce, you know, venture fund who's investing in you, then your chances go up a little bit, a little, yeah. But why, so I guess what's that balance, right?

Cause I think a lot of us, you know, hopefully a vast majority of people start businesses because they see a problem because they see something that they, they're passionate about fixing. But quite frankly, and especially with a lot of the founders you probably worked with, like, I know a lot of them who are like, nope, I'm starting this to sell it. Yeah. Yeah. What's your philosophy on that? Look, it's clear, you know, I guess there's two paths you take, right? So if you're bootstrapping it, basically you're generating the revenue to, uh, to invest back into the business and to grow it that way, that's a very different path. And that most likely will lead to, you know, kind of building a lifestyle business or kind of a long-term sustainable business, which is a perfectly legitimate way to build a business.

Right. The other, uh, direction is when you go out and you've raised VC funding, you know, earlier than later at different rounds, you know, pre-seed, seed, series A, series B, and so on. Um, that in itself already commits you to an exit at some stage because the investors are putting money in to get a return. The, the disconnect for me is, um, it's not a decision either or, right? So you can start building it your own and then bring in money if you want to expand more quickly, but the bigger thing is even the folks that are raising money think that sometimes they can do this and turn it around and flip it in a couple of years. The average length of that exit process is at least 10 years, literally the average, right?

So if you're starting a business, that should be the timeline that you've got in your head in order to actually exit in a, in a meaningful way. And, you know, funnily enough, by the time you exit, I think a lot of founders are kind of, you know, they're, they're so into the whole process that, you know, most of them sell it and they start something else. Right. So it's very few of them get in a position where like, okay, I've done my thing. I'm going to retire. They just want to do it, you know, because it's part of the fun, right. Of building something. And I think if they last that long too, right. Yeah, exactly. If you, if you get through that pain of starting and grinding through a business and then you start to kind of get those calluses, if you will, you know, some people get out fast.

Cause like, whoop, nope, nah, I thought I was an entrepreneur and apparently not, you know, this is not for me, just like sales. Like I thought I was in sales and nope, that ain't for me. But I think once you do it, it's like, okay, cool. I can do this again. Right. And, and quite frankly, if you have a good exit, you can now have a lot more flexibility to invest in it the way that you want to and correct some of the mistakes that you made earlier. Yeah. There's this great graphic I saw once in social media. I'm not sure who did it, but it's, it's, it's called the emotional. It's called the emotional journey of building something great. Have you seen this? No, it's basically this dip, right?

So I'm showing it to you. Like you start, you start in the upper left-hand corner and it's like, this is the greatest idea I've ever come up with. Right. That's like your starting point. And then you're like going down the path. You're like, oh, this is a little bit harder than I expected. Oh, wow. I have no idea what I'm doing. And then you reach the bottom and that's called the dark swamp of despair. Right. And, and that's when you're at the point where you're like, I can't believe I'm doing this. And, and there's this little rickety bridge that goes across the swamp and, um, and I label that persistence, right? That's like the little, the little rickety bridge that you kind of walk through.

And then, you know, you're, you're sitting there like about to fall off and you go back and so on. And you, and that's basically what you go through over and over again until one day you were able to get across the bridge. And then you start, you know, going to the other side and it ends up with, this is the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. Right. That's the actual reality of building a business. Right. And, and, um, you know, it's funny having spent 20 years really hardcore in the corporate world. You know, I think one 10th of 1% of people in my past life understand that. Um, and, and, you know, the other remaining 99.99% think that it's just having the right business card and, you know, uh, benefiting from the joys of corporate life.

Exactly. Now, so when you're working with founders, how can you tell, like, say that, you know, technical founders doing their thing, they went through and they're like, how can you tell that they, what are the indicators for you that they're pushing through kind of the sales side of the house in a productive way and, and trying to figure it out versus necessary evil. I got to get through this. And I just, it's almost like an SDR waiting to be an AD. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I just have to do this one thing before I go to the next stage. Like, okay, when can I get rid of this? Like, what are the indicators of, of, of founders that you work with that are on the positive versus the negative side of that?

Yeah. Look, I think it all comes down to their belief and their ability to create a, what I call a problem solution connection, right? Like, like that's to me, the foundational stuff, like have they discovered a problem and can they articulate that problem in a way that then they can create a direct connection to whatever technology solution they're offering. And to me, that means you have to do three things. First, you have to decide what problem you solve, right? And one of the typical situations I find myself in is, is people saying, well, this, you know, this technology is good for this. It's good for that. It's good for this. Like I had a company I worked with that had created the streaming technology.

You know, they started, you know, the streaming technology and they started using it to broadcast. I think it was like, you know, home health tips during the COVID and then they pivoted to doing, um, uh, I think online shopping in Asia and then they went into a third and a fourth, right? So it was like, it was like a product looking for a problem. Right. Uh, and so, so that's, that's the first thing is can you articulate a very clear problem? The second is, can you identify who has that problem and who it is that you want to sell that serious solution to? And, um, you know, my favorite quote is the man who, uh, who chases two rabbits, cash is neither, right? You got to decide which rabbit you're going to capture.

And that means you have to identify really clear, um, target audience of buyers who is going to consider your solution, the perfect solution to their particular problem. Not one of many different solutions to many different problems. And the third bit is how do you define your competitive advantage, right? Like, what is it that makes you different from every other option out there? You know, typical, typical pushback is, oh, well, you know, our technology is so unique and special. There's no competition. Well, the reality is it's probably not true, but even if that is true, technically speaking, you're competing against people's laziness or unwillingness to change. You're competing against old solutions to old problems.

You know, people used to do math problems before somebody expect, you know, uh, created a spreadsheet, right? So, you know, that, that is existing out there and you really have to create that, that competitive advantage, which is going to be either, you know, some very, very unique benefit you offer or more likely the process that you use in order to arrive at the solution, that unique special sauce that you do. Cause I was, I was going to say, is there anything unique anymore? Quite frankly. I mean, I, I, in general, I love it when I would coach people and be like, oh, our founders or leaders in this, I'm like, all right, what's your differentiator? And they're like, oh, our people are a difference.

I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? That's when you put on like a wall in a conference room, right? Well, and, and, but on the, and like, what do you think that your competitors are doing in front of your clients? Are you, are they going to your clients being, look, our product is incredible. Oh, it's so good. But man, whoof, our people suck. Like I, we got a little bit of a challenge with our people over here. I know that company XYZ over there has great people, but man, their technology isn't nearly as good as ours. I mean, like what there is no, to me, it, to your point, to a certain degree, I, and I know technical founders don't like listening to this, but to me, it has almost nothing to do with what you do.

I mean, at this point, if you don't show up to the table with, with what your product says it can do, like table stakes at this point, right? Yeah. So it's not what you sell, it's how you sell. Oh, absolutely. And how do you articulate the value of what you're selling? Right. That's so critical. Um, you know, it's so typical, um, is, is when you're, you see the whole communication, the messaging is all about these features. This is what we do. We've got this money, this technology. It's all me, me, me, me, me. Right. And I always tell these founders I work with is nobody cares who you are until they first understand what problem you're going to solve for them. And if you can't articulate that problem, make a connection to whatever you're selling, then you're never going to get past the point where they're going to listen.

Once you've done that, then you can talk about how great you are and how, you know, the logos you've worked with and the testimonials, because then they want to know, okay, do I believe this person is going to deliver the solution they're saying? But until you get to that point, you got to focus on the problem and the solution. And that's what I spend a lot of my time doing is like helping founders identify that and articulate that in an easy way and easy to understand way. I'm guessing my hunch here is that you say it until you're blue in the face to some of these founders, but they, and they're nod their head. Oh yeah, yeah. No, I understand. I have to listen to the client. I have to be problem centric.

And then they get into the meeting. They're like, look at how awesome we are. We've spent this year. Then we found this. Is there a moment that you usually see with, with startups or founders where it's like the, Ooh, okay. Die. Get it now. And the reason I ask is because I went through this process when I was a, when I was a kid in sales, it was, I vividly remember walking out of a meet cause you know, my hour long meeting, you know, somebody told me early in my career, two ears, one mouth, make sure you ask more questions, let them talk. So like, like I legitimately ask 35 minutes worth of questions in a 60 minute meeting to make sure that you spoke longer than me. And quite frankly, it didn't matter what I said, what you said in those 35 minutes, you were getting my pitch after it.

And I would literally turn into a robot. Like we were founded in June of 2000 with three, you know, and I would go through this whole thing. And I remember walking out of a meeting with an engineer and I was so proud of myself for crushing that meeting. I was like, Oh, I nailed that. Right. And these words came out of my mouth. Literally. I said, Oh man, that dude didn't even know what to do with the information I put in front of them. And an engineer, my engineer, non-salesperson, like even he was like, wait, what did you just say? And, and literally the look on his face when he turned to me and had that confused look, like it's seared into my brain of like, Oh my God. I'm like, what did I just say?

Like, he didn't even know what to do with the information I put in front. I'm like, what the fuck? So I, that was like, literally that was the day I threw my pitch deck away. I was like, I am never using a PowerPoint presentation ever again in sales. So is there, do you see those moments? Is there a forcing function for them to get it or do they get it through the process you bring them through? Well, since I don't really sit in the meetings with my clients, I don't have a direct, you know, insight into what they're doing. What I'll sometimes do is they get there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but, but I do, but I do sometimes have them record. Obviously we live in this digital world now where they will record the meetings and then I'll give them feedback on those meetings.

Right. So as we go through that process, which is very interesting. Um, but, but I think, you know, I think it's, it's, it's iterative, right? Like, I don't think somebody who's never done this before or potentially has these, these, uh, internal obstacles they have to overcome is going to, you know, change overnight. I mean, if it was that easy, everybody would do it. Right. It's step-by-step. And I think, I think the founders that, that, that come out okay on the other side are the ones that acknowledge the fact that sales is a process, right? And the process begins with focusing your offer message. So clients understand why they should buy what you're selling. Like that's job number one. Until you've done that, everything else is unnecessary.

Now, the second, you have to come up with a very structured approach to talking to and acquiring customers. It's not, I know a guy, it's not spray and pray. It's who are my, who's my ideal customer? Who are the 50 companies that match that character, those characteristics? How am I going to get in front of those people, get feedback, iterate the pitch and the product so that ultimately I can get in a position where I'm clear on my target audience, what I'm selling, and then I can scale it through partnerships and through inbound marketing. And, and I think until you are able to go through that process, you know, at some stage, all of these little pieces are going to start, you know, clicking.

And when you get it right, it's pretty awesome. I mean, I just caught up recently with a woman I worked with. She was in social media analytics space. So basically they have this technology that scans all this, you know, millions of conversations online and gives companies a, um, a picture of what people really think about their, of their process. And when we started working together, um, they were targeting financial services companies, tech telecommunications companies, and pharmaceutical companies. And, um, and, and it kind of went out and started targeting these three different verticals. And it was interesting because through the process of iteration and engagement, what she realized was that in fact, telecom and financial companies, while experienced the need, weren't feeling the pain hard enough to lean into it.

But pharmaceutical companies, they were all in, right? Because they really want to understand what people think about what their product is. And so she doubled down, she narrowed a niche, she, she, she found a bunch of different pieces of the puzzle from partnerships and, and support and, and messaging that, that capture that. And in that moment, once you found that, that focus, she was able to scale and, you know, closes kind of 20 to 25 high ticket deals a year, just on the back of going through the process and finding your focus. So if you do it right, it can be an unbelievably empowering and successful process. And you talked a lot and you see, you just mentioned it as far as diversifying those channels, right?

So you got the inbounds, you got the partners and you get the outbound where, um, I guess where do founders focus too much of their time on or, or, or, or in which one of those three, uh, do they tend to avoid more than, uh, more than others? Well, I think that, I think it depends a little bit on the, the comfort zone of the founder. Um, I think people default to outbound first. That's kind of the natural direction. Um, people who are very, very averse to even picking up the phone are going to try to do inbound marketing first, which is going to be horribly ineffective because you're actually sending random messages into the space, not knowing what, what hits and what doesn't. Um, but the one that I think actually is usually underutilized is partnerships.

Interestingly, um, that in itself, I think is the next level of sophistication in sales. When you realize actually, I can actually exponentially leverage my capabilities by finding companies and individuals who, whose network I can tap into is credibility. I can tap into and enable, you know, just a stronger outreach. And so a lot of companies I work with, that's the one where I think they probably don't spend enough time on it. Um, but some, some of the companies actually, you know, lean into that heavily. So I'm, I'm actually chairman of a company called Antavo, which is a SaaS tool in loyalty. Um, they, um, they, um, power loyalty programs for large, um, retail companies like Hilfiger and Calvin Klein and so on.

And, you know, their big breakthrough is when they started working with, uh, consulting companies that actually develop loyalty concepts for these companies. And we'll bring in this Antavo company as the technology partner. Once that preliminary sale is done. And once they made that shift, their sales skyrocketed and they were able to spend a lot less time on conversion because they were finding companies when they were ready to buy rather than spending a bunch of time before they were ready for the technology piece of the puzzle. So if you get the partnership piece, right, it can really help you scale very quickly. And I think that's something that a lot of founders probably underestimate. I don't know.

What's your view? What do you, what's your view of partnerships? I, I agree the challenge with partners. I've always had it, you know, resellers, uh, you know, I've always said it's, it's hard enough to get your own reps to sell your shit. It's 10 times harder to get somebody else's to sell your shit. Right. So I think unless you're in the, more of those OEM models where it's like one of those, it's, it's just, that's the way the industry works. Um, that cool, but you know, I've always struggled with partnerships. I have, I have tons of partnerships and I've tried to get very strategic with others. And I think unless there's that strong, healthy partner ecosystem that's already there, it ends up being like, Hey, you know what?

We should partner. Like, why don't we try, you know, I'll refer you, you refer me and then we go back to our desk and nothing happens. And then, you know, whatever. So, you know, I think early days, I, I, I did this inherently, but thankfully, you know, I got, I got involved with business networking international, right? Early days is BNI group where you go to networking and you learn how to network, right? You stand up for 30, you know, for 30 seconds, you give your pitch, you come with leads and leads aren't just, Oh, I know, like, Hey, no, this person's expecting. Yeah. And their whole mentality was giver's game. Yeah. And so for me, I was okay. So I, I try to give as much as possible and that's how I developed the relationships, which then I could come and get something if I needed to, right?

Where it was referral and that, and quite frankly, that has saved my career multiple times, right, where I was in the shit from a starter founder standpoint, because the economy, you know, 2000, I started my first company in 2000, my second one in 2007. Nice. You got a great, great sense of timing. Oh yeah. Right. You know, had to rebuild in 2023 again, you know, all of these different things. And every single time I've been able to tap into my partner ecosystem and, and say, Hey, I need to, I need some help and, and I've been able to get it, but I, but it's not structured. And I work with a group now called forecastable that is really trying to put a structure to partnerships, which I appreciate.

Right. But it is one of those, you know, when done right, it's insane when done wrong, it's kind of a way, a lot of a waste of time. But, but you know what, John, I think, I think one of the misconceptions about it is that the partnership is over once you've shook, shake hands, once you shook hands and you assign the documents, like I'll call you, you know, you call me kind of thing, what you just referred to. I don't think that really works. You got to manage the partnership. It becomes a question of resources, but you know, uh, I think if you're serious, about it, having somebody who's just there to make sure the partners are up to speed on your latest products, um, you know, have all the collateral material they need, you know, have some sort of system, let's say monthly call just to kind of update people.

You know, a lot of this stuff is kind of soft pressure where like, you can't show up to the call, the, the, the partnership call for the sixth month in a row saying, oh, we haven't done anything. Right. So, so I think there's a whole process of managing those relationships. And I think that if you put a bit of effort into structuring them, and if you actually demonstrate value to the partner first, so oftentimes I've had situations where, um, companies I've worked with, I I've actually helped them, given them leads first, um, to, as an indication of goodwill. Right. And just say, Hey, this is something you guys should work on. And if it works out, then you get the commission or the partnership benefit, you know, and I'll get the money.

And, and that's led to longer term relationships. So yeah, look, it's not a perfect, perfect situation, but I think he puts a bit of effort in. You can manage that to a, to some degree of success. I take a similar approach. Like, and I recommend reps do this, but also obviously founders is, you know, you can create your own little part partner ecosystem. So let's go to back to ideal customer profile and product market fit and all that other stuff. Like once you get super, super specific on who you sell to the problem that you solve, well, then you figure out all the different vendors that, that compliment what you do or go after the same exact ICP to help us. And then what I tell reps is figure out who those vendors are now go call.

They'll figure out who the top vendor in the area is for that thing. Call up and say, Hey, can I talk to your best sales rep? Why? I just want to develop a relationship. And it'd be like me, Hey, Zoltan, what's going on, man? So look, I work with a lot of companies. It looks like you and I do the same stuff. A lot of times I get requests for what you do. Do you mind if I put you in my backpack here and then I give you some, you know, when, when I bring in, you know, that, of course you're going to say yes. Right. Yeah. And I do that with five or six people. And then what that does is that puts me in a position to be a problem solver. So now I'm not trying to sell my shit. I'm meeting with you because I'm trying to solve a problem.

Hopefully what the problem is, is that I have, but if not, it's like, Hey, you know what you actually need to talk to so-and-so in first and that, right. And that way you can, instead of looking at it outwardly to say, how can I get leads from partners to fill my, it's no, actually, how can you better service your customer by having a portfolio of stuff that you can bring to the table for them? Yeah. And by the way, you just captured like literally the essence of what turned my thinking about sales. Right. So as I talked about earlier, I came up in a family environment where this was not necessarily a top priority. And, and it was in that environment that I started through a bunch of interesting circumstances, ended up getting this job selling advertising on Cartoon Network in central and Eastern Europe.

And actually it was on a trip to Moscow. This was like 96, I think I'm sitting in the car and the taxi on the way into, uh, to meet some agencies there with my boss, Dan Levenger, um, who had hired me. And I was a bit agonizing because I just wasn't feeling that comfortable in this whole process or this role. And he said to me something to me that literally changed my entire mindset. We said, look, Zoltan, um, sales is not pushing something on somebody that they don't need. It's actually helping them solve a problem. And who the hell doesn't want to help solving the problem. Right. And it was such a, it's, it was such a click in me, right? It's like, okay, well, actually that's what I'm doing.

And so, and then it just becomes so much easier, right? Because it's not like, oh, you got to buy what I'm selling. It's like, Hey, what do you, what do you, you know, tell me what your problem is. Tell me what your challenges. Tell me what it is that, that, uh, is, is it, is, you know, making your job harder and how can I help you achieve a better outcome? And by the way, if I can't, that's absolutely fine. Right. And, and I, by the way, that's one of the greatest powers in sales when you can tell somebody I'm not the right person for you. I got a call last year from a Swedish founder in Oregon of all places. He reached out to me. He was selling like a 20, um, uh, euro a month, a $20 a month, um, SAS tool for developers, I think.

And he kind of reached out to me and say, Hey, I'm reading your stuff and, you know, would be interested in working with this and look, I actually really am good at helping you sell high ticket products to enterprises and corporations, um, which starts at a hundred thousand dollars and up. I'm not the guy you're going to turn to, to sell you a $20 a month thing. You need a digital marketing expert. Who's going to, you know, figure out how to scale your message in a very efficient way. I'm not your guy. And he was a bit shocked, right? At the first he's like, but I'm like, you understand. I mean, I'll recommend you to somebody and they can have a conversation. But to me, that was like, so it was so empowering, right?

Like when you can tell somebody say, you know what, I'm not the right person. And I think if you, as a founder can adopt that mindset and understand that you're there to help people and that you don't have to push them to buy something, then it just becomes a natural flow of, of engagement and conversation. The tricky part though, that I see is. So yes, all of it. The tricky part though, is what I see is chasing bad revenue. So early days, I don't have a lot of cash. That person's looks like a duck smell like, you know, let me go try to sell them that thing because they're willing to give me money right now. That's going to help me continue. And that's quite frankly, one of the worst things I've seen people do is because you take on bad customers, bad revenue that usually you do average service at best for them.

They become a huge pain in the ass and they just suck the life out of you. And it takes all that time away from finding the perfect customer. That's why like starting a company, like you need six months runway to, to, to, to at least so that you don't have to panic about sales and take shitty revenue. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, what you describe is a very typical situation, right? And, and honestly, it's easier said than done, but I genuinely, I genuinely believe that in the grand scheme of things, you're much better off sticking to your focus. And, and, you know, again, finding that, that type of customer really considers your solution as the perfect solution to their problem. Having said that at the beginning of the process, as we know, look, it is controlled chaos, right?

I mean, you're making various assumptions, you're going in this direction and that direction. So in some place, some situations, you just don't know what the right solution is, right? So in that case, I think you can forgive yourself maybe for taking some business on that isn't ideal because part of the learning process is learning what you're not relevant for and you're not good at, right? So, so I think there's a fine line there, but, but broadly speaking, especially by the way, once you get into a little bit of a scaling mode, you know, taking on business that doesn't fit your, your, your problem solution connection just for the sake of money literally is a recipe for, for just being, you know, wasting a lot of time and, you know, and taking you down a rabbit hole.

That's not going to deliver any long-term growth for your business. What metrics should, should people be paying attention to, right? Cause I think there's a lot of vanity metrics out there and also, well, actually let's talk about this first, which is the feedback loop. Okay. And, and the collection of data to make better decisions moving forward. So let's call the founder led sale approach where the founders having all these conversations, all these people and, and maybe getting into some opportunities that they shouldn't, but whatever, how do they, what's a structure that they can use to, to collect the right data that tells them that this is good or bad. And I mean that also, even from a product market fit, right?

Cause those early days, you're not just searching for business. You're, you're really trying to nail down that, where do I fit? And you're going to, Oh shit. And people are going to tell you, Hey, I, Oh, I'd love it to do X, Y, and Z and like feature creep and all this other stuff. And it's like, okay, how do I stay true to my core here, but also evolve. And so I guess, what kind of data are you looking for them to collect upfront? Cause they're doing all the activities anyways, they should collect some data to have some insights into it. When you say collect data, you mean collect data from the customer or collect data for the purpose of their own, of measuring their own progress. The process, right?

So it's like, so I say like the other scenario is I got a VP of sales out there going out and meeting with a ton of people, right. And gathering insights. Now I'm the founder over here and I, and, and that is product, you know, that is market and insights better than any report or data thing could ever do because you have it right from the people that you're selling to. Um, and that is almost always lost in, in translation, right? That I always think sales reps, we are the best, uh, ones to, to understand if the product cares about what we do. Cause we're literally talking to somebody about it, but that almost always gets lost in translation back to the, back to the, you know, product team, leader, any of that.

Look, I don't think there's a perfect set of metrics. I say there's a couple of things that highlight. Um, you know, first I'd say that, you know, things like average contract value, um, price, wherever you define that, whether it's, you know, per piece or, or, you know, per service, whatever. Um, I think sales cycle length is really, really important, right? Because you should have a clear idea of how long it's going to take you to close a piece of business. Um, and you certainly don't want to get in a position where you're waiting 12 months for a yes, right? Because then you're going to spend a tremendous amount of time on necessary, uh, you know, it's, it's a red flag for me that, you know, you're, you're, you're talking to the wrong folks.

Um, you know, those are kind of, for me, like top three sales metrics on the marketing side, um, you know, engagement on your, you know, your content. Um, and I don't mean likes on LinkedIn. I'm talking about like downloads of content that you've had, um, you know, maybe some sort of engagement on webinars that you do, um, you know, things that are a little bit more about actual taking the time to understand what you're selling. Uh, when you talk about vanity metrics, you know, classic cases, you know, is likes on social media posts, um, which if you've been following LinkedIn have been, you know, dropping pretty dramatically in the last nine to 12 months, uh, in terms of views and, and, uh, and engagement.

Um, so, so yeah, those are the things I would keep in mind. Um, but I also think that some of those metrics, you will actually only understand the value of once you've collected enough data to be able to compare it to something, right? So you, you'll start out with price X and then you're going to see six months down the line. If you've closed business at that rate, or you're closing at a higher rate and you'll get an average. What's really interesting is if you actually can, can introduce certain levers that make those metrics shine. I'll give you a specific example. So one of the things I talk a lot about is the importance of, of, of narrowing your product offering. So the customers, it's easy for customers to say yes.

Right. So a typical situation you find is, Hey, I'm selling the solution. What would you like? Right. And then it turns into this, you know, incredibly extended, long, you know, tailored conversation with all the bells and whistles, you know, you spend six months on it and then finally say, ah, you know what? I don't have the budget. Right. And I say, don't go through that process. Come up with three scenarios, make the middle scenario solution, your ideal balance of, you know, features and benefit, put together a premium offer, put together a, you know, an entry level offer, create that sort of standard three, three level offer. And, um, it certainly is going to narrow the focus of the decision maker, but it's also going to give you an anchor from which you can make changes if you need to.

Right. So I actually taught this to, um, to, uh, one of my customers, a software development company works with enterprises and database management. And it was interesting because he was complaining about sales cycle, right? It was taking way too long for him to close deals. And just by introducing this one switch in the way he sold what he was offering, he literally halved his sales cycle from like six months to three months. And, you know, he was able to start charging much more because actually it didn't change anything in terms of the perceived value. It just made it actually, he, he made it seem like he was just an easier person to do business with. So people are going to pay more. So it was, and I remember like having this conversation with them, um, and almost taking him through the thought process of, you realize what happened was he's like, oh my God, you're right.

It's like, everything's become just so much easier just by making that change. And so that metric all of a sudden became completely recalibrated. So, you know, I think if you, if you, if you understand the importance of tracking your progress through data, whatever that data is already, you're a step ahead because, you know, entrepreneurs by nature are often very intuitive, right? So they kind of, you know, make decisions based on gut feeling, which is fine to a certain level. But if you want to scale your business, you're going to have to create some, some standard procedures and processes that you can then pass along and build a team around. And so if you just get in the habit of tracking those responses and making decisions based on data, you're already a step ahead.

Nice. All right. So let's finish up on this one. Um, with the feedbacks, even traveling around, you said you did 31, uh, things last year or whatever it was like traveling around, doing a bunch of shows, talking about the book, working with people in the book, um, based on the feedback, what chapter do you think you'd expand on and which one or add? Is there something that either you would add, subtract or expand on that now based on the feedback? Well, it's funny. One of the things that I was told before I wrote the book is you'll know you've written a good book when six months later, you kind of flip through it and you don't like go, Oh, that's awful. I can't believe I wrote that. Right. Thankfully that has not happened to me.

So I feel like I've captured the, the essence of what I wanted to say in the book. Having looked through it enough times over the last six months, if I had to kind of add anything, I think the, the, you know, the, the book's basically built into three pillars. So the first is about focus your offer message. The second is about structure your client acquisition. And the third is, um, you know, scale your operations. I think the scale piece probably could use a little bit more detail in terms of the, just some of the things we just talked about. What are like the parameters you should, you should track, you know, how do you build the team over time? Um, but that almost could work, be like another book, right?

Cause that, that's a, that's a little bit different phase of development. So I think that's probably where I would expand, um, because, you know, it's also the part which a lot of founders have even less experience in than selling is how do you scale an organization, right? Cause that requires leadership and management experience, which a lot of them don't have. Right. So, um, so I think that's probably the bit, um, having said that, I think if, if, if there's a founder out there who's just like in that situation, they have to figure out how they're going to sell whatever it is they've created, it's going to give them a really, really clear, easy to understand blueprint that they can follow.

Um, and like with everything, right. It's as, it's only as good as, as the amount of time and effort you put into executing it. Right. So the world's greatest concept is irrelevant if it's not implemented correctly. So it comes down to how committed they are to getting it done. And, and I think, um, you know, as most things in life, you get where you, you know, you put your time and effort into. Awesome. Zoltan was great talking to you. How, where can people find out more about the book, what you're doing, all that fun stuff. Well, uh, thankfully I'm still the only Zoltan Vardy on LinkedIn. So, uh, so you'll be able to find me there quite easily. Um, if you are interested in learning more about the book, obviously it's available on Amazon, but I'm, I just wanted to make a kind of a, an offer, John, to your, your audience.

If somebody is kind of in the tribe before you buy mode, if you just go to my website, zoltanvardy.com forward slash book, um, then they'll find a, an opportunity to download the first chapter of the book for free and get a taste for what it's like. And then they can decide whether they want to buy it and, uh, in any of the different forms that's available. Um, and, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm always excited to talk to founders who are ready to, to, to figure out how to sell and to scale their businesses. Yeah. And it's, uh, you can, it's kind of more, more interesting now that I, we didn't even touch on that and the impact that's having on founders. That's a whole, that's a whole different discussion, I think.

Yeah. And you know, I'm, I'm, to a certain degree, I'm almost sick of talking about it, which is why I'm not, I didn't bring it. I'm like, all right, I'm okay. Yeah. It's going to fucking ruin the world or it's going to save the world. I don't know. I'm just going to wake up tomorrow and I'm still here. So let's just keep rolling. It is. It is. It is. My, my, my two cents on AI is it's, it's transferational, but it doesn't replace the fundamentals of selling now, it doesn't, although we could have a whole nother conversation of what those fundamentals are these days, quite frankly, because I, that I'm, I'm questioning on whether they've shifted or, or what they even are at this point with this, with this tool, right?

Cause it can shortcut a lot of stuff. Uh, yeah, but, but that's the key. It's a shortcut, right? So it's, it's a, it's a efficiency grower. It's not necessarily a replacement in my view. Yep. Perfect. Awesome. Well, Zoltan, thanks again for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. It was a fun conversation. Thank you very much. Likewise. Absolutely. And everybody hopefully enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Like I always say at the end of 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, you make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day in the world. 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 jaybarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together.

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