Live from Sales HQ with Chris Leithe
We are live from SalesHQ. I'm Vince Speezy, your host and the founder here at Sales HQ. And our guest today is Chris Licht. Nailed it. Nailed it.
Vince Beese:As always. Well, Chris, before we get back to you, because you are the guest, and we will get back to you. What is this phenomenon with SalesHQ? That's all I hear about. Right?
Vince Beese:I've been dying to know. Go on LinkedIn. You're on TikTok. You see videos. It's, like, all the rage.
Vince Beese:I've been dying to them. Right. You gotta tell us. You wanna know? I I wanna know.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Sales HQ is coast and sales teams. Primarily from folks that are working remote today, either by yourself or your team is working remote, we've recreated the sales floor. Right? It is the energy of the sales floor, the networking ability to meet other people and collaborate with other people.
Vince Beese:Let let's be honest. Like, sitting in a room by yourself 5 days a week is not healthy, and it certainly doesn't give you the motivation you need as a salesperson. So get out. Come visit us at saleshq.co. Our first location is Raleigh area, but we'll be expanding from there.
Vince Beese:So that's my sales pitch about sales HQ. Sounds awesome. Like, you're gonna join. Right?
Chris Leithe:Sounds awesome. Yeah. Absolutely.
Vince Beese:Alright, Chris. Let's get back to you. So Sure. What are you up to these days, man?
Chris Leithe:Well, Vince, it's so exciting to be here. Thank you so much to you and sales HQ for having me here. And, yeah, in terms of what I've been up to, so I've been building my own sales consultancy over the past, let's call it, year and a half. Mhmm. So about a year and a half ago, I made the decision to go out on my own, after a couple of, different, you know, experiences building teams and helping companies scale.
Chris Leithe:And one of the things I've always loved is variety, difficult problems, meeting new people, and I really wanted to start, focusing on building a community of people and customers that were just wonderful human beings. Yeah. And I wanted to have more control over that. And so I went out about a year and a half ago, and what I do is I help people find more leads, close more sales, and scale their
Vince Beese:People care about that stuff.
Chris Leithe:They care about that stuff. You know? They're like, oh, you can help you can help me make more money
Vince Beese:Especially delete delete things and close those leads? That's weird. That is weird. Right?
Chris Leithe:Who wants to do that? And so I went out on my own to to do that. And what that usually evolves into is a lot of leadership, leadership discussion Yeah. Afterwards. Right?
Chris Leithe:So you start you get in there, and you start finding out that a lot of the reasons people aren't able to scale their sales teams or aren't able to close deals is because there's an evolution of leadership that needs to happen. Yeah. And so the conversation ultimately turns to that, and that's what I'm really passionate about.
Vince Beese:That's awesome. And I wanna get later on. I wanna talk to you about the Audience Accelerator Labs because it's gonna tie into another subject. So I know you're very involved in that as the cofounder. We'll get into that.
Vince Beese:But, my first question for you, what do you think about project 2025? No. Just kidding. Come on. We're not getting no politics here.
Chris Leithe:We're not getting that.
Vince Beese:Who you voting on? Just kidding. No. No. Everyone has a unique story when have they gotten sales?
Vince Beese:What was what's your story?
Chris Leithe:Alright. So I actually when I graduated college, yeah, I was premed, and I was applying to medical schools. And a lot of people hear that,
Vince Beese:and they're like, why? You're in. It makes a lot of sense.
Chris Leithe:Sales now. Sales and marketing and leadership, how does that work? And I got into this situation where I was faced with a choice. And the dean of admissions at UNC, who med school admissions Yeah. Lived across the street from me at the time, and he goes, Chris, you're gonna be a shoe in next year.
Chris Leithe:See, I was on the wait list. Right? You're gonna be a shoe in next year. All you gotta do is retake organic organic chemistry and get med. Oh.
Chris Leithe:And I went home, and I thought about it that night. And I had this oh shit moment where I was like, I don't wanna be a doctor enough to retake one class. Right? Organic. And I was just, you know, organic chemistry is not just one class.
Chris Leithe:It's all one
Vince Beese:of the hardest Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Classes, but I had this moment. So at the time, I was in this startup in Durham, and it was awesome. You know, nobody tells you in college that, being a part of a startup or doing any of that kind of thing is like a is an option. You know, back when I was in school, it was consulting Yeah. Eye banking,
Vince Beese:e b Well, especially the school you went to.
Chris Leithe:Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Vince Beese:The University of New Jersey in Durham.
Chris Leithe:There you go. That's exactly right. You could do you know it. I it's amazing. You know?
Chris Leithe:I didn't realize it was that popular. And so I got out of there, and I had found myself in a start up, and I loved it. Mhmm. I loved it.
Vince Beese:Which one was that?
Chris Leithe:It was called Provenis.
Vince Beese:Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Chris Leithe:And it was founded by the chancellor of Meredith of Duke University, this guy Ralph Snyderman, and this other guy Jason Wang hire. Really smart people, very successful people, and I was on the product side. Oh, wow. I wasn't even involved in the sales and marketing. I was doing, like, user interface research and interviewing physicians and all that kind of stuff.
Chris Leithe:And after about two and a half years, they laid off the team, and moved all the operations up to Boston. And so I was a part of that. And I had this moment where I was like, I have no idea what I'm gonna do with my life and all this kind of crazy stuff. And I was listening to NPR, and there was this guy on NPR that was talking all this crazy stuff about his time, visiting and living with monks in South Carolina. And he was an entrepreneur, and he was selling software and that sold his company for 1,000,000 of dollars.
Chris Leithe:And he was like, the purpose of life is all about service and selflessness and all this. And I was like, yes. This sounds amazing.
Vince Beese:And you made money at it.
Chris Leithe:And you made it. I was like, wow.
Vince Beese:Who who thought? You thought it was more than the other.
Chris Leithe:Right? You You can't help people and make money. Right? You can't reach enlightenment and make money. It's one or the other.
Chris Leithe:But this guy had seemed to figure it out, and I sought him out. Oh, wow. And he was giving a lecture at Duke, and I went and saw him speak and was blown away by what he's talking about. You know, all his time with the these monks down in South Carolina, everything he's learned about, you know, the path to fulfillment in business. And I was like, I gotta work with this guy.
Chris Leithe:And so long story short, I worked my way to get into meeting with him, and eventually, he brought me on to, work with him. And through that, he was teaching me all about, like, meaning and purpose in life and that kind of thing. And on the side, he was also teaching me about sales and marketing. And so he was the person who taught me how to first start cold calling. And so I started cold calling for this guy and booking speaking engagements for him, on, you know, other NPR Oh, that's crazy.
Chris Leithe:Chapters and and whatnot. And
Vince Beese:Who is this person?
Chris Leithe:This guy is named Augie Turack. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. And he's written several books.
Chris Leithe:He's super talented.
Vince Beese:With monks?
Chris Leithe:He does not, but he does live out on a farm in in North Carolina.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Chris Leithe:Yeah. And so he's he's an interesting cat and, like, he's got a lot of really interesting things to say. And he lit the spark Yeah. You know, in in in many different ways and carried me into, you know, my my sales career.
Vince Beese:Yeah. If you could, I I assume you could dial and find people, speaker roles, like, you can I got this guy?
Chris Leithe:I got this. He's interesting. He's amazing. He's in South Carolina
Vince Beese:and lives in middle of nowhere with monks. Yeah. Okay. What's the hook? Right?
Chris Leithe:But I was so pumped. You know? And that I think that's one of the big things that I learned is, like, when you're passionate about something Yeah. It's so important when you're gonna be selling something to be passionate about whatever it is you're a part of. It doesn't have to mean, like, wow, I'm super excited about selling, you know like, I work for ShareFile.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Chris Leithe:File sharing software. Yep.
Vince Beese:Yep. And
Chris Leithe:it's really gonna change the world and make it better. But what was really cool is the team and the community that was built at ShareFile was a really powerful community and was something incredible would it be a part of? And that's what I was bought. Right. And that really is what I was selling.
Chris Leithe:So you
Vince Beese:went from that working with that gentleman to ShareFile? Eventually.
Chris Leithe:There's there's some divisions. I started my own, software company with a couple of friends Yeah. And, you know, to limited degrees of success. And then did a stint at a marketing services company, but eventually found my home.
Vince Beese:I should ask you, where where did you grow up, by the way?
Chris Leithe:I grew up here in Raleigh.
Vince Beese:You did? I did. You're that guy?
Chris Leithe:With you. Yeah. For real.
Vince Beese:What high school did
Chris Leithe:you go to? I went to, Cary Academy. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, cool.
Chris Leithe:Harrison Avenue. Mhmm. I think I was a part of the first class to go all the way through, the last yeah. So
Vince Beese:That's awesome. Anyway, grew
Chris Leithe:up there. But, yeah, ShareFile was really where I learned how to Yeah. Do Is
Vince Beese:that where you got into sales leadership as well? Yes. And how did that come about? Because you're about, I think, the 3rd or 4th person from the Citrix mafia. Right?
Vince Beese:I mean, everywhere everywhere. Yeah. In Raleigh areas, you if you had if you're in sales, you probably worked at Citrix.
Chris Leithe:At some point.
Vince Beese:Either that or BMC software. Seriously, either one of those two areas, I think every one of my guests have been from home. Yeah. It's funny. But tell me about your journey at Citrix because it's
Chris Leithe:Well, I was I
Vince Beese:love it because everyone's start somewhere. And if you're a top performer, you have avenues for growth, which is which is awesome. Right?
Chris Leithe:It was so cool. It was such a special place. I joined when maybe it was about 76 people. It was a couple of months after they had been acquired. Okay.
Chris Leithe:And the sales leader at the time was this guy named Ed Shealy. Mhmm. And I've met Ed for that before.
Vince Beese:Come up on these podcast numbers. He should he should pay me a fee. Yeah. He should. You know?
Chris Leithe:You you maybe you'll find him. He's living out. So I think he's alive. Monks in South Carolina? Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Well, he's living out with monks probably in in in Hawaii right now. No joke. And he brought me into leads business development. So I was doing the partnerships channel
Vince Beese:Yep.
Chris Leithe:Sales, working on identifying companies that we might want to acquire and tuck in. And so I helped lead to acquisitions over there or identify 2 acquisitions over there. And then one day he came to me, he goes, Chris, you got this struggling inbound sales team. Do you think you could take a look and and help us turn it around? And I said, Ed, I've never managed more than 2 people Yeah.
Chris Leithe:In my life. I've never managed a sales team. I have no idea Yeah. What I'm doing. And he looks at me.
Chris Leithe:He goes, you're a smart guy. You'll figure it out. And so I was like, okay. So it was this group of, you know, 20 or 22 inbound sales reps. And as you might might imagine, turnaround means, there are there's a degree of success or lack thereof that needs to be addressed, and there's usually cultural and and people problems.
Chris Leithe:Yep. Right? Fun stuff. And so that was where I had to dig in. And, you know, I made a bunch of mistakes when I took over the team because I'm generally a very positive guy, and people thought that my positivity at the time was Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Just blowing smoke. Yeah.
Vince Beese:And they thought it was bullshit. And You mean they could the people reporting to you?
Chris Leithe:The people yeah. The people on the team. Yeah. You know, they thought I was trying to put lipstick on a pig. I see.
Chris Leithe:Right? And try to Yep. To to dress things up that were they weren't happy about it. They felt like I wasn't listening, and I wasn't taking it seriously. And that all culminated in this point where they were all about ready to mute me.
Chris Leithe:Ready to what? Mutiny. Oh, really? Yeah. They were like, we're done with this.
Chris Leithe:They're gonna
Vince Beese:get rid of the nice guy.
Chris Leithe:At one point, there was we were we would do exit interviews, and I remember this. I always remember this. 1 of the reps at the time, in his exit interview wrote that Ed had given the keys to the wrong guy on the bus. And we I know. At the time, it was like, oh, got it.
Chris Leithe:And and and here's the thing
Vince Beese:that's we
Chris Leithe:used to review exit interviews in front of the entire management team. Oh, man. So there the entire management team was about, I don't know, 10 or Yeah. Yeah. People at that time.
Chris Leithe:So it was the senior managers and then the managers. And so, you know, that was a pretty damning thing to to say. And so it all kind kinda culminated at this point where the team was about ready to to mute me, and they were like, we're done. Right? And at the time, I had been moved over to be managed by this guy, Steve Ainsley.
Chris Leithe:He was a wonderful human and, again, another very kinda enlightened leader. And I walk in there, and he goes, Chris, just trust yourself. Trust yourself. You know what to do. You don't need my help.
Chris Leithe:Just be real and honest with the team. And so I marinated on that a little bit, and I walk into this room of 22 people, and I'm like, what am I gonna say? So I sit down, and it was at that point where I go, I said, guy, listen, I I'm as stressed out about this
Vince Beese:as you are, and I
Chris Leithe:can come in, I could be negative and pissed off and all these things, but I don't wanna add to the to the negativity Mhmm. On the team. I'm trying to be positive to be a a rock for you all, but I understand that's not what you guys need or wanna see. So let me be real with you about where we are. And these are the things that I think are broken.
Chris Leithe:This is what keeps me up at night and what I lose sleep over, and here's what we're gonna do about it. And we had figured out ways to address quota issues and comp issues. Like, all that had been fungal. Right? Because you could, if you've ever managed an inbound team, you know how hard it is to set Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Goals because you're kind of beholden Yeah. Yeah. To the leads that are coming in. Yep. Yep.
Chris Leithe:So there's always, oh, we don't have enough leads or the lead quality this or that. Right? Mhmm. And, like, sometimes that's right. And a lot of times it's not right.
Chris Leithe:And at one moment, we talked about addressing this, and, one of the reps on the team, she got up and she cried and she left. I was like, oh, no. I I screwed this thing.
Vince Beese:What are you doing? Oh, come on, man. Right?
Chris Leithe:I I was like, what have I done? Take those
Vince Beese:keys away from me.
Chris Leithe:Right. Take yeah. Take the keys. And, you know, 5 minutes later, she comes back. Are you okay?
Chris Leithe:And she goes, I was just so relieved and happy about what you had shared
Vince Beese:with us.
Chris Leithe:Tears of joy. Tears of joy. Right? And the the air had been totally let out Yeah. Of the balloon.
Chris Leithe:And at that point, everybody was in.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Chris Leithe:And that was really the first time where I was finally, like, okay. Yeah. I I I get this better.
Vince Beese:Yeah. You don't have to have all the answers. Right? Did not have It's okay not to have all that. A matter of fact, it's okay to even say I don't have all the answers.
Chris Leithe:It's in in fact, it's important to say that. And it's important to get answers from the team. Yeah. Because I'll tell you, I thought of what I have thought are the best ideas in the world. This is the way we should do it.
Chris Leithe:Then I tell somebody the the plan, and they're like, well, have you thought about this? I'm like, you know what? No. I have not thought about that. Thank you.
Chris Leithe:And it always makes the plan better. Yep.
Vince Beese:Yep. Collaboration always. Always. I mean, even even if, you know, even if the ideas don't work out and people feel that you genuinely want their opinion or their their feedback on things, I think it's appreciated, and the fact that you were extremely vulnerable and transparent, I think, is what, probably elevated your global respect. Right?
Vince Beese:Like,
Chris Leithe:Absolutely. People didn't know. Like, they don't know, they don't know where you're at Yeah. And what you care about. And it's hard, especially, like, if you can't have one on ones with people and you haven't built that trust over years of working with them in the trenches.
Chris Leithe:It's really hard to Yeah. You you you think people should give you the benefit of the doubt, but really most people start being very skeptical. Yeah. They're not giving you the benefit of the doubt. You have to earn it.
Vince Beese:And so after that's done, you then are on on a stable footing, I would imagine. You still have to address you still have to address the problem. So how what did you do? One of the things you we talked about that I think you really focus on is how did how did you start to build the top of the funnel? I know you guys were very vertical focused, but, like, what are some of the strategies and things that you use as your secrets to success regards to building top of funnel?
Chris Leithe:Well well, there, thankfully, we had an amazing marketing team. You know? Jesse Lipson is the founder of ShareFile, is incredible marketer, product person, data. He's very data centric. Yep.
Chris Leithe:He had a wonderful team managing that, and they were doing things that today are cutting edge cutting edge. Right? They were modeling leads in a way where we our our the data scientists on the team found out that a lead is more likely to close if they capitalize their first and last name. That is they found that that was statistically significant in how they That's interesting. Submitted the form.
Chris Leithe:Right? So as a part of my journey in terms of reorging the team, what we had to figure out was our the rest of our team, the outbound team
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Chris Leithe:It was all a big dial Yeah. Yeah. Hustle outbound operation. Right? And that wasn't the culture on the inbound team, but we wanted more of that proactive culture on that team.
Chris Leithe:Right. So what we ended up having to figure out is how can you give people inbound leads while also keeping enough motivation to make outbound balance? So we went through all these permutations. If you give it to a couple of lead gen folks to call into those leads and book them for people so that they get them booked on their Yeah. Calendars, but, like, that's not all that they they need.
Chris Leithe:And we tried having them do it themselves and, but only giving them enough to, like, equate to 10 or 20% of their quota. So 80% of the time they had to spend and we tried all these different things. And, ultimately, the one that worked the best was having a lead gen team call in and book them for for the whole team and not just one inbound team. So went through that. So you separated inbound from outbound.
Chris Leithe:Correct? We we we did for a while, and then we started to blend it into the rest of the team. And so we started booking those inbound deals for some of the outbound folks. Well, that didn't work either because what ended up happening is those ones kind of got ignored because they kinda came from somewhere they didn't quite understand, and, and it was a little bit of a different conversation as you might imagine. And our systems weren't connected, so the place where those leads showed up were a little bit different than where the outbound was.
Vince Beese:Mess. Yep.
Chris Leithe:So, eventually, yeah, we kept it, we kept it into a its own kinda inbound trial team.
Vince Beese:Okay. So marking was primarily for responsible for most of the leads or They were responsible for for
Chris Leithe:for all the inbound leads, and then the outbound team was the the big, you know, the the big engine. So we had a 100 SDRs who were making about a 100 to a $125 a day. It hasn't changed. It was wild. It was wild.
Chris Leithe:And so that's where that came from. But now, like, where do inbound leads and and that sort of thing as I consult with with folks? I mean, they come from many different places. So we generally, when I'm working with a company, we try to figure out what their strong suits are. So one example is, you know, you might be in an industry where you need a lot of partnerships.
Chris Leithe:Mhmm. And those partnerships are really important for generating leads and you might wanna channel strategy as opposed to a direct outbound strategy. We've got some folks that are really good with paid advertising. Mhmm. And you wanna run, you know, Google Ads and, social ads and that sort of thing.
Chris Leithe:Then what I'm really excited about and what I've been interested in lately, and this goes to the Audience Acceleration Labs work that I'm doing, there's a huge opportunity right now, obviously, with building audiences on social platforms. And why is that important? Well, with tracking of ads being eliminated through Facebook and Apple and Google and all these regulations and laws about saying, you know, cookies aren't you're you're unable to to use those to, more effectively target from an advertiser, it makes it harder to target people effectively and with a good enough time And
Vince Beese:follow them around, yeah.
Chris Leithe:And follow them around. So that's why you start seeing all these influencers pop up who are building these audiences that are valuable. And I saw the other day, I loved it. I loved this prospecting email that somebody it was a partnership email that some one of my, colleagues received. And in the in the it was actually a DM on Instagram, and in it it said, hey, I'd rather spend my advertising dollars with you than with Google and Facebook and whatnot.
Chris Leithe:Would you be open to discussing a partnership? I was I was like, that's the future.
Vince Beese:That's brilliant. At LinkedIn every day. All the time. Right?
Chris Leithe:Yeah. All the time. And so what we're doing and some of the stuff that we're working on is how do you create content that is valuable to an audience? How do you build that audience and that asset? Mhmm.
Chris Leithe:And ultimately figure out, okay, great, I've got this great audience. I've been giving out all this great valuable information. Now the question is, how can I sell into that audience?
Vince Beese:So what comes first, the audience or the content?
Chris Leithe:Well, the content first, so you gotta come in and you've got to provide value, okay? So you've got to come in, and whatever you're doing and people are often afraid of, I don't want to give away too much information. Yeah. Yeah. And, that's just not going to matter.
Chris Leithe:And you should give away as much valuable information as you can because ultimately, they're going to see this content at points in time, and they're not gonna see all of it. And what you're doing is you're building trust, you're building expertise, you're showing that you're somebody who knows how to solve these specific problems, and so it's the content, it's the character, it's building your character. So what you'll what you'll find is a lot of people are very different than their online persona might be because they're highlighting certain versions of themselves. It's not that they're being inauthentic, it's that they're taking potentially a trait of theirs and magnifying it and focusing on that because this is an attention economy right now is you gotta really build a way of captivating people's attention. And so you can't do that if you're in milk toast.
Chris Leithe:Yep. You know? It's just hard to
Vince Beese:I mean, the subject lines back in the day, just email. I mean, if the subject line mattered. Right? Like, if you didn't have a good subject line, you weren't in a hook. Wasn't happening.
Vince Beese:Same thing on Same today, actually. Same thing on LinkedIn. Like, you know, when I look at let's be honest. If you're not an influencer, the reason you're gonna lead you're gonna read a post is the the headline. Right.
Vince Beese:Right. If it's not catchy or if it's not relevant, then you're just to the next thing and the next thing. It won't work. Yeah.
Chris Leithe:And so what we do is we help people figure out what
Vince Beese:their character is
Chris Leithe:gonna be, then we help them figure out what
Vince Beese:So who are you working with in this context? Are you working with CEOs? Who who the who what's the what's the typical profile you're working with to help them build their Great question. Segment or their asset? Great question.
Vince Beese:So our our
Chris Leithe:philosophy is people build relationships with people, not with companies. Mhmm. So we only work with people who wanna be the face
Vince Beese:The company. Of their company. Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Okay? And usually that is founders and CEOs of their company. That's who we, tend to work with the most. In larger organizations, it can be the sales leaders or whatever, and some cases can be the sales reps. Mhmm.
Chris Leithe:Because as you're in bigger, more reputable companies, you're able to spend time and energy on that, and it's a very valuable thing for a sales rep to spend their time on, but even more so for founders. Because once you've built this asset, you take that with you wherever you go, and people don't realize that. And so I'm really excited about the work that we're doing there because we have this, you know, we've got doctor Aaron Dennen who is a, professor at Duke. He teaches at Fuqua and and the undergrads there, and he teaches a course to these students on audience building. So he's a partner in Audience Acceleration Labs, with me, and he has built this framework and, strategies and core concepts that anybody can use to take to build their audience.
Chris Leithe:And in fact, we have, we're we're bringing him in to speak at 1 year master classes in a few weeks from now. It's gonna be a good one. Oh, yeah. It's gonna be awesome. And then the third person that we have in there is this wonderful human, Aaron Limpany, who is an amazing videographer.
Chris Leithe:And beyond just being a videographer, he's a marketing, guru as well. He's very smart, very disciplined, very creative, which is hard to find in one Yep. One person. And so what's magical about him is he's worked with several companies where he's actually come up with content strategies and filming strategies for them where he took one business that was doing all this outbound and switched their entire vector of customer acquisition to inbound and tripled their business in 9 months. Amazing.
Chris Leithe:Because of video? Because video. Because of social video.
Vince Beese:I have some great ideas for video if I could afford. I really do. That's this whole concept of sales HQ because it's like I have this whole vision of before sales HQ and after. You know what I mean? You can imagine.
Vince Beese:Right? Guy wakes up in the morning, the coffee's not made, he goes to work out, and someone's at the door ringing the doorbell or the leaf blowers blowing. He starts his, you know, his conference call, and then the dog's barking like crazy and then wake up his new day. He's now at sales HQ. Remember?
Chris Leithe:I love that.
Vince Beese:He gets downstairs. He's running at full speed on the treadmill, walks into sales. They shoot a cup of coffees handed to him.
Chris Leithe:He sits out his desk. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Bells are ringing. Ringing. Come on, man.
Chris Leithe:Buddy is right. From the ceiling.
Vince Beese:Thank you.
Chris Leithe:Yeah. I get it.
Vince Beese:I see your vision. Maybe you're a guy, and you can hook me up. And there you go. Absolutely. You know?
Vince Beese:But, yeah, I have limited budget. I'm a small operation.
Chris Leithe:You know? He he's not cheap, but he is effective. He's not cheap.
Vince Beese:What's his name? Aaron Liberty. Hey, Aaron, man. I just got your name on the sales live from sales HP podcast. Hook a brother up.
Vince Beese:Let's go, man.
Chris Leithe:I love that.
Vince Beese:But, no, video is powerful. I mean, you see being utilized, on LinkedIn, which, wasn't a thing 2 or 3 years ago. And now it's
Chris Leithe:And it's it's increasing. And so now is the time to get into more more video, and it's not being compelling. Yeah. And it's not being being very well thought out about how you're starting that video Yeah. And how you're driving anticipation throughout that video.
Vince Beese:Yeah. I I mean, it's it's it's effort, but it's quality. Right? Like, I think of it as also, you know, the visual. I don't know what percentage of people in in an audience are more visual than they are, text driven or audio driven.
Vince Beese:Right? But Great question. Right? Because there's arguments about that on specific I I I only know my social platform is LinkedIn. I haven't experimented on on YouTube on on, TikTok or Twitter or any of that.
Vince Beese:So but I have seen people say that people most people won't look at the video. They just read the text. So as long as you can do the video, make sure that you have the subtitles. Make sure you have the subtitles because most people will not actually click on the video. They'll just read your subtitles.
Vince Beese:Right.
Chris Leithe:And if you think about where you're watching these social media videos, like, maybe you're in the bathroom or maybe you're somewhere Or you're in the office.
Vince Beese:Or in
Chris Leithe:the office and you don't want it, you know, go back to you in in public. Well, great. Yeah. Do that.
Vince Beese:So but it but it's just it's a powerful powerful thing. So it is cool. Let's get back to this study about the the the social stuff really is interesting to me because the rise of the influencer. I've gotten pretty good now on LinkedIn to be able to tell who's promoting something. Right?
Vince Beese:Yes. I mean, they're getting it's very creative. I'll give the I'll give them the the top influencers a lot of credit. They they do sneak it in there pretty well, but you know at the end of the message, it's like and don't forget to go to such and such and check out this new CRM system.
Chris Leithe:Absolutely.
Vince Beese:But there's a lot be said there. If you think about it, go back to the fifties with celebrities smoking cigarettes, selling cigarettes. Like, it's it's as old as the day is long.
Chris Leithe:Right? Like, this whole it's been going on forever. And, actually, that's what's really interesting about doctor Dennen is he brings that historical context to the modern, content creation Yeah. Side of things. And he'll bring in, Walt Whitman and how Walt Whitman used a lot of the same, strategies that creators use today to promote leaves of grass, which was his first big Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Poetry, book that he had gotten published. And it's a great story. I'm not gonna, share it here because I don't wanna steal his thunder, but there's a lot of similarities to to what's going on. And, you know, you think of the modern day, what what's called a thirst trap. Well, those were being used back then.
Chris Leithe:Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I think I think you mentioned, you know, it's this whole concept is the framework could be used for individual sales, folks, which I see them on LinkedIn too, and some of them are doing great things. And I think about it this way.
Vince Beese:It's like once you build your audience, your audience is forever. Right? Absolutely. I mean, that's why if you start in your
Chris Leithe:early 20 keep investing in it.
Vince Beese:As long as you keep investing. If you start, it's it's like it's like starting a 401 k. You start a 401 k in your thirties. It's not a bad thing, but it'd be better if you started in your twenties. Right?
Chris Leithe:I would say we like it to home to home ownership. Yeah. Right? So it's the same you buy a home, you invest in it. If you don't keep investing in that home Yeah.
Chris Leithe:It, you know, deteriorates. It gets dilapidated. But if you keep investing it, you keep maintaining it over time, that asset, ideally, if it's in the right location Yeah. Will grow.
Vince Beese:It's kinda like you're an athlete and in this sport, you're more, relevant to, like, a golfer because a golfer has longevity. Right. Right? Right. So if you do this right, you're like a professional golfer where you can play from your twenties to your into the into your grave.
Vince Beese:Right? Yeah. If you take the time and effort. That's that's funny. Look.
Vince Beese:You don't like golfers? Or Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Love golfers. Yeah. Love
Vince Beese:what else do we wanna talk about? What's near and dear to your heart these days? Like, what
Chris Leithe:are you passionate about? What's what's driving it? Oh, man. What am I passionate about? So professionally, I'm passionate about people development.
Chris Leithe:Uh-huh. So, like, my big thing when I'm talking leadership with folks, it's it starts with empathy. Mhmm. I think that's something that people don't talk about enough. They don't talk about it in leadership, and they don't talk about it in sales enough.
Chris Leithe:And and what I'm really passionate about is that level of empathy and personal development, not only of myself, but but helping my clients, with that. Outside of work, it's music. Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Is there
Chris Leithe:a specific genre? Or I love singer songwriter type stuff. And, also, I grew up in the eighties and and nineties, so, you know, that grunge rock kinda thing, which is yeah. You know, you can tell. My my real job, yeah, is is I'm I'm working my way towards being
Vince Beese:a rock star. Nice. Yeah. Did you know, by the way, that I'm gonna ask you a question at the end about yourself? But did you know an interesting thing?
Chris Leithe:Is not that.
Vince Beese:Can I talk about myself for a sec? Yeah. I didn't ask, but Please. But could I tell you?
Chris Leithe:Yes. We'll get you going.
Vince Beese:I was I was in early nineties a a disc jockey at a modern rock station in on the Jersey Shore. Get out of So it was when all that was breaking, all the grunge was breaking. So Nirvana, Pearl Jam, all that stuff. That was magical. It's crazy because we would get the the demos.
Vince Beese:We would get the the pre releases before they were released. And at a modern rock station, it was more similar to a college rock station. Right? Like Yeah. We get some really funky stuff coming out.
Vince Beese:I never forget when we received the the single for alive. And I put it on. I never heard of this who this Pearl Jam thing is. And I'm like, wow. This is I said this is something.
Vince Beese:Like, as soon as you heard it the first time,
Chris Leithe:you're like You just know. This is you get the goosebumps.
Vince Beese:Right? It's gonna blow up. And you're like, wow. Yeah. So, yeah, it's that's special to me that whole nineties and that whole decade.
Vince Beese:But we can have a whole another podcast on music now. You know what I mean? Maybe we'll do a separate show. I would What do you think? I would love that.
Chris Leithe:I think that would be so much fun.
Vince Beese:I'm gonna I got one last question for you, but I wanna see if anyone from the audience has any questions or not. Oh my goodness. No. You know, don't don't don't feel obligated. Don't feel obligated.
Vince Beese:I still have some good ones. So okay. Last question for you.
Chris Leithe:Great. You ready?
Vince Beese:I think so. One thing about Chris that's interesting that most people don't know. Now you shared a lot.
Chris Leithe:So this is So so in addition to in addition to being a, like, evening rock star. So Do you play an instrument? I do. Okay. I play guitar and I sing.
Chris Leithe:I take singing lessons. Nice. People don't
Vince Beese:don't know about. Squirrel rock.
Chris Leithe:Yes. And I also went down and spent some time with the monks in South Carolina.
Vince Beese:People don't know that either.
Chris Leithe:Yeah. How was that experience? It was it was really special. How long? So I would go down and do these weekend long retreats.
Chris Leithe:So it's like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Yeah. So it's these 4 day long, retreats, and I would do it probably about once or twice a year for a while. And it's a silent retreat. Yeah.
Chris Leithe:Right? And it was with these this sect of monks called the Trappist monks, which, if you know anything about them, they they fall under, I think, the Catholic lineage. But it was that that was not important to me. The important part was the being in that kind of contemplative mindset and framework for that number of days.
Vince Beese:Yeah. That's cool.
Chris Leithe:Yeah. And and going inside, which is important and sometimes hard to do in modern society when we got all this stuff going on around the
Vince Beese:plains, The the Christie thoughtful, empathetic, empathy driven leader, rock star. What else could we add to it? I don't know. Very complex, man. Very complex.
Vince Beese:I just have a lot of interest. You do. That's awesome. I wanna thank you for coming on show, man. Thank you so much for having me.
Vince Beese:This is great.
Chris Leithe:This is a great conversation.
Vince Beese:Thank you, man.
Chris Leithe:Yeah. Till
Vince Beese:next time, sales HQ.