Live from Sales HQ with Joel Bush
We're live from sales HQ. I'm Vince Speezy, your host and the founder here at sales HQ. And my guest today is Joel Busch. Joel, welcome to the show.
Joel Bush:Thank you.
Vince Beese:Glad you could make it today. You brought the great weather for us as well.
Joel Bush:Let's take it everywhere I can.
Vince Beese:We really appreciate that. Oops. As I drop my glasses. Just tell us what you're up to these days. What are you working on?
Joel Bush:So, I'm working at RepSpark as the chief revenue officer. RepSpark is a wholesale ecommerce platform. We work with around 225 brands, and we are what connects them with their wholesale network or their retail buyers. That's how they connect with all their resellers and the way that their sales reps write orders, the way their customers access, inventory product information and place orders.
Vince Beese:So what The brand? Who would be some of your customers, for example?
Joel Bush:Yeah. So, we've actually got a few that are local to us here in the Triangle. Peter Millar. Oh, yeah. Stitch was a customer.
Joel Bush:Gosh, we work with Under Armour Golf. We work with, sort of the who's who in the golf industry. Okay. We've got, quite a few surf and swim brands that use RepSpark.
Vince Beese:Behind the scenes. People wouldn't recognize your brand necessarily. Right? Not at all.
Joel Bush:In fact, you know, Peter Millar has thousands of retailers. Most of them probably don't realize they're in RepSpark. Right? They're just using Peter Milar's wholesale system.
Vince Beese:Oh, very cool. How they how they Business going well?
Joel Bush:Things are going great. Yeah. We're go doing great.
Vince Beese:That's good. First question for you. How'd you get started in sales?
Joel Bush:Yeah. So What's your story? You know, when I was young, I'd I'd like a lot of us in sales, didn't aspire to grow up to be a sales person. Right?
Vince Beese:Come on. That's the first time I've heard of you. I I
Joel Bush:was in college. It was coming towards the end of my freshman year, and I saw an ad in the paper that said, get paid to do your homework. It seemed like the greatest combination of things I could possibly think of. And responded to the ad, it was at the school newspaper, and they said, there's your office over there, sit in there. When the phone rings, fill out this piece of paper, which is basically an insertion order for advertisement in the newspaper.
Joel Bush:So great. I sat there for a couple months. Phone didn't ring very often. And somewhere along the way, I think my dad gave me a copy of Sales for Dummies, because he knew I was in this job, and it wasn't really a sales job. It was just sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.
Joel Bush:Yeah. And so I read this book and learned about, you know, prospecting and cold calling and walking into businesses and and presenting yourself that way. And over the course of of time for the next 3 years, we went from being a once a week 8 page paper. Newspapers are the size of a newspaper determined by the amount of advertising. Okay.
Joel Bush:So we went from a once a week 8 page newspaper to a 3 times a week 32 to 40 page Wow. Newspaper. And I ended up by the time I graduated college, I had a sales team of 4 people working for me, and we just absolutely exploded the school newspaper, New Mexico State University. New Mexico.
Vince Beese:Roundup newspaper. Wait. Is that the Aztecs? No. The Aggies.
Vince Beese:The Aggies. Okay. Wow. That's quite a story. What year in college were you when you started that?
Joel Bush:It was at the end of my freshman year. So I had, it took me 5 years to get through college. So I actually had 4 years in that role.
Vince Beese:So when you graduated, you right moved right into the sales leadership role and built a team?
Joel Bush:So I graduated with a marketing degree, and I looked at marketing jobs and how much those paid, and I looked at how much I could make in sales, and it was a no brainer at that point.
Vince Beese:That's an interesting story.
Joel Bush:Yeah. So that's how I got got into sales. I had a a couple different advertising sales gigs. And then, when I moved to the Triangle, got connected with Fantana Communications, which at the time was a, computer trade book publisher. They published things like the SQL 5 programmer's reference and, you
Vince Beese:know, very exciting. Yeah. I I think I got that on Amazon. Yeah. It's quite a read.
Joel Bush:Well, you know, somewhere into my tenure there, the company got the exclusive retail distribution rights for Netscape Navigator, where people bought software in boxes. Yep. And so I, you you know, it really jump started my sales career, also opened my eyes to the Internet. Yeah. Right?
Joel Bush:I mean, this was 94, 95. And, all of a sudden, I was repping the hottest selling software product in history. And, you know, it's sort sort of what got me into
Vince Beese:So your company packaged up the net, Netscape software and Yeah.
Joel Bush:It was a and all that. CD or, you know, 3 and a half inch discs, one with a user manual, and it came in a big, heavy box.
Vince Beese:I remember that.
Joel Bush:Sold those into Best Buy and Office Max, Office Depot, Fries. Yeah. All those types of stores.
Vince Beese:Is that crazy that we had to get this piece of software and then load it onto our machines
Joel Bush:It was it was a different and
Vince Beese:then read a manual. Like, people don't even know what that is. You know what I mean? I remember going to trade shows at the same time. You probably went to these where all these, like, AOL and CompuServe and Prodigi, we'd be hanging out there.
Vince Beese:Oh, yeah. You got to use any of those. Right. Like, here's a 30 day free subscription. Like and you just have stacks of CD ROMs.
Vince Beese:Right? Remember that? It's crazy. So you started in the Internet time about the same time I did, which was just locked into kind of getting a job in electronic publishing similar to what you
Joel Bush:That's right.
Vince Beese:And what were the first things that really were remarkable to you that you saw when you you joined and you saw what Netscape was doing and other Internet companies were doing?
Joel Bush:Yeah. I think, you know, from the Netscape standpoint, it really helped me realize how powerful software is and how much utility that can bring to people, especially when you open up a whole new category like Internet browser, right, at that point in time. You know, a little further into that journey realized the power of annual recurring revenue
Vince Beese:Mhmm.
Joel Bush:As a way to grow a business
Vince Beese:Even prior to the SaaS. Right?
Joel Bush:Well, you know, it's sort sort of in that same vein. So, you know, before it was SaaS, it was application server pages. Right? And and so people were starting to move in that direction. But, yeah, I had a number of software sales jobs that were literally just selling licenses and not SaaS.
Joel Bush:But as, you know, as as SaaS started to to take over the software world, you know, just, again, it just really opened my eyes to the power of ARR as a way to grow a business.
Vince Beese:Yeah. It was a nice one.
Joel Bush:You don't start from 0 every month or quarter or year that you've got this really amazing base of revenue coming in from contracted customers that you can sort of build your business on.
Vince Beese:So if I'm reading you right, you never really went into an individual sales contributor role. You started right off into sales management.
Joel Bush:I I actually had this several individual contributor roles after I mean, I I couldn't go from having this part time college experience into actually running a sales team. And so Oh, gosh.
Vince Beese:People didn't buy that, No.
Joel Bush:I've worked at, you know, had a lot of crazy jobs along the way. I worked at Tiger Direct as as just, you know, it's a green screen. Every time you hang up, there was another person on the phone as soon as you hung up to, got to work with Reed Conrad on extensibility, which was acquired by TIBCO Mhmm. Right at the turn of the century, about 2 days before the dotcom bubble burst.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Joel Bush:And, yeah, the rest is history. And I've worked on probably a dozen or more very early stage technology companies around the triangle.
Vince Beese:So you had success as an individual contributor. What drove you to want to be in sales leadership?
Joel Bush:Yeah. I don't know if there was any, like, compelling event other than, you know, just continuing to, become more mature and knowledgeable in in the overall operation of the business and and how things work, and it just seemed to make sense to to head down the path.
Vince Beese:Did you raise your hand, or did someone approach you about
Joel Bush:Oh, gosh. You know, Vince, in these in these companies, you know, a lot of them have been so small. Right? So is it eText very, very early. I was at, you know, extensibility.
Joel Bush:I was the only sales resource for some time. So I think it was just growing a team around me and and helping to grow the company and just sort of getting up there by default.
Vince Beese:You're the
Joel Bush:a constant decision. I think
Vince Beese:individual contributor, sales leader, operations director, revenue ops. Right? Like
Joel Bush:Oh, I mean, that's that's a big small company.
Vince Beese:You probably
Joel Bush:wear a lot of hats depending on the day of the week or the time of the day. So
Vince Beese:Once you got into actually managing a team of multiple folks, what did you find early days challenging about that experience?
Joel Bush:Well, I'm sure there's no secret to anyone, but salespeople like to find any excuse they can to not do sales work. Right? And so, you know, keeping people motivated, trying to really maintain a positive culture. And, you know, something we're doing at RepSpark that I'm really proud of is building the revenue squad as a team that promotes heavily from within. So we've still got a couple.
Joel Bush:In fact, we have 2 AE roles open right now if anyone's looking. Uh-oh. But we we're trying to build a culture where, people will come into this team as a BDR, and then they'll have opportunities to move into account executive, account management, or sales engineering depending on their Yeah. Their preferences moving forward. And so we're we're really trying to build that culture at RevSpark right now where it is a promote from within organization.
Joel Bush:And the the way that you get on the rev squad is you start as a BDR and work hard.
Vince Beese:I got a good idea for you, by the way. You hire those 2 reps inside sales HQ with yourself, and then we'll build the nucleus of the the team here and The challenge is
Joel Bush:you have an in office requirement in downtown Durham.
Vince Beese:Let's get out of that. Let's get you the proper way locations. You can surround yourself with other, sales professionals. So let's fast forward a little bit. I'm I'm curious today.
Vince Beese:Over the last 18 months, I think things have dramatically changed for the sales world. Yeah. SaaS companies were just riding high. It was easy to close deals, quite frankly. A lot of salespeople had success without being
Joel Bush:Sure.
Vince Beese:A long career or a lot of experience selling, came too easy quite frankly. That's all ended.
Joel Bush:Yes.
Vince Beese:How do we get at what are you doing or what what should we be doing as a sales leadership or sales culture to kind of change the dynamics that are happening in the sales world today?
Joel Bush:Yeah. I think, you know, there's only so much impact we can have individually on the macroeconomic issues. Right? So some of it is just gonna be we're in harder times.
Vince Beese:It is.
Joel Bush:You gotta grind a little bit harder to get your deals. You know, something that we're doing is really focusing on an account management practice where we get amazing feedback and have a really good relationship with our existing customers Mhmm. Understanding on the challenges they're facing, any issues with the product, and translating that back over to the account executive so they understand when they're talking to prospects, the issues the customers are facing, the success that they're finding. And really trying to sell more of a relationship and a consultative Yeah. Relationship than selling a product.
Joel Bush:Right? So we're we are actively selling a relationship. We've got a platform that, know, entry level brands can latch on to rep spark, and we can take them all the way to, you know, worldwide distribution across multiple business units and multiple languages and everything else. And so I think, really understanding the challenges that your customers are having Right. Will will
Vince Beese:And how do you approach them? Because, you mean, they get approached by you're not the only vendor they work with. Right? Yeah. Of course.
Vince Beese:How do you approach them in a respectful way or or approach them that here's what's in it for you. Right? I know what's in it for you all.
Joel Bush:But Yeah. I think, you know, we we have a a practice there where we try to say that any first email to a company or to a prospect would be weird if it went to anyone else. Right? So you're putting enough specific information in there so that to differentiate yourself from all of the sort of robo emails that are going out Mhmm. The the just mass prospecting email waves that are going out, that these emails have to do do something Do you
Vince Beese:know about to the customer base or to prospects?
Joel Bush:To the prospects.
Vince Beese:Oh, I was telling you, if you're when you're reaching out to your customers Oh,
Joel Bush:I'm sorry. Okay.
Vince Beese:Have these engagements because, again, you're just one of 20 vendors they work with. Yeah. So what And everyone's always asking from from them, how do you do it so you could actually genuinely get this feedback that you're creating? Yeah.
Joel Bush:Sure. So what what we've done is create and this is is nothing that we've invented. This is, you know, tried and true practice, but we've developed a a series of quarterly business reviews and annual business reviews with our customers. We present them with, you know, sort of data utilization on how the platform is going, show them what their all their sell through numbers are and things like that, and just try to have a conversation with them. What's going on in your business?
Joel Bush:And we try to bring a lot of value to that conversation, so it's not just, oh, once a quarter, RepSpark tries to call me on these things. But it's really like, hey. Let's take a holistic view of your business. Help us understand what's going on in your vertical with your customers and how we can be a better part of this.
Vince Beese:Do your sales reps, your new business sales reps, do they get to listen to those QBRs or participate?
Joel Bush:They're all yeah. We we record them all and then sort of share highlights. They're about an hour long, so I'd rather not people are sitting around listening to those
Vince Beese:because, obviously, it's important to know what customers are are saying
Joel Bush:Of course.
Vince Beese:About the product as opposed to sometimes what we say to the market.
Joel Bush:Yeah. We've Right? You know, we're across the company. Right? Anybody in the company that talks to a customer is responsible for alerting, you know, account management if there's any sort of churn issues or if there's anything that we think isn't perfect with the customer.
Joel Bush:And so we sort of swap team in on those and make sure that we're staying proactive and ahead of issues rather than being reactive. Mhmm. That's been a big shift for the company as we've sort of grown. You know, this is happening in a lot of areas in the company. We're just sort of at that inflection point of around 50 employees where you start to get much more specialized roles, and everyone has a lot more clearly defined, responsibilities and expectations.
Vince Beese:So, customer churn, how are you guys doing with that? We're doing well. We, 1st Industries kind of metrics?
Joel Bush:Yeah. So I think well, we've got three levels of our product. Our entry level product has, you know, slightly better than industry normal churn.
Vince Beese:Mhmm.
Joel Bush:Our professional enterprise enterprise plans have almost no churn.
Vince Beese:Oh, great.
Joel Bush:And part of that is we think that we've we're doing a great job for these customers. Another part of that is the switching costs for b to b wholesale ecommerce systems are very high. Yeah. So it's it takes a lot for people to wanna rip repspark out or or even for us to unseat a competitor is very difficult. And so, again, we try to through that account management, the quarterly and the annual business reviews, try to proactively stay ahead of issues and make sure that we've got a good finger on
Vince Beese:the Yeah. So in your industry, you have to hold these big customers or it could really Yeah.
Joel Bush:We we we just can't lose it. Yeah. Peter Millar or
Vince Beese:Right.
Joel Bush:Under Armour. Right. Like that.
Vince Beese:We have to be in touch. So let's switch to the prospecting side of things now. Obviously, you have a very targeted list of accounts, which I think is always a think it makes life easier when you know who you should be going after. You really defined your ICP down to a level of the the actual accounts and the people at the accounts.
Joel Bush:Yep. I
Vince Beese:assume that's part of your strategy. Right?
Joel Bush:It is. Yeah. So we've got a number of core verticals. We are are far and away the number one wholesale platform in golf. So we connect golf brands with golf buyers being golf shops, country clubs, off course shops that that sell golf stuff.
Joel Bush:And we've got a a handful of other verticals that we're we're very strong in. And then we've got a practice now where this year, we're going after 3 big verticals in conjunction with marketing, but then we're gonna have 6 to 10 sort of fast vertical tests. So we we have a series of sort of checkpoints as we evaluate a new vertical. Day 1 is, like, hey, let's just go out and and answer these 20 questions about this vertical. Do they have a a strong network of independent retailers?
Joel Bush:Are these brands big enough to to recognize ROI from something like RevSpark? And so they sort of run through those in the first day. If it's a thumbs up at the end of that day, they spend the next week and a half prospecting into those and trying to really get a good feel for that vertical. At the end of that 2 week cycle, there's a go, no go whether we continue to pursue that vertical or not. What are
Vince Beese:you looking for? So What questions do you need to answer?
Joel Bush:Yeah. Yeah. So it's you know, what's the TAM in this vertical? Like, how many retailers are there? How many brands are there?
Joel Bush:Sort of what's the the total resale or wholesale volume going into that channel? You know, is there already a dominant b to b wholesale platform in that space? If so, we're probably not gonna mess with it. And then a lot of it has to do about, you know, the the companies that were approaching their interest and willingness to invest in this type of solution, both from a a human capital standpoint to, you know, change the way that their operations work and change their workflow for their sales reps and their retailers, as well as the financial obligation to Yeah. To make that switch.
Joel Bush:So it's just a lot of sort of very, I wouldn't say high level, maybe mid level evaluation of that vertical to to make sure it's worth our time to pursue and that we're not gonna spend 3 months chasing after something that's Yeah. Not gonna happen.
Vince Beese:Smart. Prospecting wise, is are trade shows a big thing for you all?
Joel Bush:They are. Yeah. You know, really unique thing about where we sit is that the brands are our prospects. Right? So if we go to the PGA show, they've all conveniently set themselves up with booths, and we can just walk up and down the aisles and talk
Vince Beese:That's interesting. It's kind of the reverse. Where vendors are in booths, you got the brands in booths.
Joel Bush:That's right. Oh, that's awesome. So if we go to, And they can't run away. Yeah. They have they have to stay there.
Joel Bush:Right? We were working on a new vertical in fishing, so fishing apparel, fishing equipment Yeah. Anything that that you would find in a bait shop or, a fly shop or something like that. So we went to ICAST in Orlando earlier this year. Same thing.
Joel Bush:Just walked up and down the rows, talked to everybody, realized that, you know, this is a vertical that that's worth pursuing. And so now we've got quite a few.
Vince Beese:Did you always do that, or was that a new strategy? Well, obviously, during pandemic, there weren't trade shows. But Yeah.
Joel Bush:I mean, the the PGA show was still going strong during
Vince Beese:the pandemic. Yeah.
Joel Bush:Didn't seem to be,
Vince Beese:been slowed.
Joel Bush:Too much. But, yeah, that has certainly sort of come back.
Vince Beese:And how many of these shows do you attend? I assume this is a 10 you don't set up a booth. You're just sending reps to these.
Joel Bush:Most of them. Yeah. The PGA show, we do exhibit. At the others, we just send reps to to walk. We probably go to 5 or 6 in the year, so it's not a huge
Vince Beese:And how many reps do you send to each one of these? 2. Okay. 2. Yeah.
Vince Beese:And ROI is good?
Joel Bush:It's great. Yeah. I mean, it's basically travel and an admission ticket versus a booth and all the things.
Vince Beese:Do you hold a dinner or any kind of event at these things?
Joel Bush:We're we're sort of growing into that. Yeah. We we have so many high value customers at the PGA show that we'll probably start to do some Okay. Events with that in January.
Vince Beese:Outside of that, I'm always curious from a prospecting standpoint what's working for folks. So what other channels are really starting the conversation for you all?
Joel Bush:In terms of verticals Or
Vince Beese:Just in in form of of prospecting.
Joel Bush:Oh, how we do our our prospecting. Yeah.
Vince Beese:So What's working with starting the conversation?
Joel Bush:You know, like you said before, it's fairly easy for us to identify prospects in our space. Right? Manufacturers servicing whatever market it might be. We do fairly traditional outreach. We got a a BDR team that does an amazing job of booking appointments for the account executives.
Joel Bush:Within that BDR team, they've started to do all sorts of creative things. I've got one rep who or BDR who started to connect with brands through Instagram instead of coming into their inbox or leaving them voice mails, interacting with them right there, saying, hey. You know, your brand looks like a great fit for what we're doing. Let's learn more about your wholesale practice. And, you know, we booked quite a few appointments from that.
Vince Beese:Yep. Yeah. Because your brands are all gonna be on Instagram. They're gonna be on TikTok. They're gonna be on Instagram.
Vince Beese:Right? Yes. Absolutely. You use TikTok? I don't.
Vince Beese:Not you.
Joel Bush:53 years old, man. Hey.
Vince Beese:There's no age limit on TikTok, by the way. I don't think they let's say I don't think there's a cap on it. Right? I guess I could. I could.
Vince Beese:But but are you taking it are your sales reps taking advantage of TikTok as well?
Joel Bush:I assume so. Yeah. It's it's not something that we have Isn't
Vince Beese:it interesting to think that, like, you know, these social platforms that were for building brand or turn into this really nice way to develop relationships Yeah. Quite frankly.
Joel Bush:You know, something we've found, particularly with Instagram, is that then they start to recommend other brands because that's what your profile, that's what the algorithm sees that you're interested in. And So they start to recommend, hey. Here's 10 more brands you might be interested in.
Vince Beese:Can you set up appointments for me? You know? That's interesting. What about email? Is that working for you all?
Joel Bush:It does. Cold? It does. And I think going back to what I mentioned before is that we're not, you know, we're not writing one email and
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Joel Bush:Bombarding the world with it. Yeah. We're having to write, you know, bespoke emails to people.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Joel Bush:And I think that makes a big difference. Yeah. If I if I looked at our conversion rate from outgoing emails, it's probably, you know, not outstanding.
Vince Beese:No one's is. Yeah.
Joel Bush:We're we're we're doing enough outreach that it it seems to work.
Vince Beese:Does your marketing team do anything in regards to drip campaigns or newsletters or just information?
Joel Bush:All the above. Yeah. So what what we encounter quite a bit is companies where it's, like, there's an interest. They're definitely a fit from sort of the the high level parameters of the business, but it's just bad timing.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Joel Bush:They might be in a contract, or we might encounter we might have reached out to them during their super busy season or whatever it might be. And so those go back into HubSpot and get marked in a way that marketing knows which Yep. Drip campaign to to enroll them in.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Joel Bush:And that seems to to work really well. So it sort of keeps, you know, the brand awareness going. It gives you that heartbeat of of interaction with the prospect without wearing them down all the time. And then, you know, there's a calendar reminder to reach out at whatever time.
Vince Beese:And do you have traditional BDRs?
Joel Bush:We do.
Vince Beese:Okay. How many?
Joel Bush:3 right now, about to be 4.
Vince Beese:And do they cold call?
Joel Bush:They do. A lot.
Vince Beese:How's that working?
Joel Bush:Good. I think phone is our most effective tool at this point.
Vince Beese:Because nobody picks up when you call, they don't which people don't get many calls anymore.
Joel Bush:They don't get a lot of calls. They they for some reason, these guys tend to get quite a few answers.
Vince Beese:Finding cell phone numbers?
Joel Bush:We use Seamless, which is, like, ZoomInfo. Yeah. It's hit or miss. K. It depends on on where the data came from, I think.
Joel Bush:But, you know, we've been through all of them. We went through, ZoomInfo, Apollo, and a couple others and seem to
Vince Beese:be really happy with Seamless. Yeah. I I I get that same kind of response regards to cold call. When you do it right, when you can get the right data, if you're not doing today, it's a missed opportunity because no one's no one's hitting them as much on the phone as they are. Interaction
Joel Bush:for 20 or 30 seconds with somebody, which is
Vince Beese:The trick of it is, as you know, is that these people call, and then when someone picks they're so shocked that someone picked up. They're like, you and then you're like, well, what do you want, dude? You know?
Joel Bush:What did you think of that?
Vince Beese:I was in a meeting yesterday. It's funny we're having a coffee meeting and the guy goes, hold on. Let me let me answer this. And he's one of those people that like to challenge salespeople. So he answers it and he's like, yeah.
Vince Beese:Hello? How can I help you? You're he's like, dude, what do you want? You called me. What what is it that you want?
Vince Beese:I'm willing to listen to. So the sales rep just went in and he goes, I don't need it. I'm good. Bye. But he gave him 60 seconds to be able to get out whatever you're gonna get.
Vince Beese:So my point is the people out there listening, like, people do pick up their cell phones, and don't be shocked when they do.
Joel Bush:Yeah. I think
Vince Beese:And have your whatever your first line is ready to go because know why you're calling.
Joel Bush:You're ready to go.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Because it's like, I have to tell you, when I answered the phone and they they don't they're or is this is that you know, it's like, what are you doing? Yeah. Like, just let's go.
Joel Bush:You know, I I I think in sales, it's always worth, you know, sort of doing a review and and making sure that you're still grounded in the basics. Right? And Sandler, if no one's familiar with Sandler, they have some amazing Yeah. Cold call scripts to get you through that first 20 seconds, which is basically, like, hey, thanks for answering. You know, can you take 30 seconds and let me tell you why I'm calling?
Vince Beese:I tell you, I hate that I hate that one, which is, do you have 5 minutes from now? Because if you ask me if I have a time right now, I'm gonna say, absolutely not. No. I don't. Don't ask me.
Vince Beese:Just go, man. Hey. It's Joel. I'm calling because I saw you guys use this thing and we do this thing so much better and we're helping our clients do that.
Joel Bush:Pause. We help people sell more. Do you need that?
Vince Beese:Pause. Let them respond. No. I don't. Why wouldn't you you know what I mean?
Vince Beese:Like, sales is easy for you to break it down. It's a series of questions.
Joel Bush:That's it.
Vince Beese:And it's either people are interested with these questions and and participating or they're not.
Joel Bush:I think it's you raise a great point that it's really important to listen. Right? You have to ask questions, and then you have to listen. I'd I'd like the 80 20 rule in terms of communication on both cold calls and when you're doing discovery. Right?
Vince Beese:If Yeah.
Joel Bush:You're talking more than about 20% of the time, you're talking too I mean You should be hearing all of the problems and issues and challenges your your prospects are facing and then figure out how your problem
Vince Beese:I will say, and I'm gonna date myself, but I I think this is an a authentic statement. I think the younger generation, because they're so used to the, texting and just messaging, a way of communicating even with their friends and family, that the art of conversation or at least starting conversations, it's a little bit more awkward for them. So I could say it could be very nerve wracking, but the only way to break through that is practice, practice, practice. Right? Like, the only way you're going to get better at that is either you role play with your peers or you just start doing it and get better at it.
Vince Beese:Everybody, universally, sucks at it when they first start doing it.
Joel Bush:That's right. Again, all of your all your sales skills, we've gotta constantly be brushing those up, make sure we're staying grounded in the principles that got us to that point. And I think it's really easy to get off on tangents and sort of lose your way Yeah. And not stay focused on solving problems.
Vince Beese:The one thing I found in both email and in, in voice prospecting, is opening with a thought provoking question that can't could be a yes or no because you're trying to get to the next question or some thought provoking question. Because I think it does a number of different things. One, it's if the question is the right question. For example, when I'm going to approach a person or a leader about SalesHQ, the first question I ask is, I'm curious. Is you or your team fully remote today?
Vince Beese:And that's fairly much of a yes or no. Sometimes it's a a maybe, but I'll get response to that 67% of the time. Really? Yes. Because how hard is it to answer that question?
Vince Beese:Yes. And or
Joel Bush:some people they know, there's no controversy, and, yeah, it's black or white.
Vince Beese:Or some people might push back and say, well, why do you ask? And that's cool. Then let's now we're starting a conversation. Yeah. Because what I was doing before on LinkedIn after the first connection, I would go I'd start spilling what's sales HQ, and I'm like, that's not it wasn't getting anything.
Vince Beese:So I said, don't just stop this. Let's just start the conversation.
Joel Bush:Yeah. Bombarding feature people with a features list is never sold.
Vince Beese:But but sales is an experiment. Right? It's like you don't know until you know. That's why there's not a one size fits all or one playbook that works. It's like you gotta understand who your customers are, what's your product what's problem you're solving, and you gotta start the conversation however you feel best it's gonna start.
Vince Beese:Right?
Joel Bush:That's right. That's right. And and through those practices and you continue to hone that process, those questions will get better and better and better, and you'll start to understand what the answers mean a lot more in detail and a lot more in-depth. Yeah. I think, you you know, having a series of really good questions, whether it's on a cold call or in your discovery meetings, is critically important.
Joel Bush:Yeah.
Vince Beese:You've got
Joel Bush:to understand what you're trying to get to through your questions and then being able to internalize the responses that you get and then acting upon
Vince Beese:them. Yep.
Joel Bush:Right? There is no script.
Vince Beese:Yep.
Joel Bush:Right? There is not a script. There is there are guidelines and Yeah. Sort of rules rules of engagement, but, ultimately, we've gotta we've gotta uncover the issues, the challenges that people are having and map those challenges to the solution that we sell.
Vince Beese:There's gotta be a problem. You have to have a solution for that problem, and there's gotta be a desire to solve that problem.
Joel Bush:That's That's right.
Vince Beese:If those three things don't happen, you don't you're never gonna have a sale.
Joel Bush:That's right.
Vince Beese:Hey. Let me go back to your, top of the conversation. We started talking about your team goes into your your offices in, downtown Durham. Do you guys have a mandatory kind of in office amount of days, or how does that work for you all?
Joel Bush:Monday through Friday.
Vince Beese:Really? Yep. Was it has it always been that way, or has it slowly come back to that?
Joel Bush:So I've been with RepSpark for 3 years. So I guess I sorta got in there right at the tail end of COVID.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Joel Bush:At least since I've been running the revenue side of the team yet has been mandated in all.
Vince Beese:Any pushback from the team on that?
Joel Bush:Not really. I think, you know, we may be moving to a hybrid schedule where we're gonna work from home on Wednesdays, but that hasn't locked in yet. Absolutely. This is this is based on the team's feedback.
Vince Beese:Well, that's
Joel Bush:that's that's the
Vince Beese:Counter That seems to the industry, just so you know.
Joel Bush:Yeah. So I'm not sure exactly where we're gonna land there, Vince, but, you know, I'm getting a little pushback. We are pretty lenient on, you know, when the day ends so that people can avoid traffic. I could try to make some consolations for them them coming in. But I think, you know, we we tend to skew a little bit earlier career.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Bush:And I just think it's really important to be around people that know what they're doing, that you can, you know, turn around and get an answer to a question. You don't have to schedule a meeting or, you know, wait for someone else
Vince Beese:to talk. And all the data I've been reviewing and seeing says that hybrid is the winner, period. End of story. People that are in regardless if you're in sales or not in sales, people that are in a hybrid office, some portion during a week, 1, 2, 3 days, whatever that is, will outperform those that are fully remote or fully in the office, by the way. Okay.
Vince Beese:This is a HubSpot study. That. I wanna HubSpot study. I will send it to you.
Joel Bush:Yeah. I'd love to
Vince Beese:send it. And so what the trends are also showing is that, most companies are tending to be in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Okay. With Monday Friday work from home day. Okay. Here in sales HQ, HQ, interestingly enough, I did a survey and asked people which days of the week do you prefer to come in because, obviously, it's flex.
Vince Beese:You come in whenever you want. They said Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday, top 3, in that order, and then and then Monday, number 4, and Friday, number 5. So I then looked up the data verse. They say this, but is that true? Uh-huh.
Vince Beese:It's apps what they said is actually true. Yes. Wednesday here is the most popular because for us, Wednesday is a big event day. Like, today, we do this. We have another event after this, and we have a big networking event tonight.
Vince Beese:So that I'm leading Wednesday to be the day. Regardless, Tuesday and and Thursday aren't far off from Wednesday. It's not a big jump. But that's, I think, what we're seeing the evolution become.
Joel Bush:Interesting. Yeah. I can't wait to read that that article. I mean, I'm I'm admittedly old school in my my in office belief. If you're telling me
Vince Beese:Hey, man.
Joel Bush:That says hybrid is better than
Vince Beese:I will tell you this. It's I'd I'd rather have a team in the office 5 days a week than no days a week, Period. End of story. And I know some of the people can't may not appreciate that today, but if they ever leave your company and go to a company that's a 500 something month, they'll feel the difference.
Joel Bush:That's right. And, you know, a handful of folks that are on the team now, this is their second grown up job. Right. And they were at least a couple of them were fully remote before. They seem to really appreciate the team atmosphere, being around humans all day.
Joel Bush:Right? And, again, having access to leadership team and experienced AEs and other people that are in the office to bounce questions off of and get help when they need.
Vince Beese:I mean, career development, I think it's vital. If you're really looking to advance yourself and and Totally. Get promoted or move to the next role, it's really hard to do that 100% remote. Yeah. So I think it's all good things.
Vince Beese:Well, Grace has been good. I got one question I typically throw out at my guests. It's, thought provoking.
Joel Bush:K.
Vince Beese:So you're gonna have to think about this because it's thought provoking. K. What's the one thing that most people, Joel, don't know about you that's interesting?
Joel Bush:The one thing most people don't know about me that is interesting. Golly. This is a real stumper, Vince. I told you
Vince Beese:I told you to be mentally prepared, Joel. You can make it up too. I don't think anyone will fact check it. Holy.
Joel Bush:Well, I mean, I don't know if this is
Vince Beese:I don't know how personal I gotta do it.
Joel Bush:Just I I sort of have this, this fantasy of, like, being the front man for a band.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Joel Bush:But I can't sing, and I don't play any musical instruments. But I think my work around here is that if I pick the right songs, I can can sing okay.
Vince Beese:K. Do you have a karaoke that's your go to? Do you even karaoke?
Joel Bush:I don't karaoke.
Vince Beese:So you have a dream that you're gonna be a frontline singer for a band. You don't
Joel Bush:something in the back of my head. Like, you know, I've always imagined singing, playing Beats, Done Dirt Cheap, or DCDC in front of people for some reason.
Vince Beese:Tonight, we have a big networking event. We're going to have a DJ who's gonna have a mic, Joel.
Joel Bush:Tonight? Today? I don't
Vince Beese:know. Tonight? What what do you say to your reps when they say, boss, tomorrow we should do it? Come on, man. This is the perfect opportunity.
Joel Bush:Bias for action. Bias for anyway.
Vince Beese:I I I appreciate that. I often think that I could sing, but I I know I can't. But it's always nice to dream that you might be able to do something that seems glorious and all that fun
Joel Bush:stuff. Right? You know, people people seem to really gravitate to Mick Jagger and other lead singers. So yeah. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Front man front woman. Whatever. Just There you go. Lead the band. Hey.
Vince Beese:Thanks for coming on. You got it, man. We don't have any. Do we have any? No?
Joel Bush:I definitely could. I could. We have so much fun at Halloween. We get we're in the neighborhood where
Vince Beese:all Are are you the parents that dress up? Oh, yeah. We have Okay.
Joel Bush:We have turned it into an event at our place. We had the, Treatomatic 5,000 a few years ago, which is a bunch of cardboard boxes. It was during COVID. So we had this, PVC tube that we dropped candy in and it Oh, really?
Vince Beese:Fall out of the Oh, you're a fun house.
Joel Bush:We had, we did a Plinko board last year where you got What's a Plinko board? You you drop it's like an angled thing. You drop a peg down and it bounces. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Bush:And it ended up in the trick or treat basket. We did a spinning wheel a couple years ago to see what kind of candy you got.
Vince Beese:Well, I'm gonna come over to
Joel Bush:your house this year. Come on over, man. You'd be ready to
Vince Beese:wait in line. There'll be about 50 kids. A wine? Yes. Are you charging for the candy?
Vince Beese:Jeez. And you're not giving out apples or anything nonsense
Joel Bush:like that. Right? We give good candy, and there's always some sort
Vince Beese:of entertainment. Man, that's awesome. Joel, thanks for coming on, man.
Joel Bush:Appreciate it,
Vince Beese:man. Thanks. Till next time. Sales HQ.