Live from Sales HQ with Nolan Walker
We're live from SalesHQ. I'm Vince Buese, your host and the founder here at SalesHQ. And my guest today is Nolan Walker. Welcome to the show today.
Nolan Walker:Thanks for having me, Vince. Excited to be here.
Vince Beese:I'm excited to get deeper into your background. But first and most importantly, well, not more importantly than you, Nolan. What is SalesHQ? That's probably what you're asking yourself right now. What is this concept of SalesHQ?
Vince Beese:He says, well, most people know by now, but it's the first of a kind co selling space for remote sellers and teams. And what does co selling mean? You remember the days when you would work on a sales floor next to other sales people or leadership and so on, you collaborated, I call it peer to peer learning? Well, that's the type of environment we're building here at SalesHQ. It's a it's a flex space, so you can rent a desk and you can sit next to other high performing sellers and learn something from your neighbor.
Nolan Walker:I love it. Takes me back to the days I first got started pre COVID.
Vince Beese:Right? Because when you were when you got started, the company typically sat next to a high performer and you watch what they were doing and and learn from that person. Right?
Nolan Walker:Absolutely. I think what y'all are doing here is fantastic. I've been for a few events here now, and it's been great to see sort of the sales community come back out of our rooms, our home offices, and remember what it's like to be a salesperson and interact with the community and network.
Vince Beese:And that's the other thing too. Right? It's not just about a place that I work from, some days of the week or whatever it might be. It's also, to your point, like networking, training sessions, networking sessions, just giving back to the community so we can continue to learn and get better and better at our craft, which is sales. Right?
Vince Beese:Yeah. Can't be a
Nolan Walker:people person unless you're on people.
Vince Beese:So thanks for jumping in on the ad. It's much appreciated. Slip you the check at the end of the end of the show. But tell us a little bit about what you're up to today. What are you doing today?
Vince Beese:And we'll go backwards from there.
Nolan Walker:Yeah. So I'm in an interesting season of my life, and it's an exciting one. I sort of divide my life into 3 categories right now. 1st and foremost, I'm a new ish dad to a 1 year old, husband, a father. I'm now the head of sales at Zenlist, which is in the real estate industry here.
Nolan Walker:And big passion of mine has always been mentoring, you know, the younger sales professionals in their career from an interview perspective, resumes, and really how to put yourself out there. So with all of my free time between Yeah. Kid at a start up and doing that, I my days go by pretty quickly right now.
Vince Beese:Yeah. What do you think keeps you the busiest? Is it
Nolan Walker:1 year old and not even close. No. It's if there's one thing I really enjoy is is, you know, a busy and full schedule. So I've gotten much better at protecting my time, but making sure it's well spent. And it's it's fun.
Nolan Walker:I I compare the startup world to really working with a 1 year old because they will always keep you on your toes, and you're gonna learn something new every day without doubt.
Vince Beese:That is every day is different. Right? How did you get started in sales?
Nolan Walker:Oh, yeah. I like many, I had a straight a to b path in sales. No. So You
Vince Beese:were born. You said I wanna be in sales.
Nolan Walker:I was raised in a sales environment. No. So I I am not originally from North Carolina. I grew up in, you know, kind of upstate central New York, and really didn't have much interaction in the sales community. I, like many teenagers, had no idea what I wanted to do in college and moving forward.
Nolan Walker:So I went to state school even further in New York and out to cut cut it dry. I was pretty much a nerd. I studied archaeology as a bachelor. So natural progression from my career.
Vince Beese:Clear path for sales. Clear path.
Nolan Walker:But what I'd always loved and what I found out about myself early on, both from a professional academic and just lifestyle is I've always been fascinated by other people, and I've wanted to get to know them. I wanted to understand what their goals are, what the result is. And as I moved away from archaeology as a viable career path in modern day, I started to realize that, you know, from some of the professional work I'd done from selling, you know, through college, through my summer jobs, just, you know, under the table, you know, beer sales at a brewery, from grocery sales and marketing. I knew that that was gonna be a logical progression for me. I loved working with people.
Nolan Walker:I loved being able to not sit across the table from somebody, but really to move to their side, understand who they were, what they were buying. Then the question was, where do I find a job in upstate New York, which wasn't exactly, you know, the most flush market at the time, and this would have been about 10 years ago. So having graduated from Plattsburgh, New York, it was 30 degrees below 0 with 2 feet of snow. So I picked North Carolina on a map and decided that was where I was gonna spend my yeah. I figured it was nice.
Nolan Walker:I could golf in the winter, and I didn't have to be able to snow nearly as much as I did.
Vince Beese:Not at all.
Nolan Walker:Happening to, of course, move about a week before the snowpocalypse came that everybody remembers. So that was, what
Vince Beese:was that? 2 inches?
Nolan Walker:Yeah. Sorry. I brought that to everybody. Yeah. And I guess, you know
Vince Beese:So you seriously went to a map, looked at the state of North Carolina, and then just said Raleigh area?
Nolan Walker:Yeah. If I Did
Vince Beese:you know anything about
Nolan Walker:No. So
Vince Beese:Did you know anybody? Nope. What's wrong with you?
Nolan Walker:I know. Fords and favors the bold, but I do, I look back and, you know, my parents have always encouraged us to grow and challenge ourselves. So I'm the youngest of, of brothers and I moved 2 brothers.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Nolan Walker:So one's a professional chef. The other moved around the world to Australia. So my life's a little bit easier. I stuck on the East Coast, so the parents were a little bit more comfortable. But I essentially started to apply on online through job boards, you know, Indeed and Monster back then, and those were the newer things.
Nolan Walker:So reached out to a company in the human capital management and payroll world called ADP, which most sellers get their start at one of those type of companies and had an interview with the VP of sales, down here in Raleigh and was hoping they would fly me down for the final interview process, but paid my own way, cashed out everything in my bank account to book a ticket down here, and ran through the process.
Vince Beese:They didn't pay for your ticket to fly down here? No. Because they said the job's here.
Nolan Walker:So The job's here, and we have applicants that are looking to, you know, come in from downtown Raleigh. So we can't pay for your ticket. So
Vince Beese:Bad on you, ADP.
Nolan Walker:No. And it turned out to be it was the best thing for me because, I mean, how else can you stand out of an interview for an entry level sales job to fly across the country to interview for it.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Show us how bad you want it. Right?
Nolan Walker:Went down there, you know, was offered the position, and 5 weeks later, moved down to North Carolina and, you know, jumped right into the thick of it. And without knowing the difference between Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, was thrown about as east into North Carolina as I could be into the, the the good old boy country area. So imagine a 22 year old Yankee Where
Vince Beese:were you?
Nolan Walker:Upstate New York working in Roanoke Rapids, Nashville, Elizabeth City, all the way down 64, up 95. And I jumped into it. It was a full cycle sales, which I think is the best way to get started. I had to go find all of my business. I had
Vince Beese:So it's all door to door. You were going to offices. Yeah?
Nolan Walker:Yep. Door to door offices, small business sales primarily. And when I first got started, I was so bad. Yep. I, I forgot everything I knew about myself.
Nolan Walker:I tried to be, you know, mister Wall Street. I wore a JC Penney suit in, you know, country North Carolina. And people could see right through that that I wasn't being authentic. I wasn't being who I should be.
Vince Beese:And you were wearing cheap suits. They saw that.
Nolan Walker:Cheap suits. They they could tell
Vince Beese:it now. That was an off
Nolan Walker:rack suit for sure.
Vince Beese:Isn't it something that I I similar to you, my first sales job was going into small businesses, and trying to find the owner. And that face to face, like, there's nothing more nerve wracking than walking into someone's store who didn't ask you to come in and then asking to meet the person who makes decisions about whatever it is. Like, I mean, that's that's hard.
Nolan Walker:Yeah. It's, you know, it's Face
Vince Beese:to face rejection is one thing, isn't it?
Nolan Walker:Yeah. You can normally shrug off something on the phone call, but the face to face always has a special place in my heart. But I think it's something that, you know, really sticks with you as an early career state
Vince Beese:salesperson is you get to
Nolan Walker:be you get comfortable in being uncomfortable very quickly. And from there, you can figure out what you need to work on, who you really are as an authentic salesperson. And for me, my big turning point was, you know, I still remember it 10 years later. The first real deal I closed there was to a tobacco farmer up in Roanoke Rapids. And if I was inauthentic, if I was wearing a suit, they were gonna walk away because the product I had sold, their brother and their uncle and their family members have been doing the payroll for them for decades.
Nolan Walker:So why would they ever wanna pay, you know, a company from New Jersey a bunch of money every year to do it? And I realized, you know, I've been talking to people my whole life. I threw the suit jacket in. I crumpled up the sleeves, rolled them up, and I just had an honest conversation to understand who they were, what they were looking for. And from there, everything flowed.
Nolan Walker:I closed that massive deal. I was able to hit my, you know, ramp number very early on and quickly. And then from there, you know, just started to fall in love with getting better at sales, understanding what I had to do, and and really starting to figure out who I was as a sales rep.
Vince Beese:ADP also provides a pretty good sales training program. No?
Nolan Walker:They do. Yeah. Every every Tuesday morning at 7:30 in the morning, they'd have all the new hires and the associate district managers was the title. Meet for what we call training to walk through the skills, how to go through that. So it gave me a good foundation professionally and then, you know, all the avenue in the world to really expand and help me identify quickly that, you know, ADP was a massive fortune, is a massive fortune 100 company.
Nolan Walker:But when you're working in small communities or smaller towns, they don't know what ADP is. Maybe you get lucky, and they think they're setting an appointment for ADP security. But more often than not, it was clean slate, blank space, which that is what caught my interest as a seller and really where I figured out what my true skill set was as a seller was helping products go to market, helping build territory from really nothing into something, and that helped me really start to plan and be strategic in the steps in my sales career, which has led me now, 10 years later, to being the head of sales at Zendesk.
Vince Beese:Back to when you first started there, what kind of guidance did they give you in regards to your territory and accounts, businesses you should go after?
Nolan Walker:Good luck. No. What what they really did was this was a territory that was typically hard to staff because if I needed to go to every market that I serviced, it would take me 26 hours to drive to. So I worked with an awesome VP, an awesome manager at the time who really kept me interested in sales. I I got here.
Nolan Walker:I knew nobody. I had no social social network, and I was living in a world of rejection like most salespeople. So 5 weeks in, I was sitting in a small one bedroom apartment off of Capitol Boulevard. As I said, I didn't know Raleigh. Going, was this really the right choice for me?
Nolan Walker:And I had great management who helped inform my decision to work with people and to help manage. So they gave me structure on, this is what you need to do. These are the people you need to target, and you're very outgoing. You're likable. Bring that into your process.
Nolan Walker:So get creative in prospecting. You know, I would sit there and make calls with the best of them, but for the most part, I'm calling into landline. So I needed to be the mayor of that small town. I needed to go there. People needed to know me.
Nolan Walker:They needed to trust me, most importantly of all, and they needed to understand where I was coming from that, yes, my job is to hit a number. But ultimately, what this product would be able to provide would be able to help you get to that goal or help your employees get to that goal.
Vince Beese:And this is full cycle sale?
Nolan Walker:Full cycle. So from cold call, from identifying the account, cold call to meeting to contract
Vince Beese:best way to learn. I mean, it's the best
Nolan Walker:I couldn't I I have nothing but the utmost respect for the SDR and the BDR position. I think it it is the hardest job you can have in sales. I wish there was a clearer, quicker, and cleaner path for a lot of SDRs to get closing experience because I think it's the best way to understand who you are as a salesperson and to really build your skill set.
Vince Beese:I still I'm still a firm believer that some companies selling some products should do full cycle sales. I I agree that some cases, it just doesn't scale well. Yeah. But, gosh, there's nothing better than having one person at that company speak to the client as opposed to getting passed around to multiple people. I think it's not a good customer experience.
Vince Beese:Right?
Nolan Walker:Exactly. And that's
Vince Beese:what we we always think about. What is our sales process? But it has to map back to the customer process. So
Nolan Walker:Exactly.
Vince Beese:Hopefully, you know, I've I've heard some companies starting to move back to a full cycle sale model, so I just think it's a way better customer experience.
Nolan Walker:For sure. And I I mean, I think it's it's easy for us to sort of get lost in the customer life cycle when, you know, we see all the posts on LinkedIn about team selling, passing off. And I think there are complex sales that absolutely require that. But put yourself in the customer shoes. If you're just trying to buy something on Amazon, you wanna be tossed to 4 different people before you can purchase that product.
Nolan Walker:Like, no. You want somebody that you can call and then a number that you can reach out to support for the most part.
Vince Beese:So how many years did you stay at ADP?
Nolan Walker:So I was at ADP for just under 5 years. I got to a point where, like most people in ADP, the path was moving into sales management, or staying in the role I was at. And one thing I learned very quickly about myself is that forward momentum and progress for me is very important. I have a ritual every new year where I look at what I was doing the year before. And if I can't tell a difference in Nolan Walker a year ago to where Nolan Walker is today, something's gone wrong.
Nolan Walker:So, unfortunately, I got to that point at ADP where I was doing well. I was hitting my number, but, ultimately, you know, some of my best years at ADP, if somebody had sneezed and deleted my my number, it's a multibillion dollar fortune 100 company. What impact was I really gonna make if that number, you know, was plus or minus? And to me, it made a lot, but opened my eyes then to starting to go into more of the start up, the small business avenue. So I pivoted into a another human capital management company that was much, much, much smaller in scale out of Louisiana.
Nolan Walker:Was able to stay in Raleigh, which was great for me, but they wanted somebody to launch the North Carolina market. Mhmm. And that was really what I stepped into that first real scale and start up lifestyle for me.
Vince Beese:What was it called?
Nolan Walker:NetChex. So they're an awesome company. They really tailor their product a lot more customizable. So it'll also open me up to go from SMB into the commercial enterprise deal. So helped me really sharpen my skills as a seller going from small to midsize businesses to really understanding that complex sale, budget cycles, building out a product from scratch in terms of the integrations they would need.
Vince Beese:Same industry though. Right?
Nolan Walker:Same industry. So there was some familiarity, and I was there for about a year before. Like many people, and I I'm sure many people listening, an industry called cybersecurity sales started to creep up, and I felt the call and the pull from that, and actually worked with a fantastic recruiter who pops in here every so often. Who? Lee.
Vince Beese:Oh, yeah. Lee Whitley. Yeah.
Nolan Walker:Worked and and jumped over into the cybersecurity industry from the payroll world, and I made that choice for a couple of reasons. And payroll is an awesome industry. There's a lot that you can do. There's a lot of career progression, movement. And for me, as I've mentioned, progress was important for me.
Nolan Walker:From a technology perspective, I didn't see a path for more innovation and product. You know, you can only pay people so fast and quickly, and there's a large presence of incumbents there. So cybersecurity was new to me. Knew nothing about
Vince Beese:What year is this that you went into cyber?
Nolan Walker:Right before COVID. So 2019. So went through there about, you know, like many people, worked out of an office, loved the sales floor, was able to make cold calls next to people again. And What's
Vince Beese:the name of this company?
Nolan Walker:BitSight.
Vince Beese:K.
Nolan Walker:So had a satellite office in Raleigh, primarily based on Boston. So got to be able to work and learn the industry, was able to make cold calls, meetings, sitting this far away from somebody. So back in that environment that I loved and thrived in. And then, like, everybody, the whole world, we shut down March 2020. We moved in, you know, back home.
Nolan Walker:And from there, a fun collaborative environment became Slack happy hours. So that became a difficult world to to navigate where the product was very much a nice to have in some CIOs and CTOs mindsets and with budget freezing as we didn't know if the world was starting or ending, you know, it became sort of a, you know, feast or famine type environment. Yeah. So luckily at that time, I I knew I also had that
Vince Beese:What kind of role was it, by the way?
Nolan Walker:It was, commercial to enterprise, essentially. We focused on pretty large companies. I was over the southeast and parts of the Caribbean. So I was able to work and network with a lot of people in the industry before we all shut down, and focused really on the, you know, verticals that were prime for, you know, disruption and fiber, like education, manufacturing, places like that.
Vince Beese:Cool. So how'd you do there going through COVID?
Nolan Walker:You know, I did well. You know, unfortunately, like many people, you have to deal with what you can. You can do a great job in the sales process, and it may just stall out completely. Learning what I learned about enterprise being in a role like that, all of a sudden, you know, it'd be great. This sounds awesome.
Nolan Walker:Our budget for 2026 will be open in 3 years. So submit an RFP, and we'll get back to you. So I think that was a harsh reality for a lot of my peers and a lot of people in the industry. And ultimately, BitSight made, at the time, a a decision to remove a lot of people from that division. So I found myself furloughed going into the holidays in 2021.
Nolan Walker:And, ultimately, that was, you know, at the moment, a pretty tough decision. I was planning to propose to my now wife at the time, so got to buy a ring from the jeweler, without a job. So paid in cash. Luckily, that was, you know, that was an easy one to get to get the the approval there. But,
Vince Beese:Paid in cash. Where'd you get a deal? Fall up a truck?
Nolan Walker:Yeah. The the the turnpike special. There you go. So luckily for me, I always believe in networking. I I was constantly keeping up with people, with former managers, with former colleagues, and in a, you know, great twist of fate.
Nolan Walker:And I think luck is when preparations still meet. Somebody had reached out for, a company in the real estate space called Compass. Mhmm. They were looking to expand and scale their market from being pretty successful in New York City and on the West Coast to launching in North Carolina because our real estate market is Yeah. Fantastic.
Nolan Walker:And they wanted somebody who had sales experience, scaling experience, and product experience to join. And throughout a couple calls, I was connected through just a referral saying we should reach out to Nolan Walker. Got a call, and, ultimately, I thought they had the wrong number because I knew nothing about real estate. I was not an agent, but went through the interview process, fell in love with the company, the culture, the product, and the role itself, and was at Compass for a number of years, helping them launch, scale, hire, and grow that presence. And now at the time I left, about 3 years into that role, they were the number one brokerage in Charlotte, number one brokerage in Chapel Hill, and just behind a very legacy brokerage that has been here forever in terms of production right behind that.
Vince Beese:So you weren't selling real estate. What were you selling at Compass?
Nolan Walker:So I was selling their technology platform. So real estate as an industry is one of the last sort of wild west industries I like to call them. It's healthcare, you know, real estate, and now AI as that's coming out. And technology and real estate for the longest time was taking the MLS, which is where everybody's listings are and all of your homes for sale from paper to the Internet, and that was the biggest technological advancement for a very long time. And a lot of people in that in that era where it was much easier to get VC money or capital to invest, that's where a lot of money went into.
Nolan Walker:That's where you saw Zillow come into play, Opendoor, Redfin, a lot of these big consumer portals that most of us think about as real estate. You know, I search for a house on Zillow. Compass came in and received a large investment from multiple firms to disrupt real estate in the sense of providing agents with technology to streamline their process. Because up until really that point, what they've pieced together, you know, as as a start up yourself was largely third party tools that you try to find, but maybe they work together, maybe they don't. So Compass was coming with a very innovative platform.
Nolan Walker:So my role there was to sell the vision, the platform, and the story
Vince Beese:Mhmm.
Nolan Walker:To large brokerages, to franchises, and bring them underneath the umbrella at Compass. So
Vince Beese:you would speak to real estate agents or, I should say, realtors or brokers. Right? And they would move from their current outfit to Compass?
Nolan Walker:That would be sort of the
Vince Beese:Is it exclusive relationship or no?
Nolan Walker:To an exclusive relationship, that would be sort of on the small scale of the cycle, where North Carolina is unique is there's a very difficult task to become an agent for sure, but a lower barrier to entry to start your own Oh,
Vince Beese:I see.
Nolan Walker:So one of the advantages of joining a larger organization is scale and power of purchase. So these smaller entities here in North Carolina didn't have the avenue to compete against these large players, like Coldwell Bank or Keller Williams, all names that we're probably familiar with, but they wanted to keep their identity, which was important
Vince Beese:to them.
Nolan Walker:So we essentially became a platform for them to help scale their business, help more clients. So while we would work with individual agents, a big portion of what my day to day was was helping to identify the larger brokerages with, you know, multiple, multiple members and bringing the entirety over underneath that umbrella. So a complex sale, usually a large
Vince Beese:Yep.
Nolan Walker:Large cycle, a lot of decision makers and players involved, and, honestly, a very emotional sale at Broadband.
Vince Beese:Joined at a interesting time though.
Nolan Walker:I did.
Vince Beese:Well, real estate market skyrocketed once COVID hit. Because everybody needed a bigger house with an office. Yes. So must have been really interesting how fast the growth was.
Nolan Walker:It was. I joined a few months before they actually went public in their IPO. Yeah. So I was able to join from the, you know, pre NASDAQ Compass era. And as to your point, I joined in 2021, which was really the height of the real estate market.
Nolan Walker:And then about June 2022 happened where we all know rates started to increase and pretty quick, drop down in terms of transaction pricing because a lot of people have to buy a house using a mortgage. And when the rates are high and you have monthly month to month is too much to afford, transactions slow down. So we actually saw in Raleigh, business started to increase for us, believe it or not, because
Vince Beese:The market. Yeah.
Nolan Walker:In fear like that, when you don't know what's going to happen, a lot of times, people will navigate towards those institutions that have a pretty strong foundation.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Nolan Walker:So we actually had a lot of people looking to join Compass because they wanted that security. They wanted a larger organization that they trusted to be able to navigate these hard times. And now as, you know, you can see, they've had a great resurgence. They've had a large presence and continue to grow, in their in their followings here and across the country.
Vince Beese:Yeah. I certainly see their yard yard signs a lot, even that's not a great market right now. But this area in general, it's doing better than most I'd imagine. So, you got the real estate bug? Yeah.
Vince Beese:How did you get the zen zen list?
Nolan Walker:Zen list. So I got the real estate bug. I love the industry. As a sales professional, there's this new industry called PropTech, which has really started to become a new word that's coming across, you know, the industry here. It's not the real estate sales.
Nolan Walker:It's PropTech. So you're seeing a lot of start ups happen in this business. And for me as a salesperson, that's very exciting because it means there's a lot of blank space, a lot of white space, and a lot of ability to to scale, which for me, as I said, growing a business, growing and scaling a platform is what I love to do. And Zenlist actually found me, through some of the work I've done, the networks I've made. And at the time, wasn't really looking to leave what I've been doing at Compass, but ultimately found out that, you know, it got to a point where it was steadfast.
Nolan Walker:There were multiple physical offices opened up. There was a huge presence. I had accomplished what I felt I wanted to do at that stage of my professional career. And while earlier in my life cycle, I might have been a little bit averse to becoming into that sales leadership. Yep.
Nolan Walker:I'm now at a stage in my career where I love to mentor. I love to help, and I love to scale. And everything Zendesk has offered from a product perspective, a platform, and a challenge was exactly what I was looking for. So I joined Zendesk in July of 2023. They were primarily a product led organization with a great presence in in certain markets, and they wanted an experienced enterprise sales professional to help lead, build the structure of the sales organization, build the procedures, the policies, and help them open up new markets so they could drive additional revenue.
Nolan Walker:So it's the smallest company I've worked for, but it's one of the most passionate and just every hire we have is is meant for that role.
Vince Beese:So what do you guys sell?
Nolan Walker:So we exist in this middle ground that's it's funny because you would think this is something that's here, but I've mentioned Zillow earlier, and I've mentioned the MLS. Agents need the MLS. Most consumers live on Zillow.
Vince Beese:Mhmm.
Nolan Walker:But, ultimately, what the client wants with the client being somebody buying a house is to feel supported, to be connected to their agent, and to find the most accurate information, and that's what Zemlyst does. We have a unique way of working with local organizations and local associations in the real estate world to get that accurate data, and we have an application that clients and agents can use that blows the competition out of the water. So if I'm somebody looking for a new house, I wanna be able to find, a property quicker than I can using Zillow, and I don't wanna be advertised by every agent in the world. I wanna be connected to the person that I've known for a long time that I bought my last house with, and that's where our product lives in that middle ground.
Vince Beese:So consumers will use Zendesk?
Nolan Walker:Yes. So consumers, you know, in some of our markets prefer to use Zendesk in most cases than Zillow because they're able to see inventory very quickly.
Vince Beese:They're
Nolan Walker:able to get connected directly to their agent because real estate, you know, for us, we think of it as property, but where we're seeing the trend is, it's data. You know, from an agent, the data is their clients, their customers, their contacts, their CRM. For MLSs, for associations, the data is the listing.
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Nolan Walker:And who has access to the data the fastest is gonna be the company that can position themselves to grow fast, quickly, and accurately. So clients are able to work directly with an agent. It's a private invite, a private collaboration. You could have multiple people on our platform at once. So investors, spouses, partners, individuals, everybody can be on one platform, and agents love it because they can manage their book of business and really focus on the nurturing side of the relationship.
Nolan Walker:There's plenty of solutions for them to generate business and leads, but there's not many solutions that can help foster that relationship and nurture that over the entire life cycle.
Vince Beese:Very cool. How's business?
Nolan Walker:It's good. We, we're in the process of working on expanding across the country. So my day is really connecting across the board, finding and identifying right areas that we can really expand and grow. Because one thing, you know, as as it's starting to open up, we wanna be able to capitalize on the changes with rates being cut, but we wanna be able to focus on growing, bringing on the right talent, and building up the sales force in a way that's going to position us to ride this wave and really scale the product.
Vince Beese:So what's your biggest challenge as a sales leader today?
Nolan Walker:Biggest challenge for us, I would say, and for me myself, is is finding the right approach. And what I mean by that is, you know, as I said, there's a lot of technology. There's a lot of innovation. There's a lot of companies that are competing for the same level of bandwidth, the same attention. We could be like every company, and we could get on a mass email campaign.
Nolan Walker:We could set up. We could hire a lot of, SDRs, BDRs to cold call and reach out. But with our product being so focused on the relationship, the enterprise, and real estate being a business of relationship, we also need to be able to be in multiple places at once at trade shows, at events, at local groups. So for us, if we could clone our team, that would be the greatest thing in the world. But where we're at right now is working with our organization to identify the right messaging, the right outbound strategies, creating the right inbound strategies to pull in leads as opposed to all of us having to go out and hunt and bringing the team on to hunt business.
Nolan Walker:That's been our big priority and focus
Vince Beese:here. Well, cool. I wish you the best with that. I appreciate that. A lot of GTM going on figuring out that's the fun thing about being at a start up.
Vince Beese:Right? Yeah. Like, every day is different. Yep. Trying to figure and get better and better and better.
Nolan Walker:You wake up and it's a new challenge to deal with.
Vince Beese:How big is the team?
Nolan Walker:So we're a team of just under 20.
Vince Beese:Okay. And VC backed?
Nolan Walker:Yes. Early stage VC backed, we wanted to move into, you know, that push for profitability as quick as we could. Yeah.
Vince Beese:But how are you finding the hiring process? Meaning, you you hiring folks, what is that like? What's the market like?
Nolan Walker:Yeah. You know, I think as we can all sort of empathize, it's a tough market out there. There have been a lot of layoffs, a lot of cuts, a lot of industry changing. And as a result, there's a lot of qualified sellers out there that you're competing as a company for those sellers as well. And there might be benefit packages, a larger organization can offer that, a small start up can.
Nolan Walker:But for us, it's just as important to find the perfect candidate in that sense because it's much more costly as a start up to find the wrong person. So for me, I have always gravitated towards somebody that invites me into their sales process during the interview. So from people reaching out to me on LinkedIn, and now I'm sure I'm gonna get a bunch of LinkedIn messages from saying that.
Vince Beese:Owen Walker,
Nolan Walker:hit them up. But people are reaching out to me on LinkedIn, people asking about what the product is, and then proving to me that you're a seller. Whether it's for setting appointments, whether it's for closing business, invite me into that sales process. I wanna be able to see what you
Vince Beese:So you don't you're not restricting to just people that come from the real estate industry or something. No.
Nolan Walker:That's the thing. I I mean, in good faith, I didn't come from the real estate industry directly. I learned it. And I I've lived by a mantra, Identify your skill set and learn your industry. And I think as career sales professionals, you can apply that into most situations.
Nolan Walker:Know who you are as a sales professional. We can teach the rest.
Vince Beese:That's good advice.
Nolan Walker:The industry. We can teach the a's, b's, and c's. If there's a qualified person who would be a great fit for the team but doesn't know the difference between buying and selling a house, that's easy. We can teach that in an afternoon.
Vince Beese:I'm glad you're open minded about that because there's a lot of great salespeople out there, and I know there's a lot of companies that were very defined in their criteria for hiring and they stick to it regardless. And a lot of people sending their applications, they don't have that criteria that they don't even get into the process, which is a shame. You know?
Nolan Walker:I can understand it, but I think you miss out on great opportunities in town. It
Vince Beese:just depends where I guess you are as a company. You're an early stage company to your point. Like, you're you're, like, hand selecting versus, you know
Nolan Walker:Exactly. We we can take risks because we're a small jet ski in a big ocean. We can turn left. We can turn right very quickly. So I can empathize with other leaders about it being a hard profile behind your floor as well.
Vince Beese:So you already shared the top a lot of interesting things. You have a 1 year old who recently was married not that long ago, switched jobs not that long ago. But last question for you. What's something that most people don't know about Nolan that's interesting?
Nolan Walker:Oh, well, I did say I was a nerd in school, and this this is interesting. I don't think a lot of people know about it, at least down here. I'm actually a classically trained and professional cellist. So that big old wooden instrument, I spent my whole life from a very young age learning how to play. I've played in orchestras, light orchestras, trios, ensembles, all types of groups.
Nolan Walker:So that's my fun party trick that I like to bring out. And you have one lying around here. I'm sure.
Vince Beese:Yeah. There's one in the back. I'll get it in a minute. Interesting fact though, numerous guests we've had on this podcast come from a musical background.
Nolan Walker:Really?
Vince Beese:4 or 5 people. Interesting. 1 was in a rock band, 1 was a singer. What what was what other instruments did we have? Pianist?
Vince Beese:Wow. Yeah.
Nolan Walker:Must be something in the water for music to go into play.
Vince Beese:I just think it's discipline.
Nolan Walker:Yeah.
Vince Beese:Right? I mean, you can't just wake up one day and you're playing the cello. You have to take lessons. You have to continue. Right?
Vince Beese:I mean, it's same thing as sales. You don't wake up just being great at sales. You have to so I think there's a correlation for that. Practice. Yeah.
Vince Beese:Practice. Athletics or an instrument. I think there's a a path for salespeople. So, hey, man. I appreciate you coming on the show today.
Vince Beese:This is great.
Nolan Walker:For having me. This was a blast. I appreciate it, and I can't wait to be at more of these events and and networking with our our people. If if you're looking, I'll give you the plug. This is definitely a place to jump back into.
Vince Beese:It's also a place for Nolan too.
Nolan Walker:Yeah. I love it. You'll see me more. Alright.
Vince Beese:Thanks, Nolan. Until next time, sales HQ.