Live from Sales HQ with Corey Richardson
We are live from sales HQ. I'm Vince Speezy, your host and the founder of SalesHQ, and our guest on this episode is Corey Richardson. Welcome to the show, Corey. Thank you for having me. For those out there who've never seen this, which by now, it's probably just about nobody on the planet, SalesHQ is a co selling community for high performing sellers and sales teams.
Vince Beese:What does that mean? What does co selling mean? Co selling means that we share an environment, a high energy environment, where we're people from different walks, different companies, different roles. But one thing we have in common is we're sales professionals. And what do sales professionals like to do?
Vince Beese:They like to network, they like to collaborate, and they like to talk. So our sales floor is not quiet. It's not loud. It's right there in the middle. It's meant for sales energy.
Vince Beese:You know what that is. Right? Of course. Right. So that's sales HQ.
Vince Beese:If you're interested in more about that, go to sales h q.c0. Alright, Corey. I'm gonna ask you this first question because I never had a guest yet say that they had ambitions to from an early age to go to sales. How did you how did you start in sales?
Corey Richardson:So, I think the best way to describe my journey in the sales, I was, at University of South Carolina. Not a very good student. My freshman year, I was a baseball player. Thought I would get drafted and realized I might want a backup plan. So I started pursuing academics about my sophomore year.
Corey Richardson:Well, if you know anything about business school at Kean Flag where you apply actually in your sophomore year, which means your application is made up of your freshman and sophomore year grades. My freshman year was horrific. So needless to say, I was in in in deep trouble. So they only admit about a 150 people at the time. Average GPA, you know, in the threes at least, had a 2.3 in my freshman year.
Corey Richardson:So I'm in trouble. So I'm thinking there's no way I'm getting in. Oh, by the way, sophomore year is full of weed out classes. The most difficult classes where it's all based on a bell curve. You get a handful of a's, a few b's, and bunch of c's, and few d's and f's.
Corey Richardson:And so I'm sitting there going, I've gotta beat people who are much much smarter than me probably. Actually paid attention. Yeah.
Vince Beese:And then studying. And so needless to say,
Corey Richardson:I knew that it would be an uphill battle. So I started actually meeting with the, dean of business school. And I met with him about every other week for about 6 months. And I talked to him about the journey and the trajectory I was on and and why I felt like I was, someone worth investing in to to allow in business school. And I said, look.
Corey Richardson:I'm gonna earn my way in, but I'm simply gonna apply, and it's not gonna be very exciting. You're not gonna like what you see. But if you allow me in, I guarantee I'll be successful, and I'll graduate with over 3 o, which I did, I'm proud to say. 2 time scholar athlete award winner at Carolina. And, but it was, that was the first time what I learned was that, you know, here is an objective application, you think.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. Right? Everyone's applying. You're rated on your grades. And, you know, I I had the lowest grades.
Corey Richardson:I probably hold the record for the lowest GPA to get in to business school, and I think I've done quite well. And and but I think that was when I learned that there is something called sales where Influence. The product might be inferior, at least on paper. But But if someone understands how to connect with the buyer, in this case, it was the dean of the business school who allowed me in, then, I haven't had a chance. I was wait listed, eventually allowed in, and that's when I knew sales was in my future.
Corey Richardson:It it didn't hurt that
Vince Beese:you had that bar suit jacket on as well. It was probably hella, and and I did have a good year myself. A little bit of cold at UNC Chapel Hill. I know that for a fact.
Corey Richardson:Not like today.
Vince Beese:But you were telling me, I don't wanna get into our private conversations,
Corey Richardson:but you were you had
Vince Beese:a little thing going on when you were a little younger, or you had a little routine going to make a little money. What was that all about?
Corey Richardson:So, you know, I learned about supply
Vince Beese:and demand at a young age.
Corey Richardson:I had a sibling, my my older sister worked at a, an organization that had a lot of video games. And you would purchase tokens. And these tokens, you know, there's no value to them to people that work there. They get boatloads of them. So she would give me cups full of them, and I would use them.
Corey Richardson:I play the games. I have a great time. And all good. Right? And then I saw people buying these tokens in the machine, and I'm like, I've got a lot of supply of those tokens.
Corey Richardson:They're paying for them. I wonder if I can do a little deal. Maybe I'll get 5 for a dollar instead of 4. Next thing you know, I'm making a little money. That is until my brother, wanted me to give him half of my profits because he wasn't as good at sales as I was.
Corey Richardson:And so, unfortunately, my brother told my mom. My mom asked me to stop, told me that was actually illegal. And so then I determined that I'm gonna stop this, this little thing.
Vince Beese:I didn't know that was wrong. So it was like a George Costanza moment. 14 years old. Yeah. Fast forward now.
Vince Beese:Graduate from North Carolina. How did you get into so you knew you had the sales acumen. You knew you could do that. You knew it could be a thing. But what actually drove you to get into sales and sales leadership?
Corey Richardson:Yeah. So I think it I have just a ton of respect for, a man named Dick Peterson was a mentor of mine. I met him at Carolina as an undergrad. I had heard that he had run one of the most successful sales distributorships. It was Versys, which is an old software.
Corey Richardson:And and, and I just had a lot of respect for him. He's very successful. He was he I just liked the way he operated. He played a lot of golf. He did all the things that I thought I'd wanna do, like successful, outgoing, confident, made good money.
Corey Richardson:And so I spent some time with them as an undergrad and, stayed connected. My first job was at Black and Decker Corporation, sales and marketing, and loved it. But it was really more marketing. I was more just showing off products. I until I put a hole in my partner's hand with a drill, I realized I I'd stay away from drills.
Corey Richardson:But, nonetheless, it was, things happen. It was but I but I loved it. I ended up getting promoted, 1st first one to get promoted and, moved to Chicago. I was doing great. But that same man that I stayed in contact with, I think he saw something in me.
Corey Richardson:I was 22 years old, and he invited me back and said, look. I wanna hire you as one 2 sales reps for a little start up I'm doing. You know, I'm not gonna pay you anything hardly, but I wanna teach you everything. And his commitment was he would read my proposals, my emails. He would, travel with me and ultimately teach me how to be a high performing sales rep, and I just couldn't pass up on that.
Corey Richardson:So that's when I learned the value of not only sales and how you can truly be elite at it. I I think I was I've worked hundreds of deals by the time I was 25. Had sold 1,000,000 of dollars through these projects we were doing. And and it was just a great ride, and I owe everything to to that man, Dick Peterson, and the mentor that he was. But I also learned that the type of leader he was, he was a true servant leader.
Corey Richardson:Like, he rolled his sleeves up and went on the road with me. He didn't just say do a proposal and sink or swim. He was like, let me look at it. He coached me on every word. You know?
Corey Richardson:And, you know, because there are there is value in in the words you use. And so he he taught me all of the simple you know? And by the way, it's timeless. Mhmm. This is an older gentleman.
Corey Richardson:Could barely send a fax, but yet it was helping me sell technology. Yeah. Good question. Professor.
Vince Beese:That's great. I mean, I I feel as though we can spend a whole hour on that coaching topic because I don't think, enough young folks get enough coaching to start their careers in sales. So fast forward again, today you're at. What are you doing today? So what's going on?
Corey Richardson:Teamworks. So Teamworks is a a very fast growing startup in the world of elite athletics. So we, we serve, really elite sports organizations. So collegiate, professional, national governing bodies. We also now work in the tactical space, because there are high performing individuals much like athletes.
Corey Richardson:Right? So if you think about special operators, these people, their bodies, I mean, they're investing 1,000,000 of dollars and then be prepared, to perform at a high level. So, at TeamWorks, we started in logistics and operations, and it was all about engaging the athlete in a way that, you know, all these people that surround the athlete had you know, they're all sending them text and emails and piece of paper. And how do we streamline that whole process? And once we had the athletes attention, then we started seeing other opportunities to serve those athletes.
Corey Richardson:So we've now acquired, I think, 12 companies. You'll see more coming in the future. And what we do is we look for opportunities to surround that athlete. So whether it's around athlete development, you know, could be on the academic side. You know, I could have used that for sure when I was an undergrad.
Corey Richardson:But it could be obviously, you know, what's going on in branding and NIL and Collegiate. It's a big, big business that's happening, high performance around strength, athlete management, nutrition. Those are all areas of compliance. These are all areas Those are on
Vince Beese:a global scale. Absolutely.
Corey Richardson:So we started, of course, college, went into North American Pro. We now serve 18 out of 20 Premier League teams. Really? We're pretty much about 70% distributed across the primary leagues and and Australia. Who are the 2 that hold
Vince Beese:us in the Premier League? Come on. I keep yeah. I won't I won't call
Corey Richardson:them out because they're in our sales cycle. Right? Me to
Vince Beese:go out and close these? Hopefully, they'll be here soon. It's leads. No. Just kidding.
Vince Beese:No.
Corey Richardson:We have leads. But they're they're not the Premier Leads, unfortunately. Yeah. So, yeah, you can go get it.
Vince Beese:That's exciting. So, I know a little bit about your business. I know a little bit about what you guys are up to. And I think one of the things that's very unique we talked about before in the past was, your team structure. It's very different than a standard kinda team structure from a sales organization.
Vince Beese:Explain to us a little bit about your structure and why it works for you all.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. So one of the things that's unique about us is we're not a horizontal SaaS company. So our, sales reps and employees, they know exactly who our targets are. In fact, we can access their email addresses for the most part just by going to a college's website. We can see the coach's email and his phone number.
Corey Richardson:So it's not hard to identify who our targets are. So we've got it really well laid out. So for us, it's really about being precision, you know, very pointed in terms of how we attack the market. So I would say we're account based sales approach more than anyone you've probably ever seen. We have Google Sheets that lay out every single conference, every single, you know, college, every team that they have, who we've won, who we have, and on all twelve products.
Corey Richardson:So we organize in such a way where it's a it's kind of a matrix approach. And one thing that we use the term that we think sales is a team sport, and so we're really big on team selling and it and it and we live by that. So we compensate our employees that way. So there are components of their comp plan that are individual focused goals, but then there are large components tied to how the broader team does. And so it's so if you think about a hierarchical approach like this matrix approach, you've got product specialists along the top.
Corey Richardson:And what they do is they own the product, quota all the way down. So they might cut across multiple markets, but, like, if I own nutrition, I might be a dietitian who came from that space, has a high sales acumen, and we teach them how to sell. They may have never sold a thing in their life, but they are hugely motivated to see lives change when it comes to nutrition. And they love our space. They probably served in it previously.
Corey Richardson:And so their job would be to be a specialist across all those markets. Then we have across the other side of the matrix, we have our territory specialists. So think about these as people whose job are to be general contractors. So they need to know the entire organization. They need to know the athletic director.
Corey Richardson:They need to know the sport administrators, you know, the coaches, people like that. And that's their primary focus. And so they might not be a specialist on all 12 products, but they're gonna be dangerous. Right? They're gonna be dangerous.
Corey Richardson:And, and then their job again is to leverage those economic buyers, you know, in terms of the relationship. So we we kinda take this ground approach to an air assault approach, and it really, really works.
Vince Beese:You had me at team compensation. Yeah. I I I go back to my bartending days, and there's restaurants that used to do full tipping. Yep. And there were some good waiters, and there were some not so good waiters, and you had to
Corey Richardson:share I hated that. Of course. Of course.
Vince Beese:What did how does your team react to when you went to a a team type type of compensation? So let me first a 100%. But Yeah. Let me first
Corey Richardson:start by what drove it. So what drove it is if you look at our market, it's it's incredibly, for lack of better terms, incestuous. It moves. People are constantly switching jobs. And so if I gave you a specific territory, you spend a lot of time building a relationship, potentially getting this close to a sale, and then that person up and takes a job in another territory, that wouldn't that frustrate you?
Corey Richardson:So we had to solve for that first and foremost. I'm a big believer that if your comp plan works, you're not gonna lose people. What loses people is when it doesn't work, when things like that frustrate people. Now high performers still make more money at the team works because at the end of the day, half of your compensation still tied to an individual target. So There you go.
Corey Richardson:Look. If I own nutrition and I'm slaying nutrition and I'm really doing a phenomenal job, I can make very good money. Or branding NIL has been really hot. My my reps in that market are doing quite well. And so at the end of the day, I would say I think it's the best of both worlds where where we have a a combination of individual focus goals and compensation, which, by the way, you can hit accelerators in that.
Corey Richardson:And then we have this team component, which really causes our people to help one another out. So I'll tell you the best thing about it is we don't put all the pressure on our sales managers to manage people out. The team will literally do it. You've seen remember the titans? Yeah.
Corey Richardson:Like, the coach doesn't have to fire the guy when he's missing a block. The the captain comes up and says this guy's not doing his job. I need to find someone better. That is what happens at our organization. It's a locker room feel where everyone has a job, and we're we're all interested in
Vince Beese:the ball hitting across, like, all over to the flies. Yeah. Not that extreme. Yeah. What's also unique what you said is that you don't necessarily hire salespeople for sales roles.
Vince Beese:You try to find product experts or industry knowledge experts. How does that work?
Corey Richardson:So I'd tell you one thing. I think it's a huge advantage. So, you know, the downside of sales, I think it's gotten, you know, probably our own fault is, you know, if you look back at SaaS, we we throw these massive quotas, these massive on target earnings. About 20 percent of people on average are actually making that money. A lot of people are not making it.
Corey Richardson:There's they're hopping jobs every year. We've taken a different approach where we want to find people. So the first thing we do is we do not sacrifice motivational fit.
Vince Beese:Mhmm.
Corey Richardson:Meaning you better have a massive love for this industry. If you come to us and say I've been selling for Dell EMC, I'm a 10 times
Vince Beese:I assume these are ex athletes.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. They're either ex athletes or they worked within sports.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Corey Richardson:And so they've shown us through their work product Yeah. That they have an interest in being in this business. So that number one is is important. Because I think if you want something bad enough, if you love something enough Yeah. You're gonna figure it out.
Vince Beese:It's not a job either.
Corey Richardson:And then we use, you know, predictive index behavioral assessments to make sure that they have sales IQ. Because I think that is important. You can't just hire a nonsalesperson and just hope they can sell. So we we have literally mapped out our top producers, and we measure them against candidates. And so we will disqualify people from sales roles when they apply.
Corey Richardson:Even if they come to us and they look the part, you can't really hide what your true natural behaviors are. And
Vince Beese:I'm not gonna stereotype, but top performers tend to come from some sort of athletics or some sort of organizational structure. So they like that dynamic. They like the win. Push. They like being competitive and and competing.
Vince Beese:Right? So that's so so it sounds like things are going swimmingly well. What are your biggest challenges that you have? There's gotta be some challenges out there.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. We're growing like crazy, so we're adding another not the problem. Yeah. It's a but it is a challenge because, you know so we've never invested in sales anymore. So we've done this we have about 56 people now on my team.
Corey Richardson:Okay. My sales team with 0 sales enablement support. So everything is done by committee. So think about a lot of mentoring support from the team. That's one of the advantages of team selling is people will want to bring their peer along because they rely on that peer to make money.
Corey Richardson:So it's like you have, like, like, 20 coaches inherently immediately that are gonna support. The challenge, you know, is once you start scaling and you're adding 12 products Yeah. How do you keep people from, honestly, misrepresenting a product because there's just too much to learn? We could have 5 product updates that come out this week. And so even though I'm a generalist potentially, I still need to be dangerous and understand how it works so I don't lead someone along and then have to
Vince Beese:Why did you wait so long to bring in sales enablement?
Corey Richardson:So I think part of it was it was working well. We were doing well. You know? And and, again, I think part of it was we wanted to we were getting a lot of value from our marketing team. It's really collaborative, really supportive.
Corey Richardson:Our our sales leaders have done a good job. I just think we just it was 2 years ago, we were half the size. Yeah. So 30 people, we were fine. 30.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. So now we we actually have someone who we've hired who is coming to us and will start on the set. That's cool. So I'm super excited.
Vince Beese:And you're primarily headquartered out of Durham. Correct?
Corey Richardson:Yeah. We are. But I I I'll tell you about 70% of our employees are not in Durham or in this area. So we're we're global, large contingent in Denver. I don't know what's going on in Colorado.
Corey Richardson:People are loving to move to Colorado. So
Vince Beese:I think COVID happened and everybody moved to the Colorado Denver kinda area for sure. Global wise, what percentage of your business is coming from overseas?
Corey Richardson:Not I mean, so it's still relatively small. So we're probably 10%, a little less than 10% at this point. You know? So it's much smaller. Again, it's new.
Corey Richardson:So the way Teamworks does business is we like to go into a market. We wanna test it with a handful of, you know, accounts, and we don't go too fast on purpose. So a lot of times, we'll we'll have a scout go out there. So I actually traveled to London myself, you know, 10 times, and went alongside an enterprise rep that we have who whose job is to go out and figure new markets out. We do that because if you just put a bunch of salespeople on something when the product market fit is not perfectly defined, you run the risk of attrition.
Corey Richardson:You know, customers not really like it and you spot down your development team trying to catch up. So we don't really wanna be sales led. Yeah. We really want to kinda go in there, dip our toe in, learn our way into the market, and then we go all in. So now we've got a team of 10 people, you know, in Europe, and it's growing.
Corey Richardson:Just hired one in Germany. So So you'll we're about to hire someone in Spain. So we're starting to grow, but we had to learn the 24 hour clock and some of the nuanced differences. We had to translate the multiple language. We had to get the food databases, you know, for nutrition.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. So there are a lot of nuance differences that do require engineering support. Appreciate about this company. Like, a lot of companies would say we have to grow 40%. Let's do whatever it takes.
Corey Richardson:Just go hire 20 salespeople, and then you find out that we're laying off 10 of them because we're not ready for it.
Vince Beese:So scaling is an issue. Putting sales enable in there, it doesn't sound fine to your clients. Like, demand generation is not a problem, which is the the number one problem that most people have is demand generation. Is there enough there? So how do you know when you need to add the next person, the next body then?
Corey Richardson:That's a good so number 1, anytime we bring a new product in, we always bring a specialist in. And sometimes that's What's the specialist? So they're a sales rep who owns the product goal.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Corey Richardson:So, again, when we when we added nutrition, we we acquired a company. Yep. It was an engineer founder who's not a salesperson. Yep. He'd grown it to about $1,000,000 in revenue, and so we acquired them.
Corey Richardson:We then hired a dietitian who is now on the sales team, and their job is to grow revenue in that market. So they need to own the dietitian market. So they go to dietitian trade shows. They collaborate with them so they know that user buyer. They work very closely with the product team.
Corey Richardson:So So that's the difference between, like, a general sales rep. These people are really embedded within our product and marketing teams, because that's all they do all day long. So that's the first thing is now sometimes we will share them across markets. When the markets get big enough and ready enough, we'll start hiring in multiple markets. So we may have you know, we're coming up with a displays product.
Corey Richardson:So you take all those calendars and then you push them up on any screen. It's gonna be a very exciting product. We we will start with 2 specialists. We will have someone in pro, North American pro, and someone also in college. Because if you don't, you run you run the risk of them cherry picking and saying college.
Vince Beese:You're hiring teams, basically, when
Corey Richardson:you are which is At times. Yeah. At times.
Vince Beese:Because it's I always found it's, it's always good when you hire threes Yeah. Or multiples because they learn together at the same time. So I assume that's
Corey Richardson:part of the economies of scale there for sure. And so we try to start people similar dates so they can
Vince Beese:People learn from their peers more so than, right, others around them. So that's pretty cool. Now that I was surprised to hear that after a COVID that not everybody was in the office, but you and, like, anyone else during and post COVID, people moved. People scattered. So you had a very strong culture in the office.
Vince Beese:It was a very strong how does that change your company or your culture at all?
Corey Richardson:So we're this is something if you wanna talk about, like, what we're most proud of, we we have leveraged collaboration tools like Slack and have done a phenomenal job with that. And, I would just say that in the office, we close a deal. We hit the Gong. Everyone celebrates. It's awesome.
Corey Richardson:We now do that virtually through Slack. And the emojis and the things that pop off are just I mean, it's it's pretty awesome. We have all stars channels. We do more stand ups than we've ever done. So, we probably I mean, our collegiate team may meet
Vince Beese:Stand ups up by Zoom,
Corey Richardson:you mean? 15 minutes Zoom stuff. And it doesn't mean and you might be in the office together, but you're still gonna just do it through Zoom because it's easier on the city of Austin. And so I would say we're really good at staying very well connected. And then we do get together.
Corey Richardson:I mean, our team travels for for deals. Yeah. We go on-site for, you know, key events. Like, we'll be at the NHL draft and, you know, all those events will have a handful of people there. We will
Vince Beese:4 team has to go to Vegas to go
Corey Richardson:to the spear. Well, we just had a team in at NACDA. We wanted we had probably 20, 30 people there. We hosted a party, and I think there were a 1,000 people that came. I mean, so we Okay.
Corey Richardson:Our college organization is pretty low. I mean, they had a good time. I missed that one, unfortunately, though.
Vince Beese:Oh, that's fun. That's fun. So so really nothing missed because you made it up through other other ways. Yeah.
Corey Richardson:And I would just say too how we hire is so key. I mean, I think 90% of everything I'm saying, I think it starts with hiring. Yeah. I really truly believe that that's a core competency of ours and how we do it. I mean, we don't we do we're so picky.
Corey Richardson:It takes a long time to get into team Works. It's very hard. But once you're in, you rarely ever leave because it really is a great culture. I mean, I'm proud to say that, look, I have 6 people in my sales organization. I've got 2 neutrals and 54 promoters, meaning people are telling me that if they were offered similar or money, they would stay at Teamworks.
Corey Richardson:That is like and and honestly, I mean, I I I I give all that credit to my my middle managers, my, you know, sales leaders because they're the ones that translate that strategy and execution and build those incredible ground floor relationships.
Vince Beese:Hey, recruiters. I wouldn't call on any employees at, Teamworks. You're not gonna get very far.
Corey Richardson:Well, it's funny. I get, you know, I do get offered from time to time. Hey. We'd love to help you hire. We've got some great people, and I just respond.
Corey Richardson:I'm like, we just don't outsource any recruiting because we we know who we're attacking. We go after our customers. You know, a lot of times our customers have people that it's a transient workforce anyways in athletics. Like, they're used to just taking the next bigger job. So for us to work with a customer that we've invested all this time, they just bought our product, and then we go, by the way, we're your super users come in to work for us.
Corey Richardson:They don't bat an eyelid. They understand. Yeah. And it's and it's actually quite great.
Vince Beese:So what are some of the things that your team or you are working on for improvements? I I I'm a firm believer in you don't just train once a year, twice a year. It's constant education training.
Corey Richardson:What are the things you
Vince Beese:guys are working on that you find that's been impactful for the team and the organization.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. So I would say we reinvent ourselves all the time. Like, any good athlete. Right? You you're like, man, this guy's on the top of his golf game, and he's changing his swing.
Corey Richardson:What's going on? Well, we're doing that constantly. We we do we we got our collegiate team. I I love what they just did. They did a 20% better campaign where we take everything we're doing or how can it be 20% better.
Corey Richardson:So it might be we're gonna revamp our proposal, which has been winning at 60, 70, 80%. Well, how do we make that better? Right? So everything gets really attention to detail because we're not a mass volume play where it's like I could you know, average SaaS company might be winning at 20, 25%. They're happy.
Corey Richardson:We're winning it, you know, much higher percentage of 60, 70%. Really? Yeah. Because I mean, we don't we don't even go after it unless we're very. So most of the people that come to us for technology, we're usually we're seeding that through an integrated platform.
Corey Richardson:I mean, that's beauty of what we do is everything is being typed and integrated. So think of what Salesforce has done with all these point solutions. We're doing the same thing in the world we live.
Vince Beese:So I wouldn't yeah. I love it. The fact that you you you're probably only creating an opportunity what you know is a winnable opportunity. 100%. My god.
Vince Beese:That is a nice spot to be in because
Corey Richardson:It's fun.
Vince Beese:Because a lot of people are just making opportunities, make opportunities.
Corey Richardson:Doesn't mean it how fast. We still deal with that.
Vince Beese:But you're fine. But if you told me that if I create this opportunity today, I have a 70% probability or higher of closing.
Corey Richardson:Yeah.
Vince Beese:I'm feeling pretty good about my quarter and my next quarter and my next quarter. Right?
Corey Richardson:I would say that's been the biggest shift is, you know, as we've grown, as our products have started integrating Yeah. It's made it very difficult for a point solution to compete with us. Yeah. Because, a, we're gonna have the best technology out there. B, it's gonna connect.
Corey Richardson:And and, you know, the athlete's already going to their app 6 times a day to check their schedule Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, their messages. So why not get their nutrition updates?
Corey Richardson:Why not get their, you know, strength conditioning outputs? I mean, all that stuff should come into one platform. And so we think we have a pretty distinct advantage, though, but I think the greatest advantage we have is our customer success team is our best lead gen. So, I mean, I cannot sing their praises high enough. So we have less than 4 biz dev people in our company.
Vince Beese:About this
Corey Richardson:I mean, and, you know, and they primarily are salespeople, but and they may carry the deal all the way through, which is not like the contract. But the reality is most biz dev comes from customer success.
Vince Beese:Oh, wow. Because they're customers? Yeah. Because we had a 98% or or referrals.
Corey Richardson:Some kind of upsell. So great example. In college, we have 98% of every university using this. Really? So but still a lot of greenfield.
Corey Richardson:My terps? We have your terps. We got Larry Long and my terps. We got them up
Vince Beese:and down. You know, Larry Long's a member here. Of course. Yeah. Of course.
Vince Beese:Larry Long junior.
Corey Richardson:Sorry. Yes. Right. Yeah.
Vince Beese:He said to say hello, by the way. He could be here today. Yeah. We've got a couple minutes. Anyone in the audience think about a question if you have one.
Vince Beese:If you do, there's a mic there. You gotta turn it on with your finger, and then you talk into it after you turn it on. So we've got a few seconds. Oh, here comes the always Linda's. How about you?
Vince Beese:You're gonna get a good doozy.
Vince Beese:Wow. So, obviously, your clients, a lot of them are sports teams, But you serve the them and the individual players. What do they do when they're off the team? Do you service them? Because they they probably don't wanna leave you behind.
Corey Richardson:Well, the interesting thing is the way the the nature of our product is it's really, it's a product that's, I would say, like, it it it's made possible by those that surround them and empower them. So once they move on, hopefully, they're going into professional athletics, and then they're literally signing out one day at Carolina, and they're signing on at the Bills or the Cowboys. And so and all it changes is the look and feel of the app and potentially some of the different solutions that the Cowboys may have bought that's interested in having Carolina. So that's the beauty of what we're doing is we're we're literally taking this entire life cycle of an athlete. So once we have them, we try to keep them.
Corey Richardson:You know? And so that's why it works so well. So I remember we were selling into the NFL. It was like we'd go to an NFL team. They're like, hey.
Corey Richardson:They broke. Don't fix it. We're not gonna do anything. And then we'd say, well, I just wanna show you your draft board. You drafted 9 players.
Corey Richardson:8 out of 9 used our product in college.
Vince Beese:Oh, wow.
Corey Richardson:So when they come to you and ask you what their Teamworks login is That's cool. You know, what are you gonna say? So it actually really worked well. So that that so I would say that that's that's our goal. We really don't serve individuals today without the team component around.
Vince Beese:I just wanna say that my nephew has now gone to the Yankee Fantasy Baseball Camp, and he's sold and he's coming back. And I wonder what you do for your team, sales and everybody else to get them out and playing sports they love. That's I mean,
Corey Richardson:we we we used to have when we were all local, we had a volleyball team. We were gonna launch we were gonna do it all, but now no one's local anymore. So it's kinda challenging. So
Vince Beese:so I I'd like to go back to earlier piece of your interview where you talked about team sales.
Corey Richardson:At my company, we are trying to we feel like we have the right players and territory managers, and we've got a new sales manager. But for a long time, the our compensations have been individually based. But there's there's a higher what would you say? A larger initiative by our company founder and soup and mid level managers to create more team sales culture. What was your inspiration to restructure the incentive plans?
Corey Richardson:Did you model it off of somebody else? And what advice would you give a company that's about to go down a road like that?
Corey Richardson:Yeah. I would I would say the inspiration usually comes from a problem. And in our case, again, it was a slight you know, so it was a concern where someone had worked a deal and they moved into new territory, and they were gonna get 0 compensation. And so now you're going, hey. Can I split the deal?
Corey Richardson:Can I take away from this person? I don't believe that's fair. So I don't like splitting deals. I like to do things up front. So, yes, it is kind of split because you only have a certain amount of money to go around.
Corey Richardson:But the inspiration, I think, is, you know, I'm I'm just I'm a team player. I played a team sport. You know, when I was holding the ball on the mound, like, I was in control. But as soon as it got out of my hands, I wasn't necessarily. And I needed my fielders to pick me up.
Corey Richardson:You know? And if I walk someone, I needed my catcher maybe to throw them out at second or just turn a double play. And I think that that's the inspiration is that here we work in the world of sports, and how how do we not sell that way? And to me, it just felt like an obvious transition, and the kind of people we recruit love it. So if you're a lone wolf sales rep, you don't come work for us because, you know, I've had one person actually do that.
Corey Richardson:They said, you know, can I just make all the money stuff I sell? I don't really wanna be tied to anyone else. And that person didn't last very long. Right? So I I like the idea that my team celebrates when their teammate wins because it impacts them.
Corey Richardson:Like, I love that. And I and I like the idea that, and again and what it does, it mandates that we have all a players. So that's the hard part, is I can't I cannot have b players on our team because the team won't allow. The team will come to me and say, I think there's a challenge here. So I naturally have a team of, I believe, you know, 56 incredibly talented sales professionals that are fully bought in because their peers are literally pushing them to be just as bought in as they are.
Vince Beese:Bottom line is it worked for you, and if it didn't work for your company when you implemented, you would've
Corey Richardson:I wouldn't be here. Yeah.
Vince Beese:You wouldn't be. It probably would've been because it
Corey Richardson:was a big rest.
Vince Beese:We got time for another. Lot of participation today, Corey. What's going on over here?
NA:Hey, Corey. Nice to meet you. My name
Vince Beese:is Connor Hoyt. And quick question because Teamworks has just grown phenomenally over the years through acquisitions as well as the funding rounds that you've had that are tremendous. I'm just curious in your philosophy when it comes to the criteria versus, new funding round against maybe acquisition of a competitor, etcetera.
Corey Richardson:So I so I think a lot of the funding that you've seen us raise has been a direct result of us wanting to go out and acquire. So, like, that you know, that's what require I mean, we could have absolutely been in a place where we're profitable and would not have had to raise, you know, probably our last two rounds. We chose to go faster, and that's part of it. So when we acquire, we're gaining incredible talent. So if you look at I'll just give you a great example.
Corey Richardson:We were building a compliance tool to serve collegiate athletics. We would have gotten there in a couple years. But in the meantime, there was a compliance company out there doing a really nice job that was just eating up the market, and they were gonna have to come after us with communication and collaboration. So we had 2 choices. We could fight it out.
Corey Richardson:Both of us would have had a challenge in doing so, or we could join forces. And I think we're offering now a collaborative solution. A lot of people thought was a redundancy. Are they gonna not need your product or theirs? It's actually the opposite.
Corey Richardson:People are buying both. We're bundling them together. There's cost savings for the customer, an integrated experience. And, oh, by the way, we get to get there a lot faster. I mean, we've if you look at the size of our company when I joined in 17, I mean, we're roughly 20 times the size.
Corey Richardson:Yeah. You know? And and I think and and we weren't a small company. And so the reality is, like, we're we're I think that's been because you can't do it organically that fast, at least in the markets we serve. It just takes too long to build.
Vince Beese:I got one last question for you. We talked a lot a lot about yourself, about what you're up to, but this question we have to think a little bit about.
Corey Richardson:Tell me.
Vince Beese:Are you ready?
Corey Richardson:Yes.
Vince Beese:Tell us one thing about yourself that's interesting interesting that most people do not know.
Corey Richardson:I don't know if it's interesting, but I'll tell you. I do think it's We'll all be the judge of that. I don't know if it's interesting, but I think it's something most people may not know is that, I was very close to not going into sales. I almost took a job. So I had 3 choices.
Corey Richardson:I had gotten healthy at the end of my career. I was gonna play professional baseball, which I think would have lasted 2 weeks, and I would have been hurt again, to be fair. So, my other option actually was to go in a full time ministry.
Vince Beese:So I
Corey Richardson:and I I'm I'm a solid believer. I I my faith is actually what drives the way I coach, the way I lead. It's actually everything about the way I live and serve and serve my team. And I actually thought I wanted to do that for a living. And so one of my other mentors, a guy named Mike Extonkamper at UNC, he was at in action.
Corey Richardson:He really impacted my life in a way that, honestly, I wanna give back to others. So I work with the youth group. So one of my part time unpaid jobs is I serve a youth group at my church and, spend a lot of time with those kids. Obviously, I connect very well with the athletes. So it's just kinda fun.
Corey Richardson:But so I think that's probably unusual because a lot of sales leaders, I don't think it's stereotyped as as, you know, people that are, probably putting their faith before maybe their their, you know, the results. I would say I don't lead that way. I lead where we're gonna we're do things the right way. We're gonna do it with, you know, with with respect for one another and how we serve each other. And then ultimately, the numbers will take care of themselves.
Corey Richardson:And and they seem to have done so in my career so far. Well, I think
Vince Beese:that was interesting and good good on you, man. Thank you. Corey, thanks for coming on live from sales HQ. We appreciate it. Till next time.
Vince Beese:Thank you.