March 31, 2025 • 29 mins
What if the key to sales success isn't working harder, but targeting smarter? Nick Mavrick of Built Data joins Ron for a candid exploration of how construction equipment dealers can revolutionize their sales approach by embracing the Pareto Principle—the idea that 20% of customers generate 80% of business.
The conversation reveals a startling truth: most construction equipment dealers are still using century-old sales methodologies. Traditional "black book" approaches keep valuable customer information siloed with individual salespeople, creating massive inefficiencies and preventing strategic alignment across organizations. Nick explains how Built Data solves this problem by creating a "single pane of glass" that connects high-level strategy with day-to-day sales execution.
At the heart of this approach is a fundamental shift in perspective. Rather than viewing salespeople as mere revenue generators, Nick advocates treating them as internal customers deserving of support. Built Data identifies high-value targets, predicts equipment replacement cycles, and even allows salespeople to text questions about specific accounts before meetings—serving as an "outsourced wingman" for sales operations.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when discussing why 90% of companies fail to implement their strategies (hint: 95% of employees can't even articulate what the strategy is). By distilling complex data into actionable intelligence, Built Data helps bridge this communication gap while transforming salespeople into trusted advisors rather than traditional "peddlers."
Whether you're running a dealership or leading a sales team, this discussion offers practical insights about focusing your resources where they'll have the greatest impact. As Nick puts it, market disruption is inevitable, but targeting the right customers can negate up to 80% of business risk.
Ready to transform how you approach sales? Listen now, then share your thoughts about data-driven customer selection strategies!
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Aloha and welcome to another Candid Conversation, and
the man raising his hand on theside of me is Nick Maverick
from a company called Built Data.
This is the second podcast,second Candid Conversation Nick
and I have had or will have, andI want to use this as a
platform for Nick to explain inpretty severe detail what he's
(00:27):
done, why, how, all the rest ofthat nonsense and I'm just going
to give you the company titlename is Built Data and then I'm
going to say Nick, what in thehell got you to start this?
Where'd it come from?
How'd you get it done?
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, Ron, thank you.
I always enjoy talking to youand thank you for being a
blessing.
So built data was knowledgeacquired through many teachers
through the years, mainlysalespeople and what I realized
is in sales and marketing thereare a million things you can do,
(01:14):
and Michael Dell had anexpression I like to acquire my
competitors one customer at atime, and the companion to that
is you can pick your customersbefore they pick you.
I had worked for a majorequipment consolidator that
competed with United, ultimatelywas acquired by Sunbelt.
(01:40):
Then I had worked for adivision of Volvo Construction,
equipment and Rental and wedeployed a very specific
marketing model.
It was a sales model to focuson the 20% of customers that do
80% of the business, and I knowI can say that and it sounds
easy and I did not inventcounting to 10.
And what I found is the numberof opinions in business about
(02:05):
how you achieve success reallyis as simple as showing somebody
the distribution of theproportionality of VIPs in their
customer base, and it ties toeverything we know.
Of course, the original model,or the Pareto principle, was
based on the distribution ofwealth, where 20% of the
(02:26):
population controls 80% of thewealth In business.
It's no secret that there are asmall amount of companies who
generate the majority ofeconomic output or work on the
majority of constructionprojects or industrial projects,
construction projects orindustrial projects.
(02:50):
So many years ago I counted to10 and we would display to
salespersons the 20% of thecustomers that did 80% of the
business.
But it doesn't stop there.
Those are the people that loveyou.
Can you grow your share ofwallet?
Can you grow with them Ifthey're a national account, can
you grow from Atlanta to Denverto Los Angeles with them?
And once you secure your baseof success, you then can execute
(03:15):
a more ambitious strategy.
And I don't think I answeredyour question.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I had done work you did well.
What I get out of that is we donot have a working model in the
construction equipment, lightindustrial, compact equipment
markets on how to sell.
We're using a model from 100years ago.
(03:43):
Here's my black book of mycustomers.
I know that the company doesn'thave a clue what's in that
black book.
You always used to drive mecrazy and you found a way
somehow to segment that to makeit more meaningful, more
understandable, because I can'tdeal with 20,000 customers but I
(04:04):
could deal with 2,000.
Am I?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
getting close, correct, lost all numbers 100%
and the notion is.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
There's so much confusion you and I set an honor
of calling.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
If you don't have a plan, any road will get you
there.
And one thing that we'vecreated and built data is a
watch list of customers so youcan know that 20% of your
customers will do 80% of yourbusiness.
We can stock the pond withthose customers and our aim is
to link behavior.
And I wrote down what you saidearlier strategy implement, do.
(04:42):
I wrote down what you saidearlier strategy implement, do.
We've created a system using80-20 to link strategy to
implementation to do.
And so the CEO has a view.
The director of sales who'sresponsible?
The CEO has a strategy.
The sales director has thenotion of implementing
(05:03):
Salesperson's got to do.
The sales director has thenotion of implementing
Salesperson's got to do.
We create the single pane ofglass for those three people to
work together and simplify andallow them to secure their
business in a very predictableway, targeting the best
customers and the next bestcustomers in the market.
That's it, and that's a greatmeasure of success.
(05:27):
It's not a long conversation,and if it is a long conversation
, then they're probably drowningin data, drowning in
misallocation of capital,wondering what's happening.
It really shouldn't be thathard.
So we distill data to its mostessential, actionable
information.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
What astounds me, nick?
We've had this data for a longtime and we've had this problem
for a long time and nobody hasdone what you've done yet done
(06:09):
what you've done yet, I'm sureonce it becomes popular or
successful.
You're right now, three monthsin, and creating this new
approach, an approach that works, an approach that's wildly and
provably necessary, and you'regoing to start having all kinds
of competition once this getsgoing, because everybody oh, I
know how to sell but nobodyreally knows.
I remember starting the productsupport group for Caterpillar
(06:31):
back in 1970.
And the criteria for hiring aguy to do it was they had good
writing, because you had to beable to create a quote.
The second thing that was veryclear was that Caterpillar chose
to pay commission oncompetitive items.
But the items that they choseto pay on they didn't make
(06:53):
Batteries, hose, that type ofthing.
It drove me nuts.
And what was interesting was wegave them territories.
They were geographic, it wasn'tby size or not, the 80-20.
It wasn't very sophisticatedand I would travel with the
salesmen once a month.
(07:14):
I was in the vehicle with themall day and I said you know,
it's next Tuesday, I'm going tobe with you and they'd have the
day planned for me.
You know how this works.
I'd have a customer list infront of me and I'd know where
we are geographically.
I'd say, let's go see that guy.
And it wasn't on his list.
Everybody he would visit.
They'd have a good conversation, they were good buddies, all
(07:35):
the rest of the nonsense.
It was more a personality showthan anything else, and the
customer that I went to theydidn't really know.
So that bothered me right fromthe and this is 50 years ago
that bothered right from theget-go.
You've taken that away.
You've given me a list ofcustomers that represent 20% of
(07:58):
the names and 80% of thebusiness for the dealership.
I can divide that by number ofcustomers I think a salesman can
cover, and then you give themthe data to say, okay, this is
what they bought, month by monthby month for a number of years
because you got the data.
Month by month by month for anumber of years.
Because you got the data, youhave the gap between when they
(08:19):
last bought.
How long apart is it all thatdata?
And you're distilling that in amanner that they don't even
need to think about it.
Here's the guys you need totalk to next month.
Here's the guys that areleaving you, or look like
they're leaving you.
You better get after it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Am I wrong?
No, you're right.
I mean we.
The notion is, I believe we canbe the outsource wingman for
sales operations, and whatinspired me to start the company
is I had done work for a verylarge dealership a few years ago
multi-brand dealership a fewyears ago, multi-brand
(09:02):
dealership, different operationsand just the amount of noise.
I call it.
They had bought a lot of goodthings that I think sounded good
, but when they opened the boxand installed them, they just
didn't work together.
The pieces didn't work together.
The CRM system was bloated tothe gills.
It was half owned by IT andsales Data was owned by IT.
They would do custom sort ofPower BI queries.
(09:26):
They had all the tools, butthey lacked a sort of a
philosophy to make sales orcustomer information operational
for the salesperson, and so weaim to fill that void in sales
ops is to serve the salespersonas a customer.
(09:47):
Now we not only display data but, ron, we've evolved the
business model where you can nowliterally text us with a
question you might have on thedata You're about to go into a
meeting.
I think it's risky.
Let me start there.
But how would I sell tosomebody who owns these machines
these competitive products.
Are they part of the 20?
(10:09):
Are they on the watch list?
Are the 20 that will do 80 orthe 80 that will do 20?
So they can plan their day moreeffectively and we serve as
sort of an interim you know, Idon't know how to say it a
wingman to the director of salesto just serve that data up to
the tip of the sphere who can'tget it today.
(10:31):
And it's got to be frustratingfor those companies.
I know it's frustrating forthose salespeople and I would
presume it's frustrating forownership, because they carry a
ton of expense that they scratchtheir heads with, things that
they quote unquote, need,whether it's CRM, licenses up
(10:54):
the wazoo that they may or maynot use, whether it's.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
CRM licenses up the wazoo that they may or may not
use.
The beauty is, without gettingpolitical, what Elon Musk is
doing with the governmentDepartment of Government
Efficiency, like you say.
I've got all these licenses forall these salesmen and all
these people to software and youknow, here comes GPD, here
(11:19):
comes artificial intelligenceand basically it's the same
thing as spell checkers for wordprocessing systems.
But the fundamental problemfrom my perspective and you're
exposing it is all they've donein these systems is go from
paper to glass.
They've taken the methodologies, the process, the procedures,
(11:43):
the forms even that they've beenusing in a manual sense.
Computerized it made it faster,but hasn't changed anything.
You're coming in.
Here comes data.
It was beautiful what you said.
The data is shared between ITand sales.
Bologna IT owns the data.
There needs to be a specificowner for every data element and
(12:03):
nobody can touch that fieldwithout their approval, because
our data is flawed now.
It's messy, it is messy.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It's funny.
It doesn't need to be.
I was recently talking to a um,a pretty um billion dollar plus
dealer and they were sayingthey had dirty data on their on
their books for five years.
To clean it up and it.
I hope I'm not speaking out ofturn, but the notion unless I
(12:38):
misunderstood the notion was itwould be cleaned up when they
implemented the new DBS ERPsomething.
But why wait?
I mean you're just tight.
I mean the urgency, themisallocation of capital, the
changing market conditions.
That's never changed, so themarket will keep changing.
(13:00):
But if you're tying one armbehind your back and I don't
think dirty data is that hard,by the way, we love getting paid
to fix it I don't think it'sthat hard and it's I don't know
if you want to turn it into along war that ends up being, you
know, in a standstill.
You can or just pull a SWATteam or a special forces team.
(13:24):
Fix it in 30 days and getworking, get moving.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
We don't have that sense of urgency, do we?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
doing Well, I think people, I think it.
I think what happens is it's abreakdown in teamwork.
Right, if you're an employeeand you, if you're a high
functioning executive, then youwill own an issue that maybe
isn't in your domain, but asbusinesses become bigger, they
you know, you hear the term, youknow stay in your domain, but
(13:58):
as businesses become bigger, youhear the term stay in your lane
.
Man, there's some, as you and Italked about Charlie.
There is a way to live a betterlife, and so I would encourage
businesses.
If you're carrying around theselegacy problems, something that
bugs you like dirty data, andyou say, well, we'll get to it
(14:21):
next quarter, next year, do itnow.
Do it now.
By the way, you can do it byhand.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I had a long chat yesterday with Jay Lucas, who's
one smart man.
He purchased Jordan Sitter,which is the Lord of Recruiting
Companies, and he gave me ametaphor for a company using an
aquarium.
So I've got this aquarium andI've got it filled with water,
(14:55):
and the water is the culture ofthe organization.
Now I can put tools in there tokeep the culture pure different
plants, different scenery andthen I'll put the workers in or
the customers in, whatever thecategorization is and if the
(15:20):
culture is bad, the fish aregoing to die.
If the culture is good, thefish will live.
But very few people can tell mehow they got their culture where
they are.
So you know, I'm a nut for dataand one of the things that I
look at is surveys, nationalsurveys, big number stuff, not
(15:44):
one or 2%, not 1,000, 100,000.
And in America, the number ofbusinesses that succeed in
implementing their strategy overthe last 20, 30 years has not
exceeded 10%.
In other words, 90% of thecompanies fail to implement
their strategy, and othersurveys out there point to what
(16:09):
are the reasons for that.
Why is that happening?
And 95% of the employees inthese companies can not tell me
what the strategy is.
So, from my perspective at the100,000-foot level, that's a
communications problem andbringing another name out there,
(16:32):
Steve Clegg, who's a prettyintelligent guy in his own right
.
He's beyond intelligent.
Well, he gets things down, andthe beauty to me for smart
people is they can simplifythings so that anybody on the
planet can understand, even me.
And Steve narrows things downto being a transaction between
two people a buyer and a seller.
(16:52):
Down to being a transactionbetween two people, a buyer and
a seller.
The sales function is aboutthat relationship between the
two people.
So how do we build thatrelationship?
And it's really fundamental.
What are the needs and wants ofthe customer In the organization
(17:12):
?
What are the needs and wants ofthe organization of the sales
director, of the salesman, ofthe CEO?
I don't care what it is.
Tell me what you want and it'sup to me to deliver it.
And as time passes, theBuddhist philosophy is kind of
good, do good, and if you can'tdo good, don't do bad.
(17:34):
So everything's up,everything's positive.
And so, mr Salesman who'sselling equipment, mr Salesman
who's renting equipment, mrSalesman who's doing product
support sales, what do you needto get better results?
I don't know many people haveasked the salesman that, but if
(17:57):
their salesman's smart, I wouldbet the first answer they'll
come back with is give me bettercustomers.
The salesman's got to make thebetter customer.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
If I could make a companion.
I think that with, with silentand is meaning treat the
salesperson as a customer yeah,absolutely and if you really
graded them, I would you know.
You hear a lot of machismotoughen up, right, it's your job
, go do it, go drive around,hustle.
(18:32):
Yes, there are many people whosucceed by doing that and
there's many, you know,graveyards.
A lot of machismo.
Toughen up, right, it's yourjob, go do it, go, drive around,
hustle.
Yes, there are many people whosucceed by doing that and
there's many graveyards filledwith people who did not succeed
in doing that.
I think it's unfair, and it'snot only unfair to the
salesperson, but it's a verysimplistic belief, for the
enterprise is if you havesalespeople, buys, is if you
(18:53):
have salespeople, you have themfor a reason it's a
solution-based sale.
Yes, there's a place fortransactions.
Steve's right, because Stevewould say there's multiple
transactions.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
We're focusing on people who have a solution, who
need a solution.
You have a salesperson who canadd value in helping the person
achieve solution.
Do you truly treat thatsalesperson as an internal
customer?
Can you make it easy for themand be the wingman to equip them
with quantitative andqualitative data?
That's it so.
(19:27):
Quantitative says Ron boughtthese things over time.
He has these needs, this iswhat he owns, that he bought
from other people, blah, blah,blah.
The qualitative can bring inwhat project Ron's working on.
And what's interesting is themachines now, with the software,
(19:49):
called the soft products ofmachines, have a bunch of
technology that makes it abetter one-to-one fit for
customers.
However, it's lost with theproduct manager at the OEM.
It doesn't make its way downthe field.
So we believe not only us, butwe believe we can fill that hole
(20:10):
with accessible quantitativeand qualitative information.
Here's a wingman summary forRon's lead before he goes and
talks to a customer.
It's not that hard.
A million years ago somebodymay have had an assistant to do
that.
I've never had one.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
But if you contrast that Even if I had one, I'd want
to do it myself anyways yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I, you know, I've never had that luxury.
But the why?
If the salesperson is not thecenter of the organization,
maybe consider taking adifferent path.
They're expensive, you know,fully loaded, but it's fine,
you're paying salary.
(20:56):
Maybe you don't do or don't paybonus benefits, taxes, a truck,
a computer, branded stuff,events.
You're looking at a quartermillion, a half a million
dollars.
It's not trivial, you know.
Is the enterprise fullysupporting that person?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
And then let's go further with that whole thing.
If you just make a businesscase number one, I don't like
the term salesman, okay.
I don't like the term peddler.
I'm a trusted advisor.
I like that.
I'm going to write that down.
The customer doesn't have topay for it.
If they have a question, I wantthem to ask me.
If I don't know the answer,I'll find the answer well said,
(21:36):
and it might not be my productsthat are the solution.
I want the customer to trust meexplicitly so that nobody else
is going to be between me andthat person ever.
And when you get there now youwork hard like hell to protect
it, but you can't be replaced.
The transition from thatrelationship between this
(21:59):
customer and the advisor theadvisor retires, the advisor is
sick, the advisor quits.
There has to be somebody comein and we know the statistics.
So the data you talked about inthe machine is unbelievable.
I know next year, right now,which machines need to be
(22:20):
replaced, which ones havereached the end of their life
cycle, which ones are costingper hour higher than it should,
which ones have the hour meter,all this stuff.
I know who they are, I knowwhere they are, I know what I'm
going to sell.
Have you met a salesman yetthat has a set of goals and
objectives like that for nextyear?
No, and that's so basic andfundamental it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, we got a request recently and I actually
love these requests because thesalesperson is my customer and
the notion was from a salesmanager at a substantial size
dealership.
The salesperson doesn't turn onhis or her computer, by the way
.
That's okay, that's completelyokay.
(23:05):
And we read the data to ourclients, so we read the data to
salespeople, so they don't haveto.
We wanted to take away anotherthing they need to do today,
right, so we summarize and pushinformation to them.
And the sales manager said heasked the salesperson what could
(23:26):
be done better.
He said, well, tell me who totarget.
Okay, and so now, awesome, sonow we send a list of the 10
best customers and prospects totarget and why.
And we, you know, the wingmanliterally puts it in the
person's hand and what does thatmake us?
(23:46):
I don't think that makes us adata company or a technology
company.
It makes us a service company,we're.
What kills me, ron, if you canhelp thread the message, is a
lot of these so-called tools,whether it's crm.
You know very well-knownproviders, um, and, and there's
others.
(24:07):
I think those companies aremaking a ton of money.
You know they're the only onesmaking money in the gold rush by
selling shovels to people goingdigging for gold, and it's
tantamount to a lie.
It really is.
Now they can say well, I soldyou the shovel.
Well, hey, you know, dumbo, youknow who's getting rich by
(24:28):
mining gold.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So I'd say take a look at your expenses mining
gold.
So I'd say, take a look at yourexpenses.
Well, the other side again,your perspective is the thing
that drives it.
A lot of people want to sell amachine.
Customer doesn't want to buy amachine.
Customer wants to buy a numberof miles of road, buy a number
of dozen of feet of hole, allthat very simple stuff.
(24:50):
And we have classes todetermine market segmentation
and why, grouping people withsimilar needs and wants.
Then we get into territory,establishing territories, and we
calculate the potential of theterritory in dollars and cents
(25:12):
for parts, for service or rental, for machines, and then we go
to market coverage.
So I'm 20, 40 hours into nowtraining somebody on OK, here's
next year.
How many calls are you going tomake next year?
Who are they going to be with?
Why'd you choose them?
(25:32):
Who are they going to be with?
Why did you choose them?
Your built data product givesthem the answer to that question
without them having to thinkabout it.
And I don't know and you and Ihave talked about this how you
get that word out, how you getpeople to change to using these
tools that have been around along time, by the way, not just
(25:54):
yours for three months, that'scorrect.
This is the challenge and howto scale the damn thing.
So you know, I hope thisdiscussion and the people that
are listening to it isresonating, that there's better
ways to manage the sales team,the people I call advisors.
(26:17):
There's better ways to manageyour market share.
There's better ways to makemoney and it's not necessarily
by being smarter, it's justbeing better organized and doing
what you think you need to do.
Is that kind of a reasonableconclusion to draw after this?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
short it is.
I would add a couple of things.
One is you know, talk to you,talk to Steve Clegg, talk to
people who can help.
I'm going to say you two aresome of the best minds I've ever
met and you could ripplethrough.
You can quickly cut through alot of confusion and listen.
(27:01):
Disruption will continue tooccur.
I think if you were, thequestion is how much of the risk
can you negate?
Right, I would argue you couldprobably negate 80% of the risk
(27:22):
in your operating model if youlistened to you and Steve Clegg
and us as a service provider.
The 20% in variability aremarket conditions.
You hear some of the dominantnarrative about tariffs and
interest rates and this and thatit is noise.
It's noise, and tomorrow it'sgoing to be something else.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yep, and we shouldn't be afraid of it.
In fact, I welcome that stuff.
Otherwise, just imagine howboring it would be if it was
tranquil.
I haven't had that in my wholedamn life and I don't want it.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, I'm going to see you in.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
October.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, that's right.
Well, nick's going to see thelight and get out to the islands
In the background.
My favorite beach looks justlike that, except there's less
surf.
It runs about three and a halfmiles and there might be 50 to
75 people on it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And you promised me a good cup of coffee, though.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well, maybe it won't just be coffee, that's fine.
Thank you, nick, and thankeveryone for being a blessing
that has listened to this Mahaloand I look forward to having
you with me on the next CandidConversation Mahalo, Thank you.
Aloha and welcome to another Candid Conversation, and
the man raising his hand on theside of me is Nick Maverick
from a company called Built Data.
This is the second podcast,second Candid Conversation Nick
and I have had or will have, andI want to use this as a
platform for Nick to explain inpretty severe detail what he's
(00:27):
done, why, how, all the rest ofthat nonsense and I'm just going
to give you the company titlename is Built Data and then I'm
going to say Nick, what in thehell got you to start this?
Where'd it come from?
How'd you get it done?
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, Ron, thank you.
I always enjoy talking to youand thank you for being a
blessing.
So built data was knowledgeacquired through many teachers
through the years, mainlysalespeople and what I realized
is in sales and marketing thereare a million things you can do,
(01:14):
and Michael Dell had anexpression I like to acquire my
competitors one customer at atime, and the companion to that
is you can pick your customersbefore they pick you.
I had worked for a majorequipment consolidator that
competed with United, ultimatelywas acquired by Sunbelt.
(01:40):
Then I had worked for adivision of Volvo Construction,
equipment and Rental and wedeployed a very specific
marketing model.
It was a sales model to focuson the 20% of customers that do
80% of the business, and I knowI can say that and it sounds
easy and I did not inventcounting to 10.
And what I found is the numberof opinions in business about
(02:05):
how you achieve success reallyis as simple as showing somebody
the distribution of theproportionality of VIPs in their
customer base, and it ties toeverything we know.
Of course, the original model,or the Pareto principle, was
based on the distribution ofwealth, where 20% of the
(02:26):
population controls 80% of thewealth In business.
It's no secret that there are asmall amount of companies who
generate the majority ofeconomic output or work on the
majority of constructionprojects or industrial projects,
construction projects orindustrial projects.
(02:50):
So many years ago I counted to10 and we would display to
salespersons the 20% of thecustomers that did 80% of the
business.
But it doesn't stop there.
Those are the people that loveyou.
Can you grow your share ofwallet?
Can you grow with them Ifthey're a national account, can
you grow from Atlanta to Denverto Los Angeles with them?
And once you secure your baseof success, you then can execute
(03:15):
a more ambitious strategy.
And I don't think I answeredyour question.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I had done work you did well.
What I get out of that is we donot have a working model in the
construction equipment, lightindustrial, compact equipment
markets on how to sell.
We're using a model from 100years ago.
(03:43):
Here's my black book of mycustomers.
I know that the company doesn'thave a clue what's in that
black book.
You always used to drive mecrazy and you found a way
somehow to segment that to makeit more meaningful, more
understandable, because I can'tdeal with 20,000 customers but I
(04:04):
could deal with 2,000.
Am I?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
getting close, correct, lost all numbers 100%
and the notion is.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
There's so much confusion you and I set an honor
of calling.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
If you don't have a plan, any road will get you
there.
And one thing that we'vecreated and built data is a
watch list of customers so youcan know that 20% of your
customers will do 80% of yourbusiness.
We can stock the pond withthose customers and our aim is
to link behavior.
And I wrote down what you saidearlier strategy implement, do.
(04:42):
I wrote down what you saidearlier strategy implement, do.
We've created a system using80-20 to link strategy to
implementation to do.
And so the CEO has a view.
The director of sales who'sresponsible?
The CEO has a strategy.
The sales director has thenotion of implementing
(05:03):
Salesperson's got to do.
The sales director has thenotion of implementing
Salesperson's got to do.
We create the single pane ofglass for those three people to
work together and simplify andallow them to secure their
business in a very predictableway, targeting the best
customers and the next bestcustomers in the market.
That's it, and that's a greatmeasure of success.
(05:27):
It's not a long conversation,and if it is a long conversation
, then they're probably drowningin data, drowning in
misallocation of capital,wondering what's happening.
It really shouldn't be thathard.
So we distill data to its mostessential, actionable
information.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
What astounds me, nick?
We've had this data for a longtime and we've had this problem
for a long time and nobody hasdone what you've done yet done
(06:09):
what you've done yet, I'm sureonce it becomes popular or
successful.
You're right now, three monthsin, and creating this new
approach, an approach that works, an approach that's wildly and
provably necessary, and you'regoing to start having all kinds
of competition once this getsgoing, because everybody oh, I
know how to sell but nobodyreally knows.
I remember starting the productsupport group for Caterpillar
(06:31):
back in 1970.
And the criteria for hiring aguy to do it was they had good
writing, because you had to beable to create a quote.
The second thing that was veryclear was that Caterpillar chose
to pay commission oncompetitive items.
But the items that they choseto pay on they didn't make
(06:53):
Batteries, hose, that type ofthing.
It drove me nuts.
And what was interesting was wegave them territories.
They were geographic, it wasn'tby size or not, the 80-20.
It wasn't very sophisticatedand I would travel with the
salesmen once a month.
(07:14):
I was in the vehicle with themall day and I said you know,
it's next Tuesday, I'm going tobe with you and they'd have the
day planned for me.
You know how this works.
I'd have a customer list infront of me and I'd know where
we are geographically.
I'd say, let's go see that guy.
And it wasn't on his list.
Everybody he would visit.
They'd have a good conversation, they were good buddies, all
(07:35):
the rest of the nonsense.
It was more a personality showthan anything else, and the
customer that I went to theydidn't really know.
So that bothered me right fromthe and this is 50 years ago
that bothered right from theget-go.
You've taken that away.
You've given me a list ofcustomers that represent 20% of
(07:58):
the names and 80% of thebusiness for the dealership.
I can divide that by number ofcustomers I think a salesman can
cover, and then you give themthe data to say, okay, this is
what they bought, month by monthby month for a number of years
because you got the data.
Month by month by month for anumber of years.
Because you got the data, youhave the gap between when they
(08:19):
last bought.
How long apart is it all thatdata?
And you're distilling that in amanner that they don't even
need to think about it.
Here's the guys you need totalk to next month.
Here's the guys that areleaving you, or look like
they're leaving you.
You better get after it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Am I wrong?
No, you're right.
I mean we.
The notion is, I believe we canbe the outsource wingman for
sales operations, and whatinspired me to start the company
is I had done work for a verylarge dealership a few years ago
multi-brand dealership a fewyears ago, multi-brand
(09:02):
dealership, different operationsand just the amount of noise.
I call it.
They had bought a lot of goodthings that I think sounded good
, but when they opened the boxand installed them, they just
didn't work together.
The pieces didn't work together.
The CRM system was bloated tothe gills.
It was half owned by IT andsales Data was owned by IT.
They would do custom sort ofPower BI queries.
(09:26):
They had all the tools, butthey lacked a sort of a
philosophy to make sales orcustomer information operational
for the salesperson, and so weaim to fill that void in sales
ops is to serve the salespersonas a customer.
(09:47):
Now we not only display data but, ron, we've evolved the
business model where you can nowliterally text us with a
question you might have on thedata You're about to go into a
meeting.
I think it's risky.
Let me start there.
But how would I sell tosomebody who owns these machines
these competitive products.
Are they part of the 20?
(10:09):
Are they on the watch list?
Are the 20 that will do 80 orthe 80 that will do 20?
So they can plan their day moreeffectively and we serve as
sort of an interim you know, Idon't know how to say it a
wingman to the director of salesto just serve that data up to
the tip of the sphere who can'tget it today.
(10:31):
And it's got to be frustratingfor those companies.
I know it's frustrating forthose salespeople and I would
presume it's frustrating forownership, because they carry a
ton of expense that they scratchtheir heads with, things that
they quote unquote, need,whether it's CRM, licenses up
(10:54):
the wazoo that they may or maynot use, whether it's.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
CRM licenses up the wazoo that they may or may not
use.
The beauty is, without gettingpolitical, what Elon Musk is
doing with the governmentDepartment of Government
Efficiency, like you say.
I've got all these licenses forall these salesmen and all
these people to software and youknow, here comes GPD, here
(11:19):
comes artificial intelligenceand basically it's the same
thing as spell checkers for wordprocessing systems.
But the fundamental problemfrom my perspective and you're
exposing it is all they've donein these systems is go from
paper to glass.
They've taken the methodologies, the process, the procedures,
(11:43):
the forms even that they've beenusing in a manual sense.
Computerized it made it faster,but hasn't changed anything.
You're coming in.
Here comes data.
It was beautiful what you said.
The data is shared between ITand sales.
Bologna IT owns the data.
There needs to be a specificowner for every data element and
(12:03):
nobody can touch that fieldwithout their approval, because
our data is flawed now.
It's messy, it is messy.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It's funny.
It doesn't need to be.
I was recently talking to a um,a pretty um billion dollar plus
dealer and they were sayingthey had dirty data on their on
their books for five years.
To clean it up and it.
I hope I'm not speaking out ofturn, but the notion unless I
(12:38):
misunderstood the notion was itwould be cleaned up when they
implemented the new DBS ERPsomething.
But why wait?
I mean you're just tight.
I mean the urgency, themisallocation of capital, the
changing market conditions.
That's never changed, so themarket will keep changing.
(13:00):
But if you're tying one armbehind your back and I don't
think dirty data is that hard,by the way, we love getting paid
to fix it I don't think it'sthat hard and it's I don't know
if you want to turn it into along war that ends up being, you
know, in a standstill.
You can or just pull a SWATteam or a special forces team.
(13:24):
Fix it in 30 days and getworking, get moving.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
We don't have that sense of urgency, do we?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
doing Well, I think people, I think it.
I think what happens is it's abreakdown in teamwork.
Right, if you're an employeeand you, if you're a high
functioning executive, then youwill own an issue that maybe
isn't in your domain, but asbusinesses become bigger, they
you know, you hear the term, youknow stay in your domain, but
(13:58):
as businesses become bigger, youhear the term stay in your lane
.
Man, there's some, as you and Italked about Charlie.
There is a way to live a betterlife, and so I would encourage
businesses.
If you're carrying around theselegacy problems, something that
bugs you like dirty data, andyou say, well, we'll get to it
(14:21):
next quarter, next year, do itnow.
Do it now.
By the way, you can do it byhand.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I had a long chat yesterday with Jay Lucas, who's
one smart man.
He purchased Jordan Sitter,which is the Lord of Recruiting
Companies, and he gave me ametaphor for a company using an
aquarium.
So I've got this aquarium andI've got it filled with water,
(14:55):
and the water is the culture ofthe organization.
Now I can put tools in there tokeep the culture pure different
plants, different scenery andthen I'll put the workers in or
the customers in, whatever thecategorization is and if the
(15:20):
culture is bad, the fish aregoing to die.
If the culture is good, thefish will live.
But very few people can tell mehow they got their culture where
they are.
So you know, I'm a nut for dataand one of the things that I
look at is surveys, nationalsurveys, big number stuff, not
(15:44):
one or 2%, not 1,000, 100,000.
And in America, the number ofbusinesses that succeed in
implementing their strategy overthe last 20, 30 years has not
exceeded 10%.
In other words, 90% of thecompanies fail to implement
their strategy, and othersurveys out there point to what
(16:09):
are the reasons for that.
Why is that happening?
And 95% of the employees inthese companies can not tell me
what the strategy is.
So, from my perspective at the100,000-foot level, that's a
communications problem andbringing another name out there,
(16:32):
Steve Clegg, who's a prettyintelligent guy in his own right
.
He's beyond intelligent.
Well, he gets things down, andthe beauty to me for smart
people is they can simplifythings so that anybody on the
planet can understand, even me.
And Steve narrows things downto being a transaction between
two people a buyer and a seller.
(16:52):
Down to being a transactionbetween two people, a buyer and
a seller.
The sales function is aboutthat relationship between the
two people.
So how do we build thatrelationship?
And it's really fundamental.
What are the needs and wants ofthe customer In the organization
(17:12):
?
What are the needs and wants ofthe organization of the sales
director, of the salesman, ofthe CEO?
I don't care what it is.
Tell me what you want and it'sup to me to deliver it.
And as time passes, theBuddhist philosophy is kind of
good, do good, and if you can'tdo good, don't do bad.
(17:34):
So everything's up,everything's positive.
And so, mr Salesman who'sselling equipment, mr Salesman
who's renting equipment, mrSalesman who's doing product
support sales, what do you needto get better results?
I don't know many people haveasked the salesman that, but if
(17:57):
their salesman's smart, I wouldbet the first answer they'll
come back with is give me bettercustomers.
The salesman's got to make thebetter customer.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
If I could make a companion.
I think that with, with silentand is meaning treat the
salesperson as a customer yeah,absolutely and if you really
graded them, I would you know.
You hear a lot of machismotoughen up, right, it's your job
, go do it, go drive around,hustle.
(18:32):
Yes, there are many people whosucceed by doing that and
there's many, you know,graveyards.
A lot of machismo.
Toughen up, right, it's yourjob, go do it, go, drive around,
hustle.
Yes, there are many people whosucceed by doing that and
there's many graveyards filledwith people who did not succeed
in doing that.
I think it's unfair, and it'snot only unfair to the
salesperson, but it's a verysimplistic belief, for the
enterprise is if you havesalespeople, buys, is if you
(18:53):
have salespeople, you have themfor a reason it's a
solution-based sale.
Yes, there's a place fortransactions.
Steve's right, because Stevewould say there's multiple
transactions.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
We're focusing on people who have a solution, who
need a solution.
You have a salesperson who canadd value in helping the person
achieve solution.
Do you truly treat thatsalesperson as an internal
customer?
Can you make it easy for themand be the wingman to equip them
with quantitative andqualitative data?
That's it so.
(19:27):
Quantitative says Ron boughtthese things over time.
He has these needs, this iswhat he owns, that he bought
from other people, blah, blah,blah.
The qualitative can bring inwhat project Ron's working on.
And what's interesting is themachines now, with the software,
(19:49):
called the soft products ofmachines, have a bunch of
technology that makes it abetter one-to-one fit for
customers.
However, it's lost with theproduct manager at the OEM.
It doesn't make its way downthe field.
So we believe not only us, butwe believe we can fill that hole
(20:10):
with accessible quantitativeand qualitative information.
Here's a wingman summary forRon's lead before he goes and
talks to a customer.
It's not that hard.
A million years ago somebodymay have had an assistant to do
that.
I've never had one.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
But if you contrast that Even if I had one, I'd want
to do it myself anyways yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I, you know, I've never had that luxury.
But the why?
If the salesperson is not thecenter of the organization,
maybe consider taking adifferent path.
They're expensive, you know,fully loaded, but it's fine,
you're paying salary.
(20:56):
Maybe you don't do or don't paybonus benefits, taxes, a truck,
a computer, branded stuff,events.
You're looking at a quartermillion, a half a million
dollars.
It's not trivial, you know.
Is the enterprise fullysupporting that person?
Speaker 1 (21:13):
And then let's go further with that whole thing.
If you just make a businesscase number one, I don't like
the term salesman, okay.
I don't like the term peddler.
I'm a trusted advisor.
I like that.
I'm going to write that down.
The customer doesn't have topay for it.
If they have a question, I wantthem to ask me.
If I don't know the answer,I'll find the answer well said,
(21:36):
and it might not be my productsthat are the solution.
I want the customer to trust meexplicitly so that nobody else
is going to be between me andthat person ever.
And when you get there now youwork hard like hell to protect
it, but you can't be replaced.
The transition from thatrelationship between this
(21:59):
customer and the advisor theadvisor retires, the advisor is
sick, the advisor quits.
There has to be somebody comein and we know the statistics.
So the data you talked about inthe machine is unbelievable.
I know next year, right now,which machines need to be
(22:20):
replaced, which ones havereached the end of their life
cycle, which ones are costingper hour higher than it should,
which ones have the hour meter,all this stuff.
I know who they are, I knowwhere they are, I know what I'm
going to sell.
Have you met a salesman yetthat has a set of goals and
objectives like that for nextyear?
No, and that's so basic andfundamental it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, we got a request recently and I actually
love these requests because thesalesperson is my customer and
the notion was from a salesmanager at a substantial size
dealership.
The salesperson doesn't turn onhis or her computer, by the way
.
That's okay, that's completelyokay.
(23:05):
And we read the data to ourclients, so we read the data to
salespeople, so they don't haveto.
We wanted to take away anotherthing they need to do today,
right, so we summarize and pushinformation to them.
And the sales manager said heasked the salesperson what could
(23:26):
be done better.
He said, well, tell me who totarget.
Okay, and so now, awesome, sonow we send a list of the 10
best customers and prospects totarget and why.
And we, you know, the wingmanliterally puts it in the
person's hand and what does thatmake us?
(23:46):
I don't think that makes us adata company or a technology
company.
It makes us a service company,we're.
What kills me, ron, if you canhelp thread the message, is a
lot of these so-called tools,whether it's crm.
You know very well-knownproviders, um, and, and there's
others.
(24:07):
I think those companies aremaking a ton of money.
You know they're the only onesmaking money in the gold rush by
selling shovels to people goingdigging for gold, and it's
tantamount to a lie.
It really is.
Now they can say well, I soldyou the shovel.
Well, hey, you know, dumbo, youknow who's getting rich by
(24:28):
mining gold.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So I'd say take a look at your expenses mining
gold.
So I'd say, take a look at yourexpenses.
Well, the other side again,your perspective is the thing
that drives it.
A lot of people want to sell amachine.
Customer doesn't want to buy amachine.
Customer wants to buy a numberof miles of road, buy a number
of dozen of feet of hole, allthat very simple stuff.
(24:50):
And we have classes todetermine market segmentation
and why, grouping people withsimilar needs and wants.
Then we get into territory,establishing territories, and we
calculate the potential of theterritory in dollars and cents
(25:12):
for parts, for service or rental, for machines, and then we go
to market coverage.
So I'm 20, 40 hours into nowtraining somebody on OK, here's
next year.
How many calls are you going tomake next year?
Who are they going to be with?
Why'd you choose them?
(25:32):
Who are they going to be with?
Why did you choose them?
Your built data product givesthem the answer to that question
without them having to thinkabout it.
And I don't know and you and Ihave talked about this how you
get that word out, how you getpeople to change to using these
tools that have been around along time, by the way, not just
(25:54):
yours for three months, that'scorrect.
This is the challenge and howto scale the damn thing.
So you know, I hope thisdiscussion and the people that
are listening to it isresonating, that there's better
ways to manage the sales team,the people I call advisors.
(26:17):
There's better ways to manageyour market share.
There's better ways to makemoney and it's not necessarily
by being smarter, it's justbeing better organized and doing
what you think you need to do.
Is that kind of a reasonableconclusion to draw after this?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
short it is.
I would add a couple of things.
One is you know, talk to you,talk to Steve Clegg, talk to
people who can help.
I'm going to say you two aresome of the best minds I've ever
met and you could ripplethrough.
You can quickly cut through alot of confusion and listen.
(27:01):
Disruption will continue tooccur.
I think if you were, thequestion is how much of the risk
can you negate?
Right, I would argue you couldprobably negate 80% of the risk
(27:22):
in your operating model if youlistened to you and Steve Clegg
and us as a service provider.
The 20% in variability aremarket conditions.
You hear some of the dominantnarrative about tariffs and
interest rates and this and thatit is noise.
It's noise, and tomorrow it'sgoing to be something else.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yep, and we shouldn't be afraid of it.
In fact, I welcome that stuff.
Otherwise, just imagine howboring it would be if it was
tranquil.
I haven't had that in my wholedamn life and I don't want it.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, I'm going to see you in.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
October.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Yeah, that's right.
Well, nick's going to see thelight and get out to the islands
In the background.
My favorite beach looks justlike that, except there's less
surf.
It runs about three and a halfmiles and there might be 50 to
75 people on it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And you promised me a good cup of coffee, though.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well, maybe it won't just be coffee, that's fine.
Thank you, nick, and thankeveryone for being a blessing
that has listened to this Mahaloand I look forward to having
you with me on the next CandidConversation Mahalo, Thank you.
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