April 23, 2025 • 44 mins
Don't miss industry-expert and Telarus technology advisor JP Panzica of Accelerate Partners join us as we wrap up this top track on negotiation and discovery calls! JP brings many years of experience to the discussion as we talk about Discovery calls from old to now and all the things that have changed. JP shares a ton of lessons, some seemingly basic, but frequently forgotten. We discuss the importance of things such as patience and empathy, and how you incorporate those into your customer engagements, but do it in a very meaningful way!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success in selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris, and this is Next Level
Biz Tech. Everybody, welcome back.
We are wrapping up a track todaycalled the Art of discovery
(00:21):
Calls stories from military intelligence style negotiation.
And I'm not saying that just cause JP's from the East Coast
and that's how they do things, but I think he's got some good
insight here. JP Panzika Accelerate Partners
welcome on Buddy. Thank you, Josh.
Great to be here with you. Appreciate the time.
I'm excited man. You have got you've got a pile
(00:42):
of experience in this. You know how to sell to
customers, you know how to go upmarket, you know how to do the
hard stuff. So let's let's kick this off.
Let's just hear a little bit about your story, your
background, how you got into this space.
Has it been a winding path, crazy stories?
What do you got? Oh boy, we're going to have to
rewind the tape for a long time because I've been doing this way
(01:06):
longer than I care to admit. But I think I'll tell you 1995,
I started my career. So that might be 4 decades worth
of experience. That is frightening to think
about because I am, I am still ajuvenile.
You know, the way I conduct myself and behave.
(01:26):
And my wife will tell you that as well.
So my career, I started in 95, Iwas starting customer service,
didn't have any skills, wasn't an engineer.
I wasn't a, you know, an accountant or a finance person.
It's just a, you know, kid out of college and like, all right,
(01:50):
I'm going to conquer the world. And my first job I was actually
selling back in the day. Actually, I'm going to test you
here. Did you, did you ever read
anything about technology service called Telex back in the
days? That is a no.
OK, OK, I I thought that might be the case.
(02:13):
So teletype Telex Twix. Oh, and that tell now teletype.
Now I do know teletype love, love me a teletype. 50 baud, you
know, Chicka chicka chicka punchtapes, you know, Wall Street
back then, all the confirmationsand bank money transfers,
everything was sent via telex and it took forever to to get,
(02:34):
you know, to get these communications between the
companies. One of my council also was the
United Nations back then. And you know, the UN used to
send these massive messages, youknow, to countries that you
know, nobody even had heard of and the UN had put them on the
map. So I started there.
(02:56):
I was in let's see, I started incustomer service.
So actually I got to correct myself.
So that was 85 was the customer service day.
I'll get to 95 in a second. So that makes the 40 years the
math tied there we go all right,so just testing to make sure
(03:16):
you're paying attention I. Was told there'd be no math, but
go ahead. All right, all right.
So essentially working at customer service, dealing with
banks, dealing with, you know, customers issues.
And the VP of sales came in and he had this great idea.
So because back then these big telex machines were tied into
(03:38):
telephone lines and they found out is if you could bypass these
telex networks and dial directlyinto the phone line, you can
actually not pay the settlement charges between the carriers.
It's kind of like long distance,you know, back in the day and
local. So they put a program together,
(04:00):
they gave, they asked so many customer service if they wanted
to make the outbound calls and they were going to give you $25
per, you know, per telephone number you got for, for clients.
I, I raised my hand. I was like, OK, let's go.
I'll, I'll totally do it. Over the course of several
months, I literally got 20-30, fifty, 100 different telephone
(04:22):
numbers. And, you know, I, I made a lot
of money and the, the VP of sales is like, you are a great
salesperson. You have initiative, you're a
personal young man. How would you like to go have a
career in sales and technology? Like, so it's like, can I make a
lot of money? He's like, yeah, he goes, all
right, let's give it a shot. So that was my very first start
(04:44):
in, in 85 and kind of had never looked back since then.
Yeah, I worked in downtown Manhattan on Wall Street,
selling to the banks. I was living in Manhattan at age
24. This company, the company's not
around anymore. It was called Graftat at the
(05:05):
time, but the company had about 100 employees total.
And couple years into my sales job, I became the number one
salesperson in the company at age 24.
So here we are late 80s, I'm making six figures in the late
80s. I'm in my young, you know, my
young 20s. Like this is great.
(05:26):
It's going to last forever, yes,but it was it, it did last for a
few years and it was absolutely awesome.
But you know, obviously you know, sales is a is an up and
down kind of game and, but I love the thrill of being in
sales. I loved the ability to meet with
(05:47):
clients. I love the ability to like now
practice a skill like selling isa skill, you know, and it's
something you need to practice, You need to, you need to use it
on game day and it needs to become like muscle memory kind
of stuff. So, and I'd love that because I
was an athlete a lot during, during my, my school years and
(06:10):
still still to a degree M as an,as an old man, you know, like to
jump on bikes and you know, go go do crazy things.
So it was a great kind of identity for me in sales.
And literally from there, you know, my career kind of
catapulted. I I was in telephony for many
years working for MCII was in their global accounts group.
(06:33):
I managed, you know, big, huge financial contracts or like
Merrill Lynch and Reuters back in the day and a team, you know,
and it kind of, you know, that was a bigger company experience
and then went into the.com era. I was recruited by someone from
MCI and I worked for a company called Internet that is was INAP
(06:59):
and now I think it's Horizon 8 IQ or they again doing sales,
just sales, building organizations, building,
building out offices, selling Internet, advanced Internet
services. It was the same actually time
that Equinix had started. They were the 2 darling
companies back in, in, in the late 90s that had really taken
(07:23):
off and what I loved about Internet, which is very
entrepreneurial, the company, you know, versus being in a big
company like MCI and, you know, I made a decision at that point.
I'm like, you know, I like to make a difference.
You know, for an entrepreneurialcompany is like you'd learn
more, you like, you're challenged more.
(07:43):
It's like, you know, you're not put into a process or a
workflow. And you know, from from there, I
just, I continued on that path. You know, I, I finished my
corporate career fast forwardinga bit and I was my last
entrepreneurial role. I was the original chief revenue
officer for Thrive. Again, sales focused, very sales
(08:05):
focused, very marketing focused,but very entrepreneurial too.
It was a very small company backthen.
It had just taken on private equity money.
And again, it was a chance to like sell, but to build, you
know, build organizations, buildsales processes written like
sales techniques and and sales methodologies.
You know, what metrics are important.
(08:27):
You know, what products are we selling the channel so they
could thrive in the channel. Back in that day, this is 2017
now, we were really one of the first Ms. PS in the channel back
then. Channel is selling Kolo and you
know, voice Ucast, you know, some cloud, private cloud stuff,
(08:53):
you know and I remember we signed we signed agreements with
Telaris back then and, and a couple of other TSDS and they
had no, the partners had no ideawhat to really do with us, you
know, because nobody was talkingto managed services and IT and,
you know, but from our background because we've I've
always been in the channel and selling on the supplier side, I
(09:15):
knew that it worked for the other technologies and it was
going to be a bit of an evolution but it was going to be
a really fun journey and if we could be successful, it was
going to be monumental. So we did, I did that for a, for
a bunch of years and then, you know, it got to a point where I
(09:38):
wasn't having fun anymore. It's like I needed to go back to
my entrepreneurial roots and Thrive was transacting with,
with one of their PE sponsors atthe time.
And then I said, this is a youngman's game and I'm not getting
any younger. So decided that Accelerate was
going to be my full time focus and, and journey.
(10:04):
And it was, it was awesome. So March of 2020.
Great time to start. Great time to start the
business, you know, sitting, sitting there, you know, we're
all trapped in our homes. I've got my I've got my mobile
phone, I've got this computer. I've got no revenue.
I've got no income anymore either corporate wise.
(10:26):
I'm like like, all right, let's let's figure this out and what
did I do? I went back to my my roots of
just selling and I had 30 plus years at the time in different
capacities. I knew tons of people.
I had always done the right thing.
Integrity and transparency are really important to me.
(10:48):
So I just started calling peopleand telling them what I was
doing. And you know, 1 by 1, you know,
I started getting, you know, I started getting opportunities,
people because of me, just because of me are like, you can
help me do this and figure this out, you know, and little by
little, you know, I landed a couple big deals after about a
(11:09):
year. In the beginning, I was just,
you know, quoting out all the DSL circuits and the Internet
circuits. I'm like, you know, I'm doing
all the work, which is just me. And you know, then we gravitated
and started to get to the MSP space and doing some, some MSP
projects. And those are the bigger dollar
items. So did that for a bunch of years
and, you know, all of a sudden got so busy that accelerate that
(11:34):
I couldn't handle all the work by myself.
But I couldn't I couldn't affordto pay anybody either.
They're still small and I'm still making a, you know, large
corporate salary. And I didn't want to stop
selling either. So I, I convinced A gentleman,
John, John Meganiello that was with us today was like, you
(11:55):
know, he want, he was hankering to do something on the
entrepreneurial side too tired of corporate.
He's an MSP guy. He came out of financial
services. He works in banking and those
hedge funds and private equity. Like I said here, I will give
you these projects. I can't afford to pay you.
It's like, but I will give you these projects.
And I'm also consulting with these PE firms and you close
(12:17):
these technology projects, you can consult with me here.
And I said, I will pay you whatever I could pay you.
You know, I'll give you as much as I can give you and you know,
we had a discussion and this is one of my sayings now that I
said it back then and I say it now to anybody new that comes on
board. Matter of fact, I said it today
during because I was interviewing somebody was like
(12:40):
back then, you know, it was pretty scary.
It's like I had a, you know, major corporate career and I'm
like, now you go back to starting from scratch.
It's like I have all this experience, I have all this
knowledge, I have the desire. If I can't bet on myself to be
successful, why would anybody else want to bet on me?
(13:01):
It's like whether it's a job or whether it's, you know, just
some contract things like you have to believe in yourself and
you have to be confident that you can succeed it if you have
the right structure. And I believe that in myself.
And it wasn't easy. It was a rocky road for the
first two years, as they always say in the channel, right?
It takes 2 years. Across the Chasm took me those
(13:24):
two years, you know, and I, and that's the conversation I had
with John. It's like, are you willing to
bet on yourself? He goes and his response was
there's nobody better. He goes, he goes, I will
absolutely bet on myself. I am very confident that I could
do so. The way he went, understanding
that the organization, understanding the landscape of
(13:45):
the channel, working the projects I gave him, you know,
he's here. Now we Fast forward to current
day 2 1/2 years later, he is successfully crossed the chasm
and the checks are now coming injust from.
I love it. I love the story.
I'm going to come back to a couple things from that story
(14:06):
here in a second. Sure.
Before I do, I guess part of that, a lot of lessons learned,
right? A lot of self discovery, a lot
of mentors, a lot of maybe good decisions, maybe some not so
good decisions that you learned from.
Look, think of all that. What is one of your favorite
lessons learned? You know, either one that you
learned on your own or mentor. So one of the biggest lessons
(14:32):
for me. So I'm big on mentoring.
By the way, I have several mentors in my life.
I've been actually the VPS LS from when I was in customer
service 40 years ago, still a mentor to me, still talk to him
all the time. But one of the biggest things I
had to learn is about patience. Patience and maturity.
(14:55):
You know, just growing up in NewYork and being, you know, in the
Northeast and being in business,you have to be aggressive
sometimes. You have to be ruthless and lots
of times you lack patience, patience and people you know,
whether it's Co workers, patience and opportunities, you
(15:16):
know, being able to be patient and when you're step back and
take a deep breath and be patient, you're able to then to
use reflection. Why is the situation this way?
You know, what are the possibilities that are going on
and just to do some critical thinking around those that is
(15:40):
able to then hopefully give you perspective on a situation, give
your perspective on a person, right.
And early on I did, I was not success very early in my career.
And I'm like invincible. And I'm like, let's just go.
And, you know, I didn't have to be patient.
(16:01):
And now as you know, my, my older self today, that's
probably one of my strongest assets is, is patience,
understanding, using empathy, appreciation for where people
have come and where they have gone.
Everybody has a story whether they're telling it to you or
not. And every opportunity has, you
(16:25):
know, dynamics that are don't that don't meet the eye.
And you really need to step backand be patient with those with
those situations and try and understand them.
Awesome. OK, so, so let's talk about.
I mean, this is about complex discovery calls and skill sets
(16:45):
and, and, and sales methodologies and things like
that. So let's first look back.
Let's let's think of early JP. What what was an early discovery
call like with JP? What worked, what didn't work?
And then we'll move. We'll we'll Fast forward.
So early discovery calls for me,and I was always taught this
(17:09):
because we grew, we grew up in sales methodologies back in my
20s. Let's listen to Tom Hopkins and
Zig Ziglar and all those sales methodologies back in the day.
And so I became a student of sales skills.
I still am actually. I'd love sales skills, sales
technique. And early on, I was very much a,
(17:30):
a pragmatic person when it came to sales skills.
And it was very rigid, you know,especially when you're young and
you don't have the experience with them.
You know, if he says this, then you say that and this is how you
overcome the objection. You know, so I was very young
and very idealistic with sales skills back in that day,
(17:51):
although lots of times I still worked.
I was a, you know, I was a believer in them, but I always,
always used sales skills and, and one of the biggest sales
skills that I was not very good at early on was listening,
listening or using active listening.
(18:12):
You know, when you actually, when somebody says something and
you actually repeat it back to them with, with some
perspective, right? So lots of times if if you're
not listening, you're not going to make the sell.
So that early on, those are my kind of couple of snags and
weaknesses. The other big thing I would say,
(18:36):
and you know, this is common across all cells and not just
not just myself and my experience.
And by the way, I I made this faux pas last week.
I'm telling you that, you know, all these great things.
You always have to ask questions.
You always got to like, you know, you think of, you know,
think of a client, think of yourself sitting, sitting here.
(18:57):
It's like what do salespeople try and do?
They're pitching like crazy. They're always talking.
They're like trying to drag the customer into their world.
This is great, we're great. This is This is why we do this,
why we do that. You know, where the opposite
should be true 100% of the time.And this is part of listening is
(19:19):
you should as a salesperson to step into the clients world.
It's like, let's talk about business.
Let me understand your business,let me understand your
challenges. Ask questions in the beginning
to understand you know the dynamics of what they're going
through 'cause that perspective 9 times out of 10 is going to
(19:41):
help you tell your story better or give you the ability to
create rapport and value for yourself with that particular
client. Is the universal golden skill
that we don't talk about enough?Then?
Is it empathy? Yeah, is.
That just universally translatedin any different recipe that you
(20:03):
want. Just apply the crap out of it
is. That absolutely kept secret.
Absolutely it it it's using empathy.
It's absolutely using empathy. Another big thing.
You won't see this in the sals books.
I've written about it a bunch oftimes, but you know, a big
believer in in karma in the universe.
So everything happens for a reason.
(20:24):
And if you go into a situation and empathy is part of that too
in a lot of cases, right understanding, you know,
integrity, doing the right thingby whether it's the client,
whether it's, you know, your Co worker or your dog or your wife,
right, that will come back and manifest itself to you.
You know, 1000 ways that you know, will impact you and I have
(20:50):
always operated that way as wellas like, you know, the universe
has got got you back and you know, you try and give more than
than you get and you're trying to, you know, invest in people,
you try and teach people. I'm a I'm a big mentor now to a
lot of younger folks as well. And, you know, there's just a
(21:12):
lot of things you could do around that in sales and sales
calls where and we do that accelerate integrity and
reputation are the two biggest, most important things for us
because you you can't let that get tarnished.
And when you sit in front of a client and you want to use, you
(21:33):
know, karma in the universe and like, you could actually break,
you know, have a conversation that may not benefit your
company, but it's the right thing to do and do.
What is it? It's, you know, it takes a
lifetime to build a brand 5 minutes to ruin it.
I mean, I'm, I'm with you on that whole universe thing.
It's funny how this all works, you know, cosmically,
karmically, whatever, whatever the case is, I think if you set
(21:57):
out to help other people, I mean, look, I, I know we've got
targets, everybody's got comp plans.
We got all of those things like those are what, what, what have
to get done so that people, people make the payments they
need to make. And we, we have the roofs that
we have. But if you, if you seek to help
other people as your kind of fundamental empathetic skill
(22:17):
set, I'm with you. It, it will always come back to
you. That will show me a place that
that screws you. I it doesn't.
It it doesn't and it never will,cause the world will just be a
better place in some varying capacity.
Absolutely, absolutely 100% agree with you.
They believe. It let's let's OK, so, so that's
(22:38):
early JP. So you've now kind of grown this
business. You, you, you, you ran
successfully the MSP at Thrive. So now you're into these more
complex deals. You've moved even into larger
customers, right, customers of all sizes.
How does that? How does?
How does later negotiation and tactic and strategy change for
you? So it changes now because my
(23:03):
role is different, right? I'm, I'm the founder, I'm the
CEO, have really talented sellers underneath me.
And when we go into situations, it's more now about what we've
done, who we are and how we can help them.
(23:25):
You know, at a, at a very strategic level, we have a lot
of conversations. Everything starts in the C-Suite
with us. Everything starts in the
C-Suite, CEOCFOCRO, you name it,CMOCO.
Having conversations about business is universal, right?
(23:48):
So you're going to, you need to be very comfortable when you
step into that client's world and you're talking to the CFO.
It's like, what are you, you know, what are your investments
look like for this year and the growth of the business.
You know, how are you protectingyour business this year?
It's like, are you going after any new segments, you know,
(24:08):
verticals, you know, what's yourhiring strategy for the year?
Business is universal. All companies have the same
kinds of conversations that way,and they have to grow their
business. Do they use technology to grow
your business or are you using human capital or are you using
both? How are you using technology,
right? How do you acquire customers?
(24:29):
How do you train your sales force?
What are the technology tools that they use this technology, a
growth enabler for you there? How do you protect your brand
and your assets, You know, what's your insurance look like,
what things you do there? So having those kinds of
conversations will ultimately boil down to technology at some
(24:54):
point. So be very, very comfortable,
which I, you know, I am and my team is talking to the C level
about business. You know, don't go in there.
You want to talk about AI because it's hot.
It's like, let's talk, talk about, you know, what their
projects are for the year because you know what AI is
probably on that road map somewhere, right?
(25:16):
You know, how are they going to grow revenue?
Can they use AI to grow revenue?You know, employee productivity,
that's another big thing. It's like, let's talk about
employee productivity. And one of the things that's
going to happen is you're going to get into technology and AI
has got some really good use cases there.
So I would say that's the biggest difference for for me
(25:37):
today is, you know, I'm talking CEO to CEO, I'm talking to a
private equity operating executive that sits on boards of
four portfolio companies, you know, and what, you know, what
we see across industry and you know, things that they could
take to their, to their portfolio companies or things
that, you know, conversations that we could come in and help
(25:59):
them be successful. So let's put let's let's put all
this negotiation together. I think you laid some great
found foundations, some fundamentals.
Walk us through a, a really hardnegotiation of when, how that
culminated all and and kind of what led to that.
What's what's what's an example here?
(26:20):
All right. I have one cell that sticks out
of my mind. When you just said that, I was
calling on a hedge fund that hasabout 20 billion of assets under
management and I called on them from three different companies
(26:42):
over a period of time. The CTO and started in the data
center space back in the day, you know, because the training
aspects of IT didn't do any business with him.
Went to an MSP after spent threeyears trying to unpack what he
(27:07):
was doing there and, and telling, understanding what
their, you know, what their risks and liabilities were, what
their strengths were as far as technology and went through
several proposals, even got awarded and got shot down, you
know, at the executive level because they didn't want to make
any change because they got acquired.
(27:30):
They got acquired. I'm like, so I won a deal and
then they got acquired, deal gotsquashed.
So then I go to accelerate. This is about relationships,
right? I'm having valuable discussions
with the C level guy. Taking you back to the point
earlier, you know, he knows I know what I'm doing and I can
help him. So you know, he picks up and
(27:51):
takes my calls. So now I'm going to accelerate
and he's one of the one of the earlier ones.
I'm telling him, you know what I'm doing and the goodwill.
So we go through an entire year's worth of process with him
replacing his MSPMSSP, you know,400 users globally in Asia,
(28:14):
Europe, North America. I'm bringing in different MSPs
left and right, not using any names.
And then the parent company wants to, the new parent company
that bottom wants to get involved, kind of derails and
takes the things sideways for a few more months.
They, they want to bring it all in house.
(28:36):
They have their own team. Literally I'm on year 3 of this
cell inside of Accelerate, you know, with five years behind it.
So we're in eight years now this.
Is playing the long game, yeah. So talk about patients, right?
Yeah, yeah. Hey, the patients place, yes.
(28:59):
So finally, finally, they make aselection with the MSP.
They're going through contract negotiations.
I'm trying to help this guy figure out the budgets and like,
you know, I'm from the MSP space, so I know what the
margins look like. I know where they're making
(29:20):
money. I know where they're not making
money. I'm trying to counsel this guy.
He finally gets to a point they're like, this is the best
that we can do budget wise. We're going over what we're
paying now you, Mr. MSP, have tofigure that out.
You know, months of that. Finally they sign the contract.
(29:44):
As soon as he signs the contract, he's supposed to feel
like really joyous, right? Eight years.
I mean, this is this is 200,000 a month in new MRR.
Like we're going places with this one.
Like this is great. You know, you want to go
celebrate? He calls me the next day.
It was JP because I just quit I.Was like what hitting?
(30:07):
Me the next day, literally the next day I got because I got
recruited by this other hedge fund that's twice the size.
It's like, I don't know what's going to happen with this
acquisition that, you know, the new parent company.
I've been doing this for a while.
I'm really sorry. I was like, OK, I was like, but
you signed a contract. He's like, yeah, they're going
to have to figure out how to honor that.
He goes, they did sign the contract.
(30:29):
So he leaves, by the way, I talked to him last week, this
guy that, this, that his new company.
And so he leaves and a consultant steps in and the MSP,
it's like we got a contract. It takes him another year and a
half to get through the process of how they're going to do the
(30:49):
migration with this guy leaving.So now, now we're 9 1/2 years
in, you know, so I think I just got my first Commission check
maybe a month or two ago, so. Cow.
It was, but it's great. It's a it's a great story.
(31:10):
I mean, you know, we, we do see stuff like this a lot though.
This has been really cool to seehow the channel has grown.
To your point, the staying if, if, if we follow these things,
we we've got patience, do the right thing by the customer, try
to figure out if there's a way that we can help them when they
throw things at us, whether we know we can do them or not.
(31:30):
They nobody throws us the hard, the easy things.
They throw us the hard things. And then inevitably you help
that customer at customer A and they end up either staying
forever and you keep selling them more or they go to another
place and you sell to customer Balso.
But if you don't follow all those basics and you don't help,
(31:50):
and you're not helping with these negotiations and you're
not grinding it down and doing all these things, then we're
just another person in the equation.
But you're not clearly to be engaged in this count, you know,
trying to close this thing. That's the longest sales cycle
I've ever. Heard.
In my life, but I love it. There's a happy story there.
(32:11):
It it is that all these things work.
Timing, timing's weird, man. Timing just you can see what the
books tell you to see how long adeal in XYZ products should
take. But then life happens and and
reality and just business and industry and all these things
happen so. There's how do you forecast that
in your pipeline, by the way? Q4 of what year?
(32:35):
Doesn't matter. I just said Q4, that's all you
need. To know I believe it's going to
close, yeah. I feel good about it.
I feel good about. It you know.
I love, I love that. Let's let's move to I think
you've given a lot of this, but from an advice perspective for
other partners, you know, what we hear about folks listening to
(32:56):
the podcast is, hey, I started out in CX and I want to move
into security or I started out in cloud and I want to move into
advanced networking or whatever,right?
Pick a pick a poison there. So for the partners kind of
listening to your story, the other advisors and they want to
expand, right? They want to hone in these
negotiation skills and expand. What's your advice for them to
(33:21):
to to identify these OPS and really position themselves the
most effective way possible? So good question.
You know, just rewinding for onesecond, I'll I'll answer that
question directly, but I'm now amazed and impressed by the
caliber of the TA firm that are in the channel.
(33:42):
There are some really can I can I say bad ass on this?
Will that will that work? Hold on.
Yeah, he can't. Yeah.
No, they said it's fine. Yeah.
All right. Good, good, good.
I just wanted to check we can dothis.
There. You just.
There are some bad dudes in thischannel and gals, I love it.
(34:03):
So I mean, there are some literally really talented
people, big firms too. I mean, with loads of talented
people and they're gravitating up the up the value chain and
the technology stack and sellingall kinds of solutions.
It's really impressive where we are now.
It's like, you know, it's got it.
(34:23):
It motivates the heck out of me.I was having a conversation with
a Talarist person the other day and we're talking about such and
such a firm. And, you know, he's telling me
that he has 50 employees now I'mlike, wow, it's like, it's like,
you know, I wonder what this guy's revenue is.
It's like, I Josh, I have 5 employees, OK, so I'm hiring 3
(34:45):
and so I'll have 8. I don't have 50 employees.
And I, you know, so I look at that and it just motivates the
heck out of me. So what do I, how do I learn
from, you know, that team grow my company like that, you know,
so that's, that's really, reallythe state of the channel from
that perspective. So if I look at myself and I
(35:08):
wanted like, I want to grow my business into other areas, We're
good in cyber, we're good in MSP, we're good in AI now good
in cloud, you know, but we're uncomfortable in CX, we're
uncomfortable in Thames, you know, other solutions, mobility.
(35:33):
We're you know, it's OK to be uncomfortable, right?
And you could there's 2 tracks that you could go.
You can either partner TA to TA,which is a new thing in the
channel now too. We are, we are the cyber CSO
cloud experts for a bunch of TA firms and we help them close
opportunities. Conversely, we have done the
(35:55):
same thing back. It's like Thames is a massive
offering. I love Thames.
You could walk in a new, I was in a, a fortune $136 billion a
year public company meeting the president, you know, a month ago
in, in New York with my team. I was like, I never would have
(36:16):
been able to get into that door.I was like, but we were talking
about technology expense management and being able to
control costs. And now it's, it goes across
licensing. So I was very uncomfortable with
that in the beginning. Partnered with a with ATA firm
at APA. Love these guys.
They've taught us so much. They're our experts.
(36:39):
So we now go in and talk Thames and when we get the opportunity
identified, we're bringing them in because they got a deep bench
of experts. So I think TA to TA partner is a
really, really strong thing because you can't master
everything unless you're the 50 person firm that's that's
bringing in subject matter experts and your private equity
(37:00):
back. You know, then you could do
those things. But for the little guys like us,
or maybe people smaller than us or maybe people that are in, you
know, same size as us, but they're selling, you know,
telecom or you, you know, UCAS, you know, being able to engage a
trusted advisor that has that discipline and working with them
(37:25):
to just increase your wallet share.
You know, that that's an important thing I would say to,
for some, some firms to do because it will, it's immediate
reward too. It's like, all right, we've got
all these clients is like, who can we sell temps to?
Who can we sell CX to? We have ACX relationship now as
well. Like who can we sell or who can
(37:47):
we consult with and get these meetings?
Let's just see if there's opportunities because the
easiest thing is you have all these existing relationships,
right? It's like they'll take a meeting
with you. It's like have a conversation,
make it a business conversation.It's like if you want to talk
about, you want to talk about CX, let's talk about user
experience, you know, let's talkabout employee productivity,
(38:11):
let's talk about hiring, right? And how CX can impact all of
those things. So, you know, that would be a
huge piece of advice that I would give.
The other thing, and I, I mentioned the word before, I
said be comfortable being uncomfortable.
(38:32):
Growth happens when you're uncomfortable because you're
going to focus, you're going to get strategic, you're going to
start to understand yourself andyour business, you know, at a
different level. And when you're uncomfortable
like that, and whether that's taking on a new technology or
whether it's hiring a salesperson for growth or, you
(38:58):
know, one of the big things I did, we just, we just brought on
another very senior seller partner in the firm yesterday.
And I had AI had our sales meeting on Monday.
And I'm like, I, I'm no longer going to be selling any deals.
It's like I am no longer going to be, you know, I, I did that
for years and I'd love to sell. I think I might have made that a
(39:20):
little clearer in this, in this meeting, but I'm like, you know
what? I I've been working, you know,
in the business for the last five years.
Now it's time for me to work on the business and get into the
strategic initiatives. I'm sitting there.
We just went, we just invested in a new commissioning system, a
new CRM system, we have a sales enablement program.
(39:43):
We just got into revenue operations, understanding
trends. We built an AI engine into
SharePoint with Copilot. So we're doing all these things
now that, you know, they're not selling and you know, some, some
of them make me uncomfortable. Some of them, you know, I'm, I'm
quite comfortable with. But the evolution of the, the
(40:04):
business is important to acknowledge and to do that.
So that was a tangent, but I don't know if that.
It's a good call out. It's it's it's perspective at
all the different things that you go through as a business
owner. So I'd love I'd love the call
outs. All right, so we think of I
guess let's let's go, let's go final thoughts.
You know, we think about this industry has has shown us a lot
(40:28):
of changes. You know, AI is our next change.
Who knows what the next, you know, thing is.
So you think about changes in the future.
How do we how do you want peopleto think about this?
When this next great thing comesout or this next great thing
comes out? How should we be thinking about
that as advisors? And you know, where, where
(40:49):
should we be paying attention toor not paying attention to and,
and just give us your final thoughts.
Sure, sure. So I personally feel extremely
fortunate to be in the position that I am the CEO of a trusted
advisor firm. And just looking at what's
happened over the past five years is you couldn't predict.
(41:11):
I couldn't predict looking in over the horizon.
Now we are sitting as the tip ofthe spear in my mind as it
relates to business technology and growth.
It's like their technology is changing so rapidly.
There are there are new technologies that are going to
come out, come into place. There are new regulations that
(41:35):
are going to come in. AI regulation is going to be
huge. You know, that's obviously we
have to figure out how compliance, AI compliance is
going to work. That's just starting.
You know, another huge thing is,you know, think of CMMC in the
DoD supply chain space, right? It's like now all of a sudden
(41:57):
it's like manufacturing is a regulated industry and it has to
comply with standards. And there's two more levels of
CMMC compliance that are going to come up this year.
So those, I mean, so those are two examples that being a
trusted advisor, those are opportunities for us there.
There are many more on the horizon.
(42:17):
There are many more across healthcare, across legal.
I just see the evolution continuing and for us as
advisors to have the relationships with our clients
to add value in those conversations to stay relevant
on technologies, get, get uncomfortable and make yourself
(42:41):
learn, learn things. I, you know, I learned AI this
year. I obviously knew what it was,
but I was, I told you I, I spokein Vegas on an AI breakout
session. I was like, I got like I crammed
for. I used AI to learn AI.
It was a beautiful. Thing.
And you know what? Oh kidding though.
(43:02):
We put together all these great use cases that I was
interviewing suppliers on, best use cases, took our own use
cases, and put this great deck together.
I learned so much about where AIcould be used, you know, So just
to be able to have that ability as things change, as business
changes, as technology changes, as the world changes, to sit
(43:25):
there as the advisor, it's a privilege to be here.
I love it and that my friend, iswhere we wrap it.
JP, man, a lot of good compressed knowledge in there.
We probably could have gone on for a lot more, but there's just
there a lot of good Nuggets in there.
I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing it all with
everybody, man. It is absolutely my pleasure.
(43:48):
I love to talk about this stuff and you know, let me know when I
can do to help Josh anytime. Love it.
I love it. Well, everybody, that wraps us
up for today. JP Panzika, Accelerate Partners.
I'm your host, Josh Lopresto, SVP of sales engineering at
Telaris. As always, wherever you're
coming to us from, Apple, Spotify, get these drops every
(44:10):
Wednesday. Until next time, Art of
Discovery calls. Next Level Diztech has been a
production of Tulare Studio 19. Please visit telaris.com For
more information.
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success in selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris, and this is Next Level
Biz Tech. Everybody, welcome back.
We are wrapping up a track todaycalled the Art of discovery
(00:21):
Calls stories from military intelligence style negotiation.
And I'm not saying that just cause JP's from the East Coast
and that's how they do things, but I think he's got some good
insight here. JP Panzika Accelerate Partners
welcome on Buddy. Thank you, Josh.
Great to be here with you. Appreciate the time.
I'm excited man. You have got you've got a pile
(00:42):
of experience in this. You know how to sell to
customers, you know how to go upmarket, you know how to do the
hard stuff. So let's let's kick this off.
Let's just hear a little bit about your story, your
background, how you got into this space.
Has it been a winding path, crazy stories?
What do you got? Oh boy, we're going to have to
rewind the tape for a long time because I've been doing this way
(01:06):
longer than I care to admit. But I think I'll tell you 1995,
I started my career. So that might be 4 decades worth
of experience. That is frightening to think
about because I am, I am still ajuvenile.
You know, the way I conduct myself and behave.
(01:26):
And my wife will tell you that as well.
So my career, I started in 95, Iwas starting customer service,
didn't have any skills, wasn't an engineer.
I wasn't a, you know, an accountant or a finance person.
It's just a, you know, kid out of college and like, all right,
(01:50):
I'm going to conquer the world. And my first job I was actually
selling back in the day. Actually, I'm going to test you
here. Did you, did you ever read
anything about technology service called Telex back in the
days? That is a no.
OK, OK, I I thought that might be the case.
(02:13):
So teletype Telex Twix. Oh, and that tell now teletype.
Now I do know teletype love, love me a teletype. 50 baud, you
know, Chicka chicka chicka punchtapes, you know, Wall Street
back then, all the confirmationsand bank money transfers,
everything was sent via telex and it took forever to to get,
(02:34):
you know, to get these communications between the
companies. One of my council also was the
United Nations back then. And you know, the UN used to
send these massive messages, youknow, to countries that you
know, nobody even had heard of and the UN had put them on the
map. So I started there.
(02:56):
I was in let's see, I started incustomer service.
So actually I got to correct myself.
So that was 85 was the customer service day.
I'll get to 95 in a second. So that makes the 40 years the
math tied there we go all right,so just testing to make sure
(03:16):
you're paying attention I. Was told there'd be no math, but
go ahead. All right, all right.
So essentially working at customer service, dealing with
banks, dealing with, you know, customers issues.
And the VP of sales came in and he had this great idea.
So because back then these big telex machines were tied into
(03:38):
telephone lines and they found out is if you could bypass these
telex networks and dial directlyinto the phone line, you can
actually not pay the settlement charges between the carriers.
It's kind of like long distance,you know, back in the day and
local. So they put a program together,
(04:00):
they gave, they asked so many customer service if they wanted
to make the outbound calls and they were going to give you $25
per, you know, per telephone number you got for, for clients.
I, I raised my hand. I was like, OK, let's go.
I'll, I'll totally do it. Over the course of several
months, I literally got 20-30, fifty, 100 different telephone
(04:22):
numbers. And, you know, I, I made a lot
of money and the, the VP of sales is like, you are a great
salesperson. You have initiative, you're a
personal young man. How would you like to go have a
career in sales and technology? Like, so it's like, can I make a
lot of money? He's like, yeah, he goes, all
right, let's give it a shot. So that was my very first start
(04:44):
in, in 85 and kind of had never looked back since then.
Yeah, I worked in downtown Manhattan on Wall Street,
selling to the banks. I was living in Manhattan at age
24. This company, the company's not
around anymore. It was called Graftat at the
(05:05):
time, but the company had about 100 employees total.
And couple years into my sales job, I became the number one
salesperson in the company at age 24.
So here we are late 80s, I'm making six figures in the late
80s. I'm in my young, you know, my
young 20s. Like this is great.
(05:26):
It's going to last forever, yes,but it was it, it did last for a
few years and it was absolutely awesome.
But you know, obviously you know, sales is a is an up and
down kind of game and, but I love the thrill of being in
sales. I loved the ability to meet with
(05:47):
clients. I love the ability to like now
practice a skill like selling isa skill, you know, and it's
something you need to practice, You need to, you need to use it
on game day and it needs to become like muscle memory kind
of stuff. So, and I'd love that because I
was an athlete a lot during, during my, my school years and
(06:10):
still still to a degree M as an,as an old man, you know, like to
jump on bikes and you know, go go do crazy things.
So it was a great kind of identity for me in sales.
And literally from there, you know, my career kind of
catapulted. I I was in telephony for many
years working for MCII was in their global accounts group.
(06:33):
I managed, you know, big, huge financial contracts or like
Merrill Lynch and Reuters back in the day and a team, you know,
and it kind of, you know, that was a bigger company experience
and then went into the.com era. I was recruited by someone from
MCI and I worked for a company called Internet that is was INAP
(06:59):
and now I think it's Horizon 8 IQ or they again doing sales,
just sales, building organizations, building,
building out offices, selling Internet, advanced Internet
services. It was the same actually time
that Equinix had started. They were the 2 darling
companies back in, in, in the late 90s that had really taken
(07:23):
off and what I loved about Internet, which is very
entrepreneurial, the company, you know, versus being in a big
company like MCI and, you know, I made a decision at that point.
I'm like, you know, I like to make a difference.
You know, for an entrepreneurialcompany is like you'd learn
more, you like, you're challenged more.
(07:43):
It's like, you know, you're not put into a process or a
workflow. And you know, from from there, I
just, I continued on that path. You know, I, I finished my
corporate career fast forwardinga bit and I was my last
entrepreneurial role. I was the original chief revenue
officer for Thrive. Again, sales focused, very sales
(08:05):
focused, very marketing focused,but very entrepreneurial too.
It was a very small company backthen.
It had just taken on private equity money.
And again, it was a chance to like sell, but to build, you
know, build organizations, buildsales processes written like
sales techniques and and sales methodologies.
You know, what metrics are important.
(08:27):
You know, what products are we selling the channel so they
could thrive in the channel. Back in that day, this is 2017
now, we were really one of the first Ms. PS in the channel back
then. Channel is selling Kolo and you
know, voice Ucast, you know, some cloud, private cloud stuff,
(08:53):
you know and I remember we signed we signed agreements with
Telaris back then and, and a couple of other TSDS and they
had no, the partners had no ideawhat to really do with us, you
know, because nobody was talkingto managed services and IT and,
you know, but from our background because we've I've
always been in the channel and selling on the supplier side, I
(09:15):
knew that it worked for the other technologies and it was
going to be a bit of an evolution but it was going to be
a really fun journey and if we could be successful, it was
going to be monumental. So we did, I did that for a, for
a bunch of years and then, you know, it got to a point where I
(09:38):
wasn't having fun anymore. It's like I needed to go back to
my entrepreneurial roots and Thrive was transacting with,
with one of their PE sponsors atthe time.
And then I said, this is a youngman's game and I'm not getting
any younger. So decided that Accelerate was
going to be my full time focus and, and journey.
(10:04):
And it was, it was awesome. So March of 2020.
Great time to start. Great time to start the
business, you know, sitting, sitting there, you know, we're
all trapped in our homes. I've got my I've got my mobile
phone, I've got this computer. I've got no revenue.
I've got no income anymore either corporate wise.
(10:26):
I'm like like, all right, let's let's figure this out and what
did I do? I went back to my my roots of
just selling and I had 30 plus years at the time in different
capacities. I knew tons of people.
I had always done the right thing.
Integrity and transparency are really important to me.
(10:48):
So I just started calling peopleand telling them what I was
doing. And you know, 1 by 1, you know,
I started getting, you know, I started getting opportunities,
people because of me, just because of me are like, you can
help me do this and figure this out, you know, and little by
little, you know, I landed a couple big deals after about a
(11:09):
year. In the beginning, I was just,
you know, quoting out all the DSL circuits and the Internet
circuits. I'm like, you know, I'm doing
all the work, which is just me. And you know, then we gravitated
and started to get to the MSP space and doing some, some MSP
projects. And those are the bigger dollar
items. So did that for a bunch of years
and, you know, all of a sudden got so busy that accelerate that
(11:34):
I couldn't handle all the work by myself.
But I couldn't I couldn't affordto pay anybody either.
They're still small and I'm still making a, you know, large
corporate salary. And I didn't want to stop
selling either. So I, I convinced A gentleman,
John, John Meganiello that was with us today was like, you
(11:55):
know, he want, he was hankering to do something on the
entrepreneurial side too tired of corporate.
He's an MSP guy. He came out of financial
services. He works in banking and those
hedge funds and private equity. Like I said here, I will give
you these projects. I can't afford to pay you.
It's like, but I will give you these projects.
And I'm also consulting with these PE firms and you close
(12:17):
these technology projects, you can consult with me here.
And I said, I will pay you whatever I could pay you.
You know, I'll give you as much as I can give you and you know,
we had a discussion and this is one of my sayings now that I
said it back then and I say it now to anybody new that comes on
board. Matter of fact, I said it today
during because I was interviewing somebody was like
(12:40):
back then, you know, it was pretty scary.
It's like I had a, you know, major corporate career and I'm
like, now you go back to starting from scratch.
It's like I have all this experience, I have all this
knowledge, I have the desire. If I can't bet on myself to be
successful, why would anybody else want to bet on me?
(13:01):
It's like whether it's a job or whether it's, you know, just
some contract things like you have to believe in yourself and
you have to be confident that you can succeed it if you have
the right structure. And I believe that in myself.
And it wasn't easy. It was a rocky road for the
first two years, as they always say in the channel, right?
It takes 2 years. Across the Chasm took me those
(13:24):
two years, you know, and I, and that's the conversation I had
with John. It's like, are you willing to
bet on yourself? He goes and his response was
there's nobody better. He goes, he goes, I will
absolutely bet on myself. I am very confident that I could
do so. The way he went, understanding
that the organization, understanding the landscape of
(13:45):
the channel, working the projects I gave him, you know,
he's here. Now we Fast forward to current
day 2 1/2 years later, he is successfully crossed the chasm
and the checks are now coming injust from.
I love it. I love the story.
I'm going to come back to a couple things from that story
(14:06):
here in a second. Sure.
Before I do, I guess part of that, a lot of lessons learned,
right? A lot of self discovery, a lot
of mentors, a lot of maybe good decisions, maybe some not so
good decisions that you learned from.
Look, think of all that. What is one of your favorite
lessons learned? You know, either one that you
learned on your own or mentor. So one of the biggest lessons
(14:32):
for me. So I'm big on mentoring.
By the way, I have several mentors in my life.
I've been actually the VPS LS from when I was in customer
service 40 years ago, still a mentor to me, still talk to him
all the time. But one of the biggest things I
had to learn is about patience. Patience and maturity.
(14:55):
You know, just growing up in NewYork and being, you know, in the
Northeast and being in business,you have to be aggressive
sometimes. You have to be ruthless and lots
of times you lack patience, patience and people you know,
whether it's Co workers, patience and opportunities, you
(15:16):
know, being able to be patient and when you're step back and
take a deep breath and be patient, you're able to then to
use reflection. Why is the situation this way?
You know, what are the possibilities that are going on
and just to do some critical thinking around those that is
(15:40):
able to then hopefully give you perspective on a situation, give
your perspective on a person, right.
And early on I did, I was not success very early in my career.
And I'm like invincible. And I'm like, let's just go.
And, you know, I didn't have to be patient.
(16:01):
And now as you know, my, my older self today, that's
probably one of my strongest assets is, is patience,
understanding, using empathy, appreciation for where people
have come and where they have gone.
Everybody has a story whether they're telling it to you or
not. And every opportunity has, you
(16:25):
know, dynamics that are don't that don't meet the eye.
And you really need to step backand be patient with those with
those situations and try and understand them.
Awesome. OK, so, so let's talk about.
I mean, this is about complex discovery calls and skill sets
(16:45):
and, and, and sales methodologies and things like
that. So let's first look back.
Let's let's think of early JP. What what was an early discovery
call like with JP? What worked, what didn't work?
And then we'll move. We'll we'll Fast forward.
So early discovery calls for me,and I was always taught this
(17:09):
because we grew, we grew up in sales methodologies back in my
20s. Let's listen to Tom Hopkins and
Zig Ziglar and all those sales methodologies back in the day.
And so I became a student of sales skills.
I still am actually. I'd love sales skills, sales
technique. And early on, I was very much a,
(17:30):
a pragmatic person when it came to sales skills.
And it was very rigid, you know,especially when you're young and
you don't have the experience with them.
You know, if he says this, then you say that and this is how you
overcome the objection. You know, so I was very young
and very idealistic with sales skills back in that day,
(17:51):
although lots of times I still worked.
I was a, you know, I was a believer in them, but I always,
always used sales skills and, and one of the biggest sales
skills that I was not very good at early on was listening,
listening or using active listening.
(18:12):
You know, when you actually, when somebody says something and
you actually repeat it back to them with, with some
perspective, right? So lots of times if if you're
not listening, you're not going to make the sell.
So that early on, those are my kind of couple of snags and
weaknesses. The other big thing I would say,
(18:36):
and you know, this is common across all cells and not just
not just myself and my experience.
And by the way, I I made this faux pas last week.
I'm telling you that, you know, all these great things.
You always have to ask questions.
You always got to like, you know, you think of, you know,
think of a client, think of yourself sitting, sitting here.
(18:57):
It's like what do salespeople try and do?
They're pitching like crazy. They're always talking.
They're like trying to drag the customer into their world.
This is great, we're great. This is This is why we do this,
why we do that. You know, where the opposite
should be true 100% of the time.And this is part of listening is
(19:19):
you should as a salesperson to step into the clients world.
It's like, let's talk about business.
Let me understand your business,let me understand your
challenges. Ask questions in the beginning
to understand you know the dynamics of what they're going
through 'cause that perspective 9 times out of 10 is going to
(19:41):
help you tell your story better or give you the ability to
create rapport and value for yourself with that particular
client. Is the universal golden skill
that we don't talk about enough?Then?
Is it empathy? Yeah, is.
That just universally translatedin any different recipe that you
(20:03):
want. Just apply the crap out of it
is. That absolutely kept secret.
Absolutely it it it's using empathy.
It's absolutely using empathy. Another big thing.
You won't see this in the sals books.
I've written about it a bunch oftimes, but you know, a big
believer in in karma in the universe.
So everything happens for a reason.
(20:24):
And if you go into a situation and empathy is part of that too
in a lot of cases, right understanding, you know,
integrity, doing the right thingby whether it's the client,
whether it's, you know, your Co worker or your dog or your wife,
right, that will come back and manifest itself to you.
You know, 1000 ways that you know, will impact you and I have
(20:50):
always operated that way as wellas like, you know, the universe
has got got you back and you know, you try and give more than
than you get and you're trying to, you know, invest in people,
you try and teach people. I'm a I'm a big mentor now to a
lot of younger folks as well. And, you know, there's just a
(21:12):
lot of things you could do around that in sales and sales
calls where and we do that accelerate integrity and
reputation are the two biggest, most important things for us
because you you can't let that get tarnished.
And when you sit in front of a client and you want to use, you
(21:33):
know, karma in the universe and like, you could actually break,
you know, have a conversation that may not benefit your
company, but it's the right thing to do and do.
What is it? It's, you know, it takes a
lifetime to build a brand 5 minutes to ruin it.
I mean, I'm, I'm with you on that whole universe thing.
It's funny how this all works, you know, cosmically,
karmically, whatever, whatever the case is, I think if you set
(21:57):
out to help other people, I mean, look, I, I know we've got
targets, everybody's got comp plans.
We got all of those things like those are what, what, what have
to get done so that people, people make the payments they
need to make. And we, we have the roofs that
we have. But if you, if you seek to help
other people as your kind of fundamental empathetic skill
(22:17):
set, I'm with you. It, it will always come back to
you. That will show me a place that
that screws you. I it doesn't.
It it doesn't and it never will,cause the world will just be a
better place in some varying capacity.
Absolutely, absolutely 100% agree with you.
They believe. It let's let's OK, so, so that's
(22:38):
early JP. So you've now kind of grown this
business. You, you, you, you ran
successfully the MSP at Thrive. So now you're into these more
complex deals. You've moved even into larger
customers, right, customers of all sizes.
How does that? How does?
How does later negotiation and tactic and strategy change for
you? So it changes now because my
(23:03):
role is different, right? I'm, I'm the founder, I'm the
CEO, have really talented sellers underneath me.
And when we go into situations, it's more now about what we've
done, who we are and how we can help them.
(23:25):
You know, at a, at a very strategic level, we have a lot
of conversations. Everything starts in the C-Suite
with us. Everything starts in the
C-Suite, CEOCFOCRO, you name it,CMOCO.
Having conversations about business is universal, right?
(23:48):
So you're going to, you need to be very comfortable when you
step into that client's world and you're talking to the CFO.
It's like, what are you, you know, what are your investments
look like for this year and the growth of the business.
You know, how are you protectingyour business this year?
It's like, are you going after any new segments, you know,
(24:08):
verticals, you know, what's yourhiring strategy for the year?
Business is universal. All companies have the same
kinds of conversations that way,and they have to grow their
business. Do they use technology to grow
your business or are you using human capital or are you using
both? How are you using technology,
right? How do you acquire customers?
(24:29):
How do you train your sales force?
What are the technology tools that they use this technology, a
growth enabler for you there? How do you protect your brand
and your assets, You know, what's your insurance look like,
what things you do there? So having those kinds of
conversations will ultimately boil down to technology at some
(24:54):
point. So be very, very comfortable,
which I, you know, I am and my team is talking to the C level
about business. You know, don't go in there.
You want to talk about AI because it's hot.
It's like, let's talk, talk about, you know, what their
projects are for the year because you know what AI is
probably on that road map somewhere, right?
(25:16):
You know, how are they going to grow revenue?
Can they use AI to grow revenue?You know, employee productivity,
that's another big thing. It's like, let's talk about
employee productivity. And one of the things that's
going to happen is you're going to get into technology and AI
has got some really good use cases there.
So I would say that's the biggest difference for for me
(25:37):
today is, you know, I'm talking CEO to CEO, I'm talking to a
private equity operating executive that sits on boards of
four portfolio companies, you know, and what, you know, what
we see across industry and you know, things that they could
take to their, to their portfolio companies or things
that, you know, conversations that we could come in and help
(25:59):
them be successful. So let's put let's let's put all
this negotiation together. I think you laid some great
found foundations, some fundamentals.
Walk us through a, a really hardnegotiation of when, how that
culminated all and and kind of what led to that.
What's what's what's an example here?
(26:20):
All right. I have one cell that sticks out
of my mind. When you just said that, I was
calling on a hedge fund that hasabout 20 billion of assets under
management and I called on them from three different companies
(26:42):
over a period of time. The CTO and started in the data
center space back in the day, you know, because the training
aspects of IT didn't do any business with him.
Went to an MSP after spent threeyears trying to unpack what he
(27:07):
was doing there and, and telling, understanding what
their, you know, what their risks and liabilities were, what
their strengths were as far as technology and went through
several proposals, even got awarded and got shot down, you
know, at the executive level because they didn't want to make
any change because they got acquired.
(27:30):
They got acquired. I'm like, so I won a deal and
then they got acquired, deal gotsquashed.
So then I go to accelerate. This is about relationships,
right? I'm having valuable discussions
with the C level guy. Taking you back to the point
earlier, you know, he knows I know what I'm doing and I can
help him. So you know, he picks up and
(27:51):
takes my calls. So now I'm going to accelerate
and he's one of the one of the earlier ones.
I'm telling him, you know what I'm doing and the goodwill.
So we go through an entire year's worth of process with him
replacing his MSPMSSP, you know,400 users globally in Asia,
(28:14):
Europe, North America. I'm bringing in different MSPs
left and right, not using any names.
And then the parent company wants to, the new parent company
that bottom wants to get involved, kind of derails and
takes the things sideways for a few more months.
They, they want to bring it all in house.
(28:36):
They have their own team. Literally I'm on year 3 of this
cell inside of Accelerate, you know, with five years behind it.
So we're in eight years now this.
Is playing the long game, yeah. So talk about patients, right?
Yeah, yeah. Hey, the patients place, yes.
(28:59):
So finally, finally, they make aselection with the MSP.
They're going through contract negotiations.
I'm trying to help this guy figure out the budgets and like,
you know, I'm from the MSP space, so I know what the
margins look like. I know where they're making
(29:20):
money. I know where they're not making
money. I'm trying to counsel this guy.
He finally gets to a point they're like, this is the best
that we can do budget wise. We're going over what we're
paying now you, Mr. MSP, have tofigure that out.
You know, months of that. Finally they sign the contract.
(29:44):
As soon as he signs the contract, he's supposed to feel
like really joyous, right? Eight years.
I mean, this is this is 200,000 a month in new MRR.
Like we're going places with this one.
Like this is great. You know, you want to go
celebrate? He calls me the next day.
It was JP because I just quit I.Was like what hitting?
(30:07):
Me the next day, literally the next day I got because I got
recruited by this other hedge fund that's twice the size.
It's like, I don't know what's going to happen with this
acquisition that, you know, the new parent company.
I've been doing this for a while.
I'm really sorry. I was like, OK, I was like, but
you signed a contract. He's like, yeah, they're going
to have to figure out how to honor that.
He goes, they did sign the contract.
(30:29):
So he leaves, by the way, I talked to him last week, this
guy that, this, that his new company.
And so he leaves and a consultant steps in and the MSP,
it's like we got a contract. It takes him another year and a
half to get through the process of how they're going to do the
(30:49):
migration with this guy leaving.So now, now we're 9 1/2 years
in, you know, so I think I just got my first Commission check
maybe a month or two ago, so. Cow.
It was, but it's great. It's a it's a great story.
(31:10):
I mean, you know, we, we do see stuff like this a lot though.
This has been really cool to seehow the channel has grown.
To your point, the staying if, if, if we follow these things,
we we've got patience, do the right thing by the customer, try
to figure out if there's a way that we can help them when they
throw things at us, whether we know we can do them or not.
(31:30):
They nobody throws us the hard, the easy things.
They throw us the hard things. And then inevitably you help
that customer at customer A and they end up either staying
forever and you keep selling them more or they go to another
place and you sell to customer Balso.
But if you don't follow all those basics and you don't help,
(31:50):
and you're not helping with these negotiations and you're
not grinding it down and doing all these things, then we're
just another person in the equation.
But you're not clearly to be engaged in this count, you know,
trying to close this thing. That's the longest sales cycle
I've ever. Heard.
In my life, but I love it. There's a happy story there.
(32:11):
It it is that all these things work.
Timing, timing's weird, man. Timing just you can see what the
books tell you to see how long adeal in XYZ products should
take. But then life happens and and
reality and just business and industry and all these things
happen so. There's how do you forecast that
in your pipeline, by the way? Q4 of what year?
(32:35):
Doesn't matter. I just said Q4, that's all you
need. To know I believe it's going to
close, yeah. I feel good about it.
I feel good about. It you know.
I love, I love that. Let's let's move to I think
you've given a lot of this, but from an advice perspective for
other partners, you know, what we hear about folks listening to
(32:56):
the podcast is, hey, I started out in CX and I want to move
into security or I started out in cloud and I want to move into
advanced networking or whatever,right?
Pick a pick a poison there. So for the partners kind of
listening to your story, the other advisors and they want to
expand, right? They want to hone in these
negotiation skills and expand. What's your advice for them to
(33:21):
to to identify these OPS and really position themselves the
most effective way possible? So good question.
You know, just rewinding for onesecond, I'll I'll answer that
question directly, but I'm now amazed and impressed by the
caliber of the TA firm that are in the channel.
(33:42):
There are some really can I can I say bad ass on this?
Will that will that work? Hold on.
Yeah, he can't. Yeah.
No, they said it's fine. Yeah.
All right. Good, good, good.
I just wanted to check we can dothis.
There. You just.
There are some bad dudes in thischannel and gals, I love it.
(34:03):
So I mean, there are some literally really talented
people, big firms too. I mean, with loads of talented
people and they're gravitating up the up the value chain and
the technology stack and sellingall kinds of solutions.
It's really impressive where we are now.
It's like, you know, it's got it.
(34:23):
It motivates the heck out of me.I was having a conversation with
a Talarist person the other day and we're talking about such and
such a firm. And, you know, he's telling me
that he has 50 employees now I'mlike, wow, it's like, it's like,
you know, I wonder what this guy's revenue is.
It's like, I Josh, I have 5 employees, OK, so I'm hiring 3
(34:45):
and so I'll have 8. I don't have 50 employees.
And I, you know, so I look at that and it just motivates the
heck out of me. So what do I, how do I learn
from, you know, that team grow my company like that, you know,
so that's, that's really, reallythe state of the channel from
that perspective. So if I look at myself and I
(35:08):
wanted like, I want to grow my business into other areas, We're
good in cyber, we're good in MSP, we're good in AI now good
in cloud, you know, but we're uncomfortable in CX, we're
uncomfortable in Thames, you know, other solutions, mobility.
(35:33):
We're you know, it's OK to be uncomfortable, right?
And you could there's 2 tracks that you could go.
You can either partner TA to TA,which is a new thing in the
channel now too. We are, we are the cyber CSO
cloud experts for a bunch of TA firms and we help them close
opportunities. Conversely, we have done the
(35:55):
same thing back. It's like Thames is a massive
offering. I love Thames.
You could walk in a new, I was in a, a fortune $136 billion a
year public company meeting the president, you know, a month ago
in, in New York with my team. I was like, I never would have
(36:16):
been able to get into that door.I was like, but we were talking
about technology expense management and being able to
control costs. And now it's, it goes across
licensing. So I was very uncomfortable with
that in the beginning. Partnered with a with ATA firm
at APA. Love these guys.
They've taught us so much. They're our experts.
(36:39):
So we now go in and talk Thames and when we get the opportunity
identified, we're bringing them in because they got a deep bench
of experts. So I think TA to TA partner is a
really, really strong thing because you can't master
everything unless you're the 50 person firm that's that's
bringing in subject matter experts and your private equity
(37:00):
back. You know, then you could do
those things. But for the little guys like us,
or maybe people smaller than us or maybe people that are in, you
know, same size as us, but they're selling, you know,
telecom or you, you know, UCAS, you know, being able to engage a
trusted advisor that has that discipline and working with them
(37:25):
to just increase your wallet share.
You know, that that's an important thing I would say to,
for some, some firms to do because it will, it's immediate
reward too. It's like, all right, we've got
all these clients is like, who can we sell temps to?
Who can we sell CX to? We have ACX relationship now as
well. Like who can we sell or who can
(37:47):
we consult with and get these meetings?
Let's just see if there's opportunities because the
easiest thing is you have all these existing relationships,
right? It's like they'll take a meeting
with you. It's like have a conversation,
make it a business conversation.It's like if you want to talk
about, you want to talk about CX, let's talk about user
experience, you know, let's talkabout employee productivity,
(38:11):
let's talk about hiring, right? And how CX can impact all of
those things. So, you know, that would be a
huge piece of advice that I would give.
The other thing, and I, I mentioned the word before, I
said be comfortable being uncomfortable.
(38:32):
Growth happens when you're uncomfortable because you're
going to focus, you're going to get strategic, you're going to
start to understand yourself andyour business, you know, at a
different level. And when you're uncomfortable
like that, and whether that's taking on a new technology or
whether it's hiring a salesperson for growth or, you
(38:58):
know, one of the big things I did, we just, we just brought on
another very senior seller partner in the firm yesterday.
And I had AI had our sales meeting on Monday.
And I'm like, I, I'm no longer going to be selling any deals.
It's like I am no longer going to be, you know, I, I did that
for years and I'd love to sell. I think I might have made that a
(39:20):
little clearer in this, in this meeting, but I'm like, you know
what? I I've been working, you know,
in the business for the last five years.
Now it's time for me to work on the business and get into the
strategic initiatives. I'm sitting there.
We just went, we just invested in a new commissioning system, a
new CRM system, we have a sales enablement program.
(39:43):
We just got into revenue operations, understanding
trends. We built an AI engine into
SharePoint with Copilot. So we're doing all these things
now that, you know, they're not selling and you know, some, some
of them make me uncomfortable. Some of them, you know, I'm, I'm
quite comfortable with. But the evolution of the, the
(40:04):
business is important to acknowledge and to do that.
So that was a tangent, but I don't know if that.
It's a good call out. It's it's it's perspective at
all the different things that you go through as a business
owner. So I'd love I'd love the call
outs. All right, so we think of I
guess let's let's go, let's go final thoughts.
You know, we think about this industry has has shown us a lot
(40:28):
of changes. You know, AI is our next change.
Who knows what the next, you know, thing is.
So you think about changes in the future.
How do we how do you want peopleto think about this?
When this next great thing comesout or this next great thing
comes out? How should we be thinking about
that as advisors? And you know, where, where
(40:49):
should we be paying attention toor not paying attention to and,
and just give us your final thoughts.
Sure, sure. So I personally feel extremely
fortunate to be in the position that I am the CEO of a trusted
advisor firm. And just looking at what's
happened over the past five years is you couldn't predict.
(41:11):
I couldn't predict looking in over the horizon.
Now we are sitting as the tip ofthe spear in my mind as it
relates to business technology and growth.
It's like their technology is changing so rapidly.
There are there are new technologies that are going to
come out, come into place. There are new regulations that
(41:35):
are going to come in. AI regulation is going to be
huge. You know, that's obviously we
have to figure out how compliance, AI compliance is
going to work. That's just starting.
You know, another huge thing is,you know, think of CMMC in the
DoD supply chain space, right? It's like now all of a sudden
(41:57):
it's like manufacturing is a regulated industry and it has to
comply with standards. And there's two more levels of
CMMC compliance that are going to come up this year.
So those, I mean, so those are two examples that being a
trusted advisor, those are opportunities for us there.
There are many more on the horizon.
(42:17):
There are many more across healthcare, across legal.
I just see the evolution continuing and for us as
advisors to have the relationships with our clients
to add value in those conversations to stay relevant
on technologies, get, get uncomfortable and make yourself
(42:41):
learn, learn things. I, you know, I learned AI this
year. I obviously knew what it was,
but I was, I told you I, I spokein Vegas on an AI breakout
session. I was like, I got like I crammed
for. I used AI to learn AI.
It was a beautiful. Thing.
And you know what? Oh kidding though.
(43:02):
We put together all these great use cases that I was
interviewing suppliers on, best use cases, took our own use
cases, and put this great deck together.
I learned so much about where AIcould be used, you know, So just
to be able to have that ability as things change, as business
changes, as technology changes, as the world changes, to sit
(43:25):
there as the advisor, it's a privilege to be here.
I love it and that my friend, iswhere we wrap it.
JP, man, a lot of good compressed knowledge in there.
We probably could have gone on for a lot more, but there's just
there a lot of good Nuggets in there.
I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing it all with
everybody, man. It is absolutely my pleasure.
(43:48):
I love to talk about this stuff and you know, let me know when I
can do to help Josh anytime. Love it.
I love it. Well, everybody, that wraps us
up for today. JP Panzika, Accelerate Partners.
I'm your host, Josh Lopresto, SVP of sales engineering at
Telaris. As always, wherever you're
coming to us from, Apple, Spotify, get these drops every
(44:10):
Wednesday. Until next time, Art of
Discovery calls. Next Level Diztech has been a
production of Tulare Studio 19. Please visit telaris.com For
more information.
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