Todd Caponi’s Post

Once upon a time, I was touring the country with my CEO & COO trying to raise a growth round. 16 PE pitches in less than three weeks. This happened more than once: The partner walks in. During the review and introduction, they realized that in the role I was in previous to this, I was on the sales leadership team of a unicorn through a successful IPO followed quickly by a ~ $3B exit. Their eyes teared up - almost dreamy-eyed. I was getting credit for it. And, at the time, I wasn’t going to tell them… …that rocketship I was on was heading to the moon whether I was on it or not. …I was probably 1/1000th of the reason it had the double exit. There’s a lot of credit given…and a lot of credit taken, for being in the right place at the right time. Sure, I contributed. And yes…that experience was probably the most fun 3-4 year period of my career. But, I’ll tell you, the stuff that shaped my sales brain, leadership brain, and growth brain was in those situations where selling was hard: - Leading when we were running out of money - Leading after a train wreck of a quarter - Leading when we were up against a competitor who was 5x bigger, had all the marquee clients, and had a broader solution Frederic Russell spoke in his 1922 book, The Management of the Sales Organization, about the difference: “It depends largely upon the importance of the salespeople in it. That is, if the sales force is relied upon to sell the product, the sales manager assumes a highly important place; if the product sells itself with little pushing on the part of the sales force, the sales manager may be an unimportant executive.”

Sixteen years ago, I was running field ops for a struggling tech company, and probably because I was cheap and our WW VP of Sales wasn’t, they let him go and promoted me. 🙂 The issue at the time? I was: (a) buds with everyone who would now be reporting to me, and, (b) younger than everyone who would now be reporting to me. Given it was my first time, my CEO gave me some advice: He said I’d have to change personalities to lead the sales organization effectively - stop being their friends, and now be a driver. If that was the requirement, especially given the circumstances, I was going to suck at this role. They’d all see right through it! So, instead, my first sentence to the team was the following: 👉 “I’m really nobody’s ‘boss’. I’m still a peer to all of you. We just have different responsibilities.” 👈 Then I laid out those responsibilities… The sales team: drive sustainable revenue, build their own territories like a franchise owner. Me: To create the right environment for each of them to maximize their revenue capacity. ◼ Focus: No science projects…make sure we’re all spending our most valuable asset, our time, on the right firmographics and demographics ◼ Field: Build and optimize the team that takes the field each day as it relates to that Focus…with the right people in the right places with the right tools and the right resources. ◼ Fundamentals: Make sure our Field team gets the right things right consistently ◼ Forecast: Predict the future so we can be prepared, be resourced, and help our investors guide and invest…using the right metrics used in the right way ◼ Fun: Create a culture where intrinsic inspiration thrives We help each other succeed through that transparent understanding. It worked. It defined the culture. (It also became my approach to every team I led after that) The business turned around, had two great years in a row, and exited successfully in 2010. You don't have to be a "boss" to have success as a leader. Transparency begets transparency, builds trust, and I swear it maximizes outcomes... 😍 **Here’s my short embarrassing acceptance speech from 15 years ago of the American Business Award “Stevie” for WW VP of Sales of the Year if you want to make fun of how poorly I’ve aged…

Sometimes there’s advice on this platform that drives me a touch nuts - it’s like one step forward, two steps back. Most of the time I just try to repress it - I know, super healthy, right? 😳 This time I can’t. The question was: What do you do when a customer tells you they’re going with another solution because they read negative reviews on yours? The answer provided? “Okay, and how many negative reviews did you see? Were those actually clients of ours or just like somebody negative on the internet who never (used us)?” He added that the point is to make them question their own research. 😩 Nooooooo…. 😩 1) How do you respond to negative reviews? When you’re doing your homework, and see a negative review, then see that the provider receiving the negative review responded by saying something like, “We’re sorry that happened. Here’s how we’d like to make it up to you. Here’s what we’re doing to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” - how does that make you feel about the provider? Good, right? Own the negative reviews. 2) Why is the customer researching and allowing the negative reviews to impact their decision AT THE END of the sales cycle? Because they don’t trust what they’ve heard from you. Own those negative reviews UP FRONT. You’re not perfect. You’re not all things to all people. Share the pros AND THE CONS up-front. Own when things haven’t gone perfectly. Earn the right to share which reviews are unfounded. When they do their own homework and see that it matches, it BUILDS trust. You’ll win faster, but lose faster, too! And you’ll differentiate in the way that you sell. #transparencywins

Founder led SALES changed the world. The way we live today wasn’t defined by revolutionary inventions and advancements. 👉 It was defined by the “invention” PLUS their ability to sell it. Imagine Henry Ford inventing the automobile, and being told it was simply a “foolish obsession”. Or Cyrus McCormick inventing the reaper, and having a major newspaper make fun of it. Every major advancement didn’t sell itself. It required the “founder” to also be an imaginative salesperson, too. - - - - - My hobby is researching the history of the sales profession. As I often say, when cool people are doing cool things, I’m ear deep in centuries-old books and magazines on sales and sales leadership. ✅ My outlet is The Sales History Podcast. Never more than 20 minutes in length, I pick a subject, research the crap out of it, then tell you about it. I really had a blast researching this most recent episode. "How Founder Led Sales Changed the World" In it, I’ll teach you some of the stories and struggles; an idea that changed the world - met with such resistance that the “founders” themselves had to also be a master salesperson. Get it wherever you get your podcasts…or here:  https://lnkd.in/e6DuFVng p.s. I don't monetize this at all - it's just my nerdy outlet for any of you who find it interesting... 🤓 (l also post miscellaneous stuff @saleshistorian on IG & X)

Believe it or not, I was once early in my career. At the time, I struggled with the idea of prospecting into, calling on, or having a meeting with an executive: “These executives are older, wiser, more experienced than I am. How can I walk in with confidence?” My history brain kicks in. Wayyy back in the 1800s, many people actually looked forward to visits by salespeople. - It wasn’t because they were excited to buy stuff or be sold.  - It WAS because those salespeople brought the news! “What’s going on in the next town over? How about the town before that?” “What should we be aware of? What should we be preparing for?” Things are a touch different today, but are they? As it turns out…nope. Because that C-Level executive is stuck in their bubble all day, every day. - They have multiple INTERNAL meetings with INTERNAL peers. Or their board. Or their investors. - Those customer facing execs? Their time is spent speaking to customers who aren’t like them. They're speaking to customers who are like their customers. I know I did. YOU, on the other hand, are speaking to people like them all day, every day. You know more than you think you do. You bring the news! The news from organizations like theirs! “What are my peers struggling with?” “Tell me about the problems I can’t see because I'm in my bubble.” “Make me smarter about my own business… (…not yours)” Teach. Share. Make the executive smarter about their own business, not yours. They’ll seek you out, not repel you. 

When I wrote my first book, The Transparency Sale, I honestly thought there was a decent chance it would suck. Just ask my high school English teacher about the prospects of me having written a book people would like / get value from. She would have probably laughed herself to tears. 😅 I left my CRO role to write the book - thinking that after I went around speaking and teaching about it for a few months, I’d land in another CRO role. Here we are 5 ½ years later. Speaking and teaching has become the role I’m planning to keep for the rest of my career. And I wrote a second book, too. 👉 So, things like this “Go-To-Market-Gurus” recognition are pretty cool to receive - especially given the other names on this list. When cool people are doing cool things on weekends, I’m studying:  ◾ Reading & listening to behavioral science studies, learning science podcasts, and from peers at the NSA to hone my craft (hired a speaker coach, too).  ◾ Reading every piece of sales history I can get my hands on. I have a desire to know more about the profession of sales than anyone on the planet. Until that happens - you can call me “nerd” instead of “guru”. 🤓 This week alone…the last week of a quarter when I figure nobody would care to talk to me, I’m speaking & teaching at six different events in three different cities. Thank you Insightly | GTM Partners | TrustRadius for the reinforcement and recognition - and thanks to everyone else for putting up with my nerdery. 😍

This may be a weird conclusion to come to about modern sales education from reading a late 1800s business book of mine, but here goes… I found a book in my sales history hunt from 1889 called 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 (in an antique store in Northeast Wisconsin). In it, there’s a section called “How To Write”. When you think of that topic, what would you guess the content would be focused on? Maybe persuasive writing - the words, the tone, the structure of the message, right? Well, this book felt the need to: - First, teach the reader how to sit optimally in their chair. - Second, teach the reader how to best hold the pen. - Third, teach the reader how best to position their hands and the angle at which the pen should be held. I think about my sales upbringing and see it prominently today, too. Where is the focus of much of the writing and talking about “How To Sell”? Might many of us struggle because so much “How To Sell” content jumps the shark? Foundationally, do we need to take a step back and start with: - First, teach the salesperson how to be a human being? - Second, teach the salesperson how people learn? - Third, teach the salesperson how people engage, prioritize, and decide? I spend a lot of my time speaking & teaching the second & third points here - and I’ve seen some salespeople’s brains explode in the audience. 🤯 Ok, not literally, but there’s a lot of head slapping going on. I mean, even Elmer E. Ferris in his 1924 book, 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱, teaches us that “The body needs to be cleaned externally almost daily. In general, take a hot bath at night and a cold bath in the morning.” How far back to the basics do we have to go?

Spring of 2000 - I joined my first startup, and found out quickly that one of our executive’s core values / business-getting strategies - was lying to prospects. The story: I spent a solid month at the beginning at our headquarters in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. Our office was located on the second floor of a building right above an Outback Steakhouse, where the Bloomin’ Onion smell permeated every crevice of the office from dawn until dark. I was assigned one account - a huge financial services company based in Virginia. Our discovery involved doing a free (because we were just getting started), intensive multi-day evaluation of their indirect procurement spend (i.e., office supplies and light bulbs). Our value prop was to find where everyone in the company was spending on this stuff, then consolidate it under one tech portal. Then, the bigger opportunity / value prop was that we would then take the spend of ALL of our clients, combine it, and negotiate in bulk to the retailers for bigger discounts. We then presented our findings on their spend… ◼ Client: “Ok. This is good. But what other clients do you have at this point to take to the retailers to negotiate bigger discounts?” The truth? None. It was a chicken and the egg scenario. We needed clients to get the discounts from retailers…but we needed the discounts from retailers to get the clients. I had an idea. ◼ Me: “None. We’re just getting going here. How about we do this? Sign on to do the internal consolidation work & implementation. If, in six months, we don’t have a threshold of clients together we can take to the retailers, you can terminate.” The client was interested. We scheduled a call for the following week. I called my manager on the way to the airport and told him the story of what happened and the idea I suggested. To me, privately, he praised the idea. However, the next day on the all-sales team call, his boss (VP of Sales) publicly reamed me out for not lying to the customer. Made an example of me… 😡 My idea of giving a client an out “would risk the entire company” and make recognizing revenue difficult. We were told to tell our prospects that we have customers, but due to confidentiality we can’t share their names. I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, and resigned without another job lined up two weeks later. My buds followed soon after. The business model didn't last. It probably sounds obvious, but if you have to lie to sell something, you might want to reassess your career choices... “If the truth won’t sell it, don’t sell it.” - Arthur Dunn, 1921 p.s. I can still smell this picture. Can someone's cholesterol go up just from smelling something? 🤔

Time for another little rant: Ever have that feeling that you’re seeing history repeating itself (in a bad way), and there's little you can do to stop it? For those of you in the sales profession - 110 years ago this profession was trusted, respected and even admired! It was because the profession was founded on a “service” mindset. “True salesmanship is the science of SERVICE. Grasp that thought firmly and never let go.” - Arthur Sheldon, The Art of Selling, 1911 ◼ That service mindset lasted until World War 1, when it was essentially “generationed” out. ◼ Coming out of the war, selling was easy in 1918 & 1919. Salespeople changed jobs like The Great Resignation we just experienced. ◼ Then, a depression hit in the early 1920s (salesperson turnover hit 85% in 1922), and, out of desperation from hard times, HIGH-PRESSURE selling took hold coming out of the depression. ◼ Just when “service” reared its head again, The Great Depression presided from 1929-1939…ending just in time for another World War. ◼ By the time WWII ended in 1945, anyone who was selling respectfully had passed or long since retired. "Generationed" out... High-pressure sales. Gross aggressive approaches. While, like today, a few tool-bags are showing off their jet planes and fancy cars teaching people how to do it, too, they’ve lowered all boats in the process. While selling was taught in just about every college and many high schools in the 1910s, by the early 1960s companies couldn’t even get upcoming graduates to show up to on-campus interviews…much less be taught the profession. This quote is from 1961: *** “Students wonder if a salesman is slowly being worn down between buyers who demand too much and sales managers who expect too much. Students see the job of the salesman as lacking both in security and social status.” – C.A. Kirkpatrick, Salesmanship – Helping Prospects Buy *** Do you see it? Sales is being taught in colleges. Many are proud of what they do in the profession. But my feed is filling with garbage. High pressure is rearing its head again. Gross tactics. Slick deliveries. 🤢 Embrace the service mindset. Play the long game. Find a lane that makes money the ‘reward for doing the work you love to do’, not the reason you do it. In the feedback economy, the long game sells better. The long game wins the short game, too. The long game raises all boats. 😘