Building Powerful B2B Networks from Scratch with Donnie Boivin

This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human. 

[00:00:00] Donnie Boivin: in transactional networking, the conversation is always centered around the person you’re talking to can buy what you’re selling. But when you’re in B2B, the person you’re talking to can’t buy what you’re selling. They’re not a big enough company traditionally. So you have to change the dynamic of instead of networking to, you’re networking through all these individuals. 

[00:00:34] Lee Brumbaugh: Welcome everyone to another episode of Sales Against the Odds. My name is Lee Brumbaugh, CEO of Sales Xceleration. Very excited to have Donnie Boivin with us today. He is the founder of Success Champion Networking. Uh, has done a lot of work with our sales Xceleration advisors in starting their own groups.

[00:00:53] Lee Brumbaugh: Excited because a lot of listeners today, when you think about networking, it’s how do we do it better? How does my sales team do it better? And I think there’ll be a lot of great tips for you to learn from Donnie today. Donnie, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:01:03] Donnie Boivin: Ah, brother, thanks for having me on. I love the name of this show, and I’m excited to hang out with you. This is going to be a lot of fun.

[00:01:08] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, against the odds, right? And 

[00:01:10] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, it’s a 

[00:01:10] Lee Brumbaugh: what we’ll talk about is how you’ve, you’ve built, uh, your company through Against the Odds. So, we’ve met through Sales Xceleration and a lot of our advisors have started their own groups. But I would love to just start with, tell me a little bit about your journey, like how you’ve built this, this amazing B2B networking infrastructure around it.

[00:01:27] Lee Brumbaugh: Tell us a little bit how your background kind of led you here.

[00:01:30] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, for sure. So career sales guy. I was never a sales manager, never a sales leader. I just sold a lot and made a lot of people a lot of money over the years. Uh, early in my career, I sold commercial printing, and I primarily sold in the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 space. when I say I sold commercial printing, if they weren’t ordering a quarter of a million to a million dollars worth of print a year, it wasn’t worth a conversation to talk to them. And so when I started out early in that career, networking just plain and simply sucked. I’d go to events, and it’d be real estate agents, financial advisors, mortgage, or somebody wanted to check my chakras, right? I just knew traditional networking wasn’t going to work for me. I didn’t wanna be the guy that was doing cold calling and kicking in doors, so I was going to figure out how to make networking work.

[00:02:11] Donnie Boivin: So, I figured out a couple of cool methodologies. I later went on from commercial printing after selling hundreds of millions of dollars over my career, to working for Sandler Training for a number of years. I sold sales training for them, later became a Sandler trainer, uh, won all the silly awards and all those things that come along with that type of work. and then in, really in 2020… I started Success Champions in 2017. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, I watched the world moving online, and I knew how hard it was to build an online business at that point. So I saw an opportunity, I jumped in. I launched SEN really to try and help as many people, you know, stay in business and continue to do business. And when we launched, we had a, a really high turnover. And what I realized quickly was people didn’t network like I networked. They were networking which was being taught in a traditional sense, which comes from your real estate agents, your financial advisors. You know, when I sell you a house, I don’t need to talk to you for the next 10, 20 years. so it was very transactional in nature. And when you’re networking in that space, everybody can sell everybody. But when you’re selling business to business and you’re selling into mid-market or multimillion dollar companies, your decision makers are hardly ever in any room that you’re going to get in. So I had to completely change how networking was done based off of the things I’d done in the past, built a framework around it. And now SCN, Success Champions Networking, we’re at 450 members, 30 chapters, nine countries, and continuing to grow. and it’s been phenomenal. And hanging out with Sales Xceleration’s been one of the cooler partnerships we’ve actually had.

[00:03:50] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, love that, Donnie. So, you know, you, you mentioned transactional, right? So let’s, let’s dive in there a little bit because I’d love to get your perspective of, you mentioned that, that real estate developing the network. When you think about like good networking and how it’s evolved, like what does that look like versus maybe 10 years ago or, or somebody that does do kind 

[00:04:10] Donnie Boivin: you know, 10 years ago there was this, uh, thought process of you network everywhere. You get to every event, you do everything, and there wasn’t any strategy and game plan. It was, it was a lot of show up and hope. 

[00:04:24] Donnie Boivin: And then, you know, pandemic hit, moved a lot of things online. our groups even meet, you know,

[00:04:29] Donnie Boivin: virtually.

[00:04:30] Donnie Boivin: but it continues to evolve because, we’re seeing a huge

[00:04:34] Donnie Boivin: push of fractional coming into the marketplace, which is awesome. Uh, I really think 2026 is going to be the year of the fractional because companies are realizing that they could pay a CEO, you know, $2 million to run their company, or they could bring in a fractional CEO at a portion of the cost, right, to do the same type of role. So what happened was as more people moved into the marketplace, more people moved into the B2B space, what they found is a lot of lack of opportunity because our ideal

[00:05:03] Donnie Boivin: clients, our ideal customers

[00:05:05] Donnie Boivin: weren’t in the traditional rooms. You’re not going to find them at chamber events,

[00:05:09] Donnie Boivin: and I’m not bashing on these organizations.

[00:05:10] Donnie Boivin: You’re not going to find them in a B&I. Like, you had to move upstream. And then I found that most of the networking that was taught in this space was you introduce yourself, you use some sort of jingle, or you have this specific elevator pitch and 30-second commercial. And maybe back in the day that worked.

[00:05:30] Donnie Boivin: It’s never worked for me. But and I always joke with people, imagine walking up to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and introducing yourself with a jingle, and then let me know how that’s going to work out for you, right? So, it has to dynamically change because in transactional networking, the conversation is always centered around the person you’re talking to can buy what you’re selling. But when you’re in B2B, the person you’re talking to can’t buy what you’re selling. They’re not a big enough company traditionally. So you have to change the dynamic of instead of networking to, you’re networking through all these individuals. So I get people into the framework that networking is really about building other people’s businesses, and that usually creates a dynamic mental shift for them. them

[00:06:13] Lee Brumbaugh: So you’re coming in and you’re, you’re coming into SCN and you’re starting to build and you’re meeting people that you feel like have these relationships. How do you show value there? Like, As you think about like just what you’re doing, is it, is it more relationship-based?

[00:06:26] Lee Brumbaugh: Like how do you get early traction if you were starting like with an S-SCN type group?

[00:06:30] Donnie Boivin: you need to dynamically understand what an ideal client for you is. I’m really like when people get focused on an industry specific, like manufacturing or, healthcare, something. Once you know that, then it’ll tell you that if you were to break down…

[00:06:45] Donnie Boivin: Let’s, let’s just use manufacturing, makes it easiest. If you look at a manufacturing company, inside that company, there’s several departments: operations, accounting, finance, you know, sales, marketing. There is an, somebody in an industry that sells to that department inside that manufacturing company. So I have to shift my thinking to, I’m going to find the CEO of a manufacturing company while I’m out networking and start shifting it to who else sells to another department inside that manufacturing company that I can network and connect with? So let’s say I do, you know, fractional sales. And if that’s the case, then maybe I need the fractional COO, the fractional CFO, or maybe I need the MSP, the IT department that’s specifically focused on manufacturing. So as I’m getting early in the game getting traction, I’m introducing myself in a completely different way.

[00:07:34] Donnie Boivin: It’s going to be, “Hey, I’m Donnie. I do fractional sales.” But my best referral partners tend to be people who are fractional COOs selling to manufacturing, people who do MSP into manufacturing. And what you’ll find is you’re dynamically changing how people are having a conversation with you. Now, more important in a first interaction or a first out the gate is you need to be more focused on them and who they need to be connected to.

[00:07:59] Donnie Boivin: So if you and I were just meeting for the first time, let’s go back to my commercial printing days, I would say, “Hey, Lee, I sell commercial printing. I’m looking to meet promotional products and marketing firms. Those are my best referral partners.” And then, “Lee, you know, what do you do?” You’d obviously say some sort of fractional sales. And I said, “You know, I probably have quite a few people I know that are in fractional operations or the like. Are you okay if I start introducing you to some of the people I know?” And I found that by actually introducing people to their best referral partners, it dynamically starts building trust. It starts moving the relationships forward and really ups your brand either in a local group or in a local community.

[00:08:40] Lee Brumbaugh: you know, at Sales Xceleration, even inside our groups, we’re teaching the same thing and, and how we build kind of referral partners. And I always tell people, you know, at the end of the day, it’s, it’s, it’s really trading baseball cards, right? You’re finding somebody, if we have similar ICP or we know we connect in.

[00:08:53] Lee Brumbaugh: And there’s a lot of value to be able to say… I think a lot of people say, “Well, this is my ICP,” and they get too locked in on that. But to say, like, “I’m the connector,” right? I know you were trying to get into manufacturing and somebody else trying to get in the healthcare space, and I’m able to connect those dots too, and you’re the person that’s influencing that, I think is a powerful concept.

[00:09:10] Lee Brumbaugh: So, the more specific and tangible you can be of Lee wants to get into the manufacturing space for a $20 to $40 million type company, that may not be who you’re trying to get into, but by connecting with him, you open the door here, that opens the door there.

[00:09:23] Lee Brumbaugh: There, there’s so many ways to Kevin, you know, Kevin Bacon it out, right? 

[00:09:26] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, absolutely. and what I want people to

[00:09:28] Donnie Boivin: think is that I wanna find the people who are the best in the game at

[00:09:33] Donnie Boivin: what they do. So people that are absolute masters of their craft. If I can find that person, the value I can bring by going out and networking specifically for them… So let’s say we’ll stay in the manufacturing lane.

[00:09:46] Donnie Boivin: in my head is if I can dynamically connect you to the best people that sell into the manufacturing space, if I can connect and help you guys bridge that relationship, then a lot more business gets done. Where people get hung up on is when we say, you know, introduce people, they think, “Well, I don’t have any CEOs of manufacturing That’s a referral, right?

[00:10:09] Donnie Boivin: What I’m looking to do is get the people that are also selling into, and I wanna bring you enough value to where it gets to the point where you look at me and it’s a no-brainer for you to turn around and like, “God, I’ve got to do something for Donnie because he continues to do something for me.” But there’s an ideology inside of there that I think is broken. There’s a framework that’s been used for years, and once again, not bashing on the organization, but it says givers gain, and I disagree wholeheartedly. And the reason I disagree is because that’s forced people to give, give, give, give, give, give, and get nothing in return. If you continue to give and never get anything back, that means somebody doesn’t respect your business back. And for me, business is mutual respect. It’s gotta be a win on both sides of the table. So I’m going to open doors, give you even opportunities, make introductions, and if we go for a year or so and you never reciprocate, you don’t even bring my name up in a conversation, I’m going to move on to somebody else and invest my time there to build out stronger and more reliable, you know, things.

[00:11:09] Donnie Boivin: It’s not about tit for tat. I give you a referral, you give me one back.

[00:11:12] Donnie Boivin: I want a mutual respect on both sides of that conversation.

[00:11:15] Lee Brumbaugh: What do you do when that’s not happening? when you’ve had that referral partner, you had that initial meeting, connected well, understood each other’s businesses, and you’ve started to open some doors and, and make those connections, but it’s not… I mean, is it just direct conversation 

[00:11:28] Lee Brumbaugh: Or do you just move on? Like 

[00:11:29] Donnie Boivin: I got a whole process I teach around this, and it’s a four-part, you know… We call them virtual coffees because most of our times we’re meeting virtually, but a four-part, you know, virtual coffee series where it takes them through. And if somebody makes it to the fourth virtual coffee with me, we’ve done some serious business together. You know, so it’s a process. So like in the first virtual coffee, you literally should throw away most of that coffee and do nothing but focus on them and make introductions for them. And so in that process, if you’re opening doors, if during that meeting they make unsolicited introductions for you Then go ahead and schedule a second virtual coffee 30 days out. because that means they already get the game. You don’t have to teach them networking. And then there’s three more stages that, that go behind this, but you’ve gotta have a process to networking. If you’re just winging it, you’re going to lose every time because that’s like asking, you know, or waiting for a magical unicorn to pop up and go, “Hey, you have found business.”

[00:12:24] Donnie Boivin: It’s not going to happen. It’s gotta be a process. But yes, at some point, if somebody’s not returning the value, not reciprocating, then I’m going to professionally be upfront and go, “Hey, you know, Lee, I’ve done a lot of introductions. I’ve opened a lot of doors. I’m just curious, have you thought about bringing my name up in any particular conversations?”

[00:12:42] Donnie Boivin: And usually what they’re going to say is, “I just don’t fully understand,” or, “I don’t have any clients to introduce you to.” That’s when you have to go to an educational moment and say,

[00:12:53] Donnie Boivin: “Look, I don’t need you to introduce me to my clients. I need you to help get me to referral partners.”

[00:12:59] Lee Brumbaugh: we see that a lot in, in what we teach too, because we’ll have a lot of our new advisor community, and we’ll, we’ll hear all the time the objective like, “Well, it’s so hard. How do I give back when I’m just starting my practice you know, I have a national network and I, I don’t know as much locally?”

[00:13:13] Lee Brumbaugh: You’ve got to teach people to be creative. I mean, when I started my own practice in Houston, I had a national network, but I still had some partners and people that I’d worked with, even neighbors and referrals. And so if you’re just thinking creatively of like, you know, this guy goes to my church, but I know this is what he does in this area, you can make open doors.

[00:13:30] Lee Brumbaugh: But I think people get caught up in, “I’ve got to make this perfect referral into this client, this business owner, that will instantly bring them $20,000 in revenue.” That’s not, three steps ahead of where we want to be, 

[00:13:41] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, I always, look at them and say, “Hey, are you doing any sort of in-person networking?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “How many business cards do you have sitting on your desk right now from people you’ve met out networking?” And they’re like, “I don’t know, 10, 20, 30.” I’m like, “Pull out those business cards and we’re going to play Go Fish.” They’re like, “Cool.” “Do you have a fractional CFO in there?” Right? And they’ll laugh and they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve got a fractional CFO.” I’m like, “Cool. Do you have a fractional chief marketing officer?” “Yeah, I do.” “Cool. Would you do me a favor and send an email between those two guys and say, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you guys have met yet, but you guys are both playing the fractional game.

[00:14:13] Donnie Boivin: Thought it might be a good conversation. If you’ve already met, no harm, no foul. Just know I was thinking about you.’”

[00:14:18] Donnie Boivin: Right? And it can be that simple and that tactical, that quick to make an introduction and watch the response you get from the people that you make that introduction to, because they’ll literally go, “Oh my goodness, thank you for thinking about me.

[00:14:30] Donnie Boivin: You know, what can I do for you?” Right? it just starts off the reciprocity game. 

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[00:14:51] Lee Brumbaugh: Discover how we deploy these proven sales solutions to address your sales challenges. By going to our website, filling out the contact form, we’d love to hear from you.

[00:15:04] Lee Brumbaugh: go into a meeting of know who you want to like spend five minutes and you’re, you’re driving halfway across town to get a coffee, spend five minutes on a LinkedIn profile and say, “Hey, look, I know you saw– you know Donnie or you know, uh, John and Tom,” and like, I know with LinkedIn you get connected to everybody, but of these five people, who do you know well?

[00:15:20] Lee Brumbaugh: because I’d really like to get to know Donnie because I’m trying to build out my network I think it’s important to be, like you’re saying, very intentional. It’s not just you don’t just go in and you wing it. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to have a strategy. So I, I think that’s a great takeaway hopefully for the audience,

[00:15:33] Donnie Boivin: I agree. You know, I’m fixing to do a really crazy thing, here down in Houston, Texas. So, you know, sometimes you have those random shower thoughts that pop in your head. So I thought, man, what if I went to a city where I didn’t know anybody, had no contacts, no connections, spent five days, documented the whole thing, and literally showed people how to build a network from scratch, asking for no favors, no introductions, not leveraging my current network. So I’m going to do it. So literally, I don’t know when this is coming out, but May 18th through the 22nd, I’m heading down to Houston.

[00:16:03] Donnie Boivin: I’m mapping out the whole thing where I’m plotting all the events I’m going to, how I’m finding the events, and then I’m going to go through and I’m going to record the before and after each event, talk about if it’s a good event, bad event, who I met. And then the Monday afterwards, I’m inviting all the people that I met in Houston to a Zoom call, and my goal is to launch one of our SCN chapters out of doing that five days in Houston, just to show people the entire process, because I think a lot of people have all this made-up ideas in their freaking head around the, around networking, and I wanna show it as much as I possibly can in real time.

[00:16:36] Donnie Boivin: So I’ve been getting camera equipment and all kinds of stuff to pull this off.

[00:16:40] Lee Brumbaugh: for the audience, I’m in Houston, 

[00:16:41] Lee Brumbaugh: I’m going to be part of your process. So we’re going to… We, we may have to do a follow-up to this on how this goes because I’m going to see how you, how you branch in and yeah, that’s 

[00:16:48] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, So this is going to be the first test is, is going in cold with no network. The second time, I may do Houston, I may do another city, but I’m literally going to leverage my network to show everybody what it looks like to unleash your network saying, “Hey, I’m going to Houston. You know, where should I need to be? Who do I need to meet?” 

[00:17:04] Donnie Boivin: because so many people have already like, “Oh, I’ve got so many people for you to meet.” I’m like, “Hold on. Let me go in and do this cold. I wanna show you can do it cold, and then we’ll come back and do it, you know, leveraging everybody’s contacts.”

[00:17:14] Lee Brumbaugh: And that’s the fun part is when you connect and you’re, you’re impactful and you’re meaningful and you do it creatively and differently like People don’t want canned. Like, so to build it from scratch, I’ll love to see how this experiment goes.

[00:17:24] Lee Brumbaugh: That’s great. So, I’m a fractional VP of s- outsourced VP of sales, like sales Xceleration or a fractional CFO or IT, and I join SDN. What, what should I expect what’s good look like for those that join your, your networking 

[00:17:36] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, I, I would say early on, protect your calendar because you are going to get more virtual coffees than you ever had doing any other experiment on the planet, because our people understand the power of meeting people and making introductions. like anything, out the gate early on, it’s going to be a lot of introductions.

[00:17:53] Donnie Boivin: So the thing you need to do absolutely is get very specific with who you want to be introduced to. because in our world, if you say, “I want to meet a fractional CFO,” the mountains are going to move. People are going to make introductions for you out the gate and immediately. then once you get introduced to those perfect referral partners, you’ve got to dynamically understand that if you open doors for them, right, then opportunities will come for you.

[00:18:16] Donnie Boivin: But I want people to understand that in our world, to close deals, you’re usually three to five sales calls before you get a deal done. Think networking the same way. Doing one virtual coffee or one in-person coffee with somebody is not going to get you to anything but success-wise. So think about, “How do I go deep with this person?

[00:18:38] Donnie Boivin: How do I build a relationship beyond the transactional networking?” And usually people are starting to see some really good things happening three to six months into their business because they’re taking time to build relationships and finding strategic partners that they can do crazy things. Like we got clients that go prospects together now. we got members that, you know, are hosting huge events and inviting all their clients to. We’re doing happy hours together. We’re bringing clients together. So there’s a lot of things that happen, but it’s way beyond what you get what you get out of it. You have to think about this as your business development strategy. Just like you’d expect a salesperson to go get ROI from the activity, you’ve got to do the exact same thing. So before you dive in, what’s the ROI you need in this? And think beyond just clients and revenue. Like there’s exposure, there’s opportunities, there’s other things. What does that look like and how are you measuring it?

[00:19:31] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, I love that. And I love the fact that they’ve got to understand the long game on this. when our advisors launch their practice, we’ll say our time to first client is, uh, I think we’re at 87 days, so it’s just under three months. But one of the worst things that actually happens is we’ll get an advisor sometimes and they get one or two clients very quickly out of the chute But they haven’t taken the time to build their strategic ecosystem.

[00:19:50] Lee Brumbaugh: So they start with client delivery, and all of a sudden that, that work that needs to go into building that network. I mean, once you have that there, as long as you keep a good pulse of how to follow up and meet the right people that wanna help you grow your business and you wanna give back, then it’s very easy to keep going.

[00:20:05] Lee Brumbaugh: But sometimes we struggle because you get caught up in client delivery before you actually build that ecosystem. So I think people have to understand it, it really is building that network. It takes time, but once you’re there, good things then start to all kind of come at once.

[00:20:18] Donnie Boivin: I learned as a young sales guy, I had one client when I was selling commercial printing that was doing like $1.2 million of business for me. So it was a good size account for when it came to commercial printing, but it was my only account, and I was straight commission. And all of a sudden, this new VP of marketing comes into that company, and 30 days later I’m out, and I literally have no business.

[00:20:38] Donnie Boivin: So I go from making a great commission to zero. And I remember looking at my sales manager at that point. His exact phrase is, “Donnie, you’ve always got to keep one iron in the fire.” He’s like, “Yes, you have to deliver, but you’ve always got to keep one iron in the fire.” Like, you’ve always got to have somebody you’re prospecting, somebody you’re talking to, right?

[00:20:56] Donnie Boivin: It doesn’t mean that you’re going to land that deal, but deals take time. Same thing here in networking, same thing with your sales Xceleration guys, is if you stay in delivery mode and never work on the business development side of things, at

[00:21:09] Donnie Boivin: some point you’re going to come up dry. And now you’re starting from zero. Uh, and starting from zero is a very big lift.

[00:21:16] Lee Brumbaugh: I agree with that. I know I looked it up before, I think it was, uh, Badass Business Summit. So love the title. Tell me a little bit about what this, what this looks like and, what people that, that attend get out of that.

[00:21:27] Donnie Boivin: it all started because wanted to be on stages and talking in front of rooms and the like, and then I realized quickly nobody knew who the hell I was, so nobody was giving me the opportunity. So I built my own summit. So we’re on year seven. it’s a three-day business development summit.

[00:21:40] Donnie Boivin: So day one is for VIPs and our members, and then day twos and three, uh, really kicks off with a two-day all-in action-oriented, you know, summit. We are a summit that we teach and then you put into place. I don’t want people to walk away and then pull out their notebook and go, “What was that triangle thing again?”

[00:22:00] Donnie Boivin: So, so we teach, you put it in play, you put it in action. So, we’ll have 300 people, uh, in north of DFW in Coppell, Texas. we have some cool sponsors already in the mix with GoHighLevel and some other cool relationships, Your CMO and the likes. but it’s three days of high-caliber networking. So if you’re in the fractional space, you’re in that SMB space, but you’re selling mid-market, this is your room to come network with the right people. Uh, we always do fun things. We have karaoke every year on Thursday nights, just a fun way for people to let their hair down. it’s three days of a lot of fun. You can go find it at badassbusinesssummit.com. and phenomenal speakers, and it’s– By the time you’re done, you will have this year, an entire market game plan of how to grow your business to the next phase, the next level. it’s been one of the coolest things we’ve built. it’s one of those things you put into everything you don’t like about summits. We focused on that for ours to make it the right summit.

[00:23:00] Lee Brumbaugh: So we’ve talked a lot about kind of referral partners that are, that are listening in, but we’ll have a lot of this audience that’s, you know, it’s a business owner of a $5 million company.

[00:23:08] Lee Brumbaugh: And what you find is, you referenced 10 years ago, you’d do an email. 10 years ago, it was just all SEO driven, right? PPC and those sorts of things. And now it’s, well, you know, maybe you do all these fancy AI email campaigns. We all know we get too much in our inbox and we delete those. So it is going back to, I think we’re seeing more of a shift even more of networking to the right people.

[00:23:29] Lee Brumbaugh: It’s not only impactful for referral partners, but for business owners, right? That are get out there, getting out physically themselves. So you’re a business owner and you’re listening to today and you’re like, “Man, I need to do more myself from a networking standpoint.” What does good look like for that business owner that’s still really busy in the trenches of their business, but still wants to have some type of balance of building their own brand and being part of the networking themselves?

[00:23:51] Donnie Boivin: Yeah, I think if I were in their shoes, the first thing I’d think about is, is there an industry association that’s focused on my industry that I’m a part of? And I would dive into that world to see what opportunity’s there. But then, you know, get outside the box is, where are they spending time learning, about things like AI?

[00:24:10] Donnie Boivin: Are they going to any AI, you know, events, conferences? Uh, where are they investing in their personal journey? I think, you know, oftentimes I’ll talk to a lot of business owners and, you know, they’re so in the business, they’re never looking outside at what’s coming next down the road. They’re just working on the business.

[00:24:29] Donnie Boivin: So, where is their personal growth and that journey coming from? where are they trying to, get more knowledge and wisdom, uh, in that arena? And then, you know, I’m also, fascinated that a lot more CEOs aren’t sitting in some sort of peer advisory group or the like because even for myself, you get pretty lonely sitting at the top of a company because, if you’ve built it right, you have a lot of people doing a lot of things.

[00:24:56] Donnie Boivin: You’re still busy, but, your job most times is sit back and say yes or no, uh, on a lot of projects. So, if that’s the case, you get really, really lonely. So if you’re sitting in your company by yourself and you’re not actively engaged out in the real world beyond the business, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities and things coming down the road.

[00:25:15] Donnie Boivin: So those are the biggest things I’d be looking for.

[00:25:18] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. I love those takeaways. And, you know, part of it is too is, I see a lot of, especially CEO level is you go very superficial, and so it’s like you’re hitting a bunch of stuff, but you’re not going deep anywhere.

[00:25:28] Lee Brumbaugh: And whether you’re, you’re a business owner listening today or an advisor or a fractional whatever, you know, the best group is where you’re giving back.

[00:25:34] Lee Brumbaugh: Like, not only you’re building relationships, but you’re helping others grow in their business. You’re forming deep relationships. You’re giving. Like, if you’re finding a group where you’re getting– you’re giving your time, you’re getting feedback, you’re learning from your peers, like I’d rather you… Just like anything else, the 80/20 rule applies to network.

[00:25:50] Lee Brumbaugh: I’d rather you deep with a group where you can be productive and get valuable information and share valuable information versus attending five different chamber things that you just dip your toe in, 

[00:26:02] Donnie Boivin: Yeah. Something I, I like to get people to really think about is imagine if you and I were at a networking event And I walked up to you at that event and I said, “Hey, Lee, I’m Donnie. I’d love to meet your largest customer so I could pitch them my services.” There’s no way in hell you’re going to introduce me to that customer, right?

[00:26:20] Donnie Boivin: You don’t know me. There’s no value. So how much trust, and, and this is a rhetorical question, but how much trust, how much time, how long would it take for me to earn your trust before you would introduce me to your number one client? Now reverse that as you go out networking, because that’s the level of trust people need from you. they’ve got to be able to understand that you can deliver, you’re the right guy, you’re going to follow up, you’re going to make them look good. Like, there’s a lot of things that play into that. So if you look at networking of how am I earning that level of trust with the people in the group, you have no choice but to go deep. Like, you’ve got to go beyond, you know, the original conversation. Like, do they have kids? What’s their family life? What are their hobbies? What are they into? most people are not this good about going that deep into the conversation. They’re just doing drive-by networking, which is going to all the chamber events like you were talking about, right? And so they think if they just show up, that magical unicorn’s going to pop up. But man, it really requires you to establishing and earning a lot of trust. And if you’re giving back, it’s the fastest way to move the needle on that whole trust algorithm, with people. Because if I do good things for you, in theory, you’ll do good things back for me.

[00:27:34] Lee Brumbaugh: Even like the little things, you know, their favorite college football teams, wins a football game, you shoot them a text. Like even, you know, we, we teach so much of like building relationships with our customers, and then we don’t apply it to the same thing 

[00:27:44] Donnie Boivin: And it’s the exact same thing because literally they’re your word-of-mouth sales team. They’re the people that are in the best position to bring your name up in the rooms you’re not in. What do you have to do to earn that right? that’s the way I always try to position it for myself.

[00:27:58] Lee Brumbaugh: Well, Donnie, this has been great. Uh, very, uh, happy to have you on. I look forward to finding out what you do on these experiments. I mean, we may have to get kind of a follow-up on this, but love what you’re doing, love what you’ve done with our sales Xceleration community in bridging a gap for what is a big need in the B2B space, so. 

[00:28:14] Donnie Boivin: Oh, thanks brother. Hey, and really quick, if guys, if you made it this far hanging out with us and you got any value out of this, do us a favor. Take a screenshot wherever you’re listening or watching this and post it out on social media or share it to somebody. If you post it on LinkedIn in particular and you tag me in it, I promise I’ll come give it love.

[00:28:30] Donnie Boivin: I love LinkedIn. I love that platform. But as Lee continues to grow this out and Sales Xceleration continues to grow this out, building an audience is one of the toughest things in the world for shows like this. So if you take a screenshot, you tag Lee in it, you tag me in it, we’ll come give it some love and help push this thing further so we can reach more, you know, voices, more people out there and really turn this into 10 times better than it already is, which would be phenomenal and great for the marketplace as a whole.

[00:28:57] Lee Brumbaugh: Great call to action. Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe that’s why you’re the Founder of Success Champion Networking, So… Donnie, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been great today. Thank you everyone for joining another episode of Sales Against the Odds. Join us again in two weeks where we, uh, bring on another business thought leader that challenges how we grow our business.

[00:29:12] Lee Brumbaugh: Thanks, everyone.