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[00:00:00] Michael Wills: You put the infrastructure, you start building the processes, you get the people aligned, and you start seeing incremental success. But a lot of times they become frustrated ’cause they think that success should happen in a much faster period of time than it does. But the big success really happens in year 2, 3, 4, not in the first six months.
[00:00:32] Lee Brumbaugh: Welcome back everyone. This is Sales Against The Odds. My name is Lee Brumbaugh, CEO of Sales Xceleration. Very excited for the podcast today. This is my first time where I’m, I’ve got two guests on. Uh, I’m joined today by Michael Wills, who’s out of Florida. He is a Sales Xceleration advisor I’ve known for many years, a tenured seasoned advisor who does a great job of delivering for his clients.
[00:00:56] Lee Brumbaugh: Michael, thank you for being with us today. And then
[00:00:59] Lee Brumbaugh: I’ve got Jason Flanzbaum, who is also, uh, outta Florida. He is the president of Boca Bearing and has been a client of Michael’s. We were just talking about that since, what’d we say, 2000,
[00:01:12] Lee Brumbaugh: 2020? Is that the year? Okay, great. So thank you both for, for joining us and really the goal of today is, I get this all the time of the clients that we work with in the SMB space, talking about how do Sales Xceleration advisors deliver. How did you make the decision to go with a Sales Xceleration advisor and kind of what are the results we’ve seen? So with that, we’ll, we’ll jump in, Jason. I know, um, as we’ve talked about in the past, you, you alluded to, um, some of the challenges. I’d like to start with some of the challenges you have from a sales perspective.
[00:01:42] Lee Brumbaugh: Where were you struggling? Why did you think about a Sales Xceleration advisor? Tell us a little bit about your journey, uh, before kind of meeting Michael.
[00:01:50] Jason Flanzbaum: Actually, so as an organization, we’re a 37-year-old company at this point, almost 38 years I guess, at this point. Um, but before I really came to the company and for a number of years at the start, uh, 22 years ago, we were really a marketing organization.
[00:02:07] Jason Flanzbaum: We were not a sales driven organization, and we were a successful marketing driven organization, but. The, the markets that had really allowed us to grow initially were dying and, uh, they were not going to be the markets that were gonna take us to the next level of sales growth. And they weren’t the markets that were gonna allow us to really grow in a proactive way, it was more reactive. So specifically my father started the business outta my bedroom as a kid
[00:02:36] Jason Flanzbaum: selling bearings to, uh, the radio control market. So RC cars, planes, helicopters, literally talking to kids on the phone a lot of times, directly one-on-one. And then he built up a dealer network of hobby shops.
[00:02:50] Jason Flanzbaum: And, uh, that grew a little bit into, uh, fishing and bicycle shops. And, uh, the reality is, is that. The RC market. Has really been eviscerated and most kids don’t really wanna play with something that breaks and then they can’t use it. They’d rather play with a video game. That’s just the truth. So that market was, was really declining and we were spending 10% of our revenue on marketing to that, area. Which was a sizable amount of money, which was, you know, magazine ads and it was then, uh, display ads on the internet and um, going to trade shows, hobby trade shows, and it was an inordinate amount of money for a market that was really declining and difficult to be proactive about. We hired a. A young gentleman had a decent salary to sit on the telephone and call hobby shops all day long, and it was terrible.
[00:03:47] Jason Flanzbaum: And most of those hobby shops were closing, most were being replaced with e-commerce sites. Most of those e-commerce sites were buying direct from factories to begin with, and they didn’t really need us. And it was extremely difficult and frustrating, but at the same time. Uh, we had always been evolving to sell to not only the retail and consumer level, but to the bearing distribution level and then the industrial end user.
[00:04:14] Jason Flanzbaum: So over the years, you know, by the time Michael came along. We really saw the handwriting on the wall. We really understood that the industrial end user was somebody we could proactively sell to. And you can identify a buyer, you can identify a need, you can make phone calls, you can actually develop a relationship, and you can get long term repeatable business.
[00:04:38] Jason Flanzbaum: And that’s, When, you know, we really started to consider, well, we need to be a sales driven organization. And what happens when you do that as an owner and, you become the sales manager, right? So I had the distinct pleasure of getting to go and hire and train and manage salespeople, which. I found extremely difficult and frustrating and, uh, emotional. It became very emotional and very high stress. And, um, managing salespeople while also trying to run a company and deal with marketing and deal with everything else became something that was. it was just difficult. There’s no other way to describe it.
[00:05:26] Jason Flanzbaum: There were a number of fighting matches, yelling matches. There were a number of, you know, well, you just get outta here, kind of conversations. it was just too much for me. It was too much for me to deal with. And. we went the normal path that probably a lot of organizations go through, right?
[00:05:42] Jason Flanzbaum: well, maybe not all organizations, but then I hired a friend of my wife’s and I got to make that mistake once, and so I never have to make that mistake again. Uh, and that gentleman just wasn’t appropriate for the position. And then I did what I, what probably most organizations do, right? I found my best guy, my best sales guy in the organization, and I moved him up to a, a sales management position. I was lucky enough. That gentleman identified that that was not his strong suit, and he took a step backwards and, and stayed with the organization for many, many years and was really my trusted partner and a, and a great salesperson. And,That was sort of the path, right, where I was trying to do it myself, trying to promote from within, trying to find somebody external. we use traction to run the company. We’ve been using traction for over 12 years. We’re a part of the, uh, grow Florida and CEO Nexus, uh, networks. And, uh, those networks have been tremendous for me in finding individuals like Michael Wills and they’re always promoting the fractional concept, right?
[00:06:47] Jason Flanzbaum: That, uh, fractional CFO, fractional Sales Manager, uh, those kinds of ideas and. Somebody must have referenced sales accelerator through that network. And um, Michael was referred to me,
[00:07:03] Lee Brumbaugh: good history. And and question for you, when you started, before you hired, started hiring the salespeople, were you doing some of the sales yourself?
[00:07:09] Lee Brumbaugh:
[00:07:09] Jason Flanzbaum: mean, again, you know, sales around here really looked like answering the t. Right. So phone rang, somebody called somebody in the organization would take it. At that point, we were in a smaller space. We were all in one room together. People would be having conversations with a customer and everybody’s chiming in from the corners.
[00:07:27] Jason Flanzbaum: No, say this, say that. No, tell ’em this. Tell ’em that. Hang up the phone, put it on hold. So it was that kind of a, you know, experience. Where the people who were answering the phone, sometimes it could be the warehouse guy, it could be the front desk guy, it could be the marketing girl they were answering and trying to deal with customers.
[00:07:44] Jason Flanzbaum: ’cause we’re a small company. We did everything. Everybody did everything. Uh, so that’s what sales looked like. And then ultimately it would bubble up, right? It would either be me or, or somebody else that would have to talk to a customer and try and guide them in a particular direction.
[00:07:58] Jason Flanzbaum: so that’s what sales really looked like at that
[00:08:00] Lee Brumbaugh: Really reactive from that standpoint and just the
[00:08:03] Lee Brumbaugh: flow of that. So Michael, you come in and you, you get introduced to Jason and you, uh, you start with the organization. What jumped out to you early as you started to see this company that. Had been. I guess evolving into the next level of, from an ICP, from a positioning standpoint.
[00:08:18] Lee Brumbaugh: Really an evolution. Jason, kudos for you for seeing writing on the wall for a certain marketplace and then evolving in there. That’s hard enough as a founder often to do. But Michael, from your perspective, what did you see early on when you started to work with Jason?
[00:08:31] Michael Wills: Well, the first thing that was really helpful is that it was a very great. Company culture. So it, they have a strong family, uh, ties within the organization and they worked very effectively. And it’s very much of a process driven company. It’s documented the heck out of everything. So all those things were well put together.
[00:08:50] Michael Wills: And then driving on EOS, it had all of the methodologies of EOS. All those fundamentals were really strong and it it allowed me to come in and and jumpstart the sales organization. But what I had to do is pivot everybody from this retail organization with a small average dollar sales. to where we’re really targeting industrial accounts, you’ve got a completely different buyer who you have to communicate in a different way.
[00:09:17] Michael Wills: And, uh, deal sizes are dramatically greater. So you’ve got sales cycle lengths that aren’t, uh, you know, answering the phone. And do you have. You know, a hundred of these. Yes. Okay. Sell ’em to me. You know, now you’re talking about having to make contact with somebody, build a relationship, explain who we are, how we can help them, and uh, and what do they really need.
[00:09:39] Michael Wills: you know, the first year or so was really pivoting the organization and then hiring people that fit that model and organizing the sales structure so that we have differentiated roles. That was something where, you know, Jason mentioned earlier. Everybody did everything well in sales, you can’t do that.
[00:09:55] Michael Wills: You’ve gotta have highly, highly specific roles where people have a singular responsibility, whether it’s hunting, account management, handling the inbound, uh, web orders. Et cetera. So organizing all that and then getting people to go after a different buyer, uh, it was really exciting. And honestly, you know, Jason’s father, uh, Allen, uh, was hesitant.
[00:10:18] Michael Wills: He, you know, he built, you know, at that point, 30 year company and he knew his customer, and now suddenly he’s going after. An entirely new customer they didn’t know.
[00:10:27] Michael Wills: once I got credibility with Alan, it was, it really allowed us to move forward faster. And then, you know, the key part of this role as the fractional head of sales is you become the sales leader. But you have that role with your gravitas, but it’s. Much more effective when people see the success and they really buy in and they have confidence that the decisions that you’re making are in the best interest of the organization.
[00:10:55] Michael Wills: And you know, once we had that, we started hiring people that really fit the organizational model we wanted and marketing change. You know, instead of investing all over the marketing spend to the retail customer, we started to slowly pivot towards an industrial customer marketing spend. And as we did that, we really started to change the brand.
[00:11:16] Michael Wills: And, uh, and over a period of years now, we really are an industrially focused, uh, ball-bearing supplier. And, and that’s where the vast majority of our revenue comes from.
[00:11:29] Lee Brumbaugh: this is the interesting part of the story ’cause I, Jason, I looked at your website before and I not, would’ve not have guessed the story because it does. It screamed the, the bearing side, the industrial side. that’s where you’ve got your ICP nailed from, from a website standpoint.
[00:11:41] Lee Brumbaugh: So I wanna go back to you guys, you both mentioned EOS and take a second there. ’cause you’ve got, you’re thinking about a pivot to who does roles, responsibilities, how did you define kind of EOS’s Right people, right seats. Right. And so from a sales perspective, either Jason or Michael. How did that process work of, changing some people that had worked in an area, now they’ve got maybe a slightly different seat determining, is this person the right fit?
[00:12:05] Lee Brumbaugh: Was that smooth? Was that bumpy? Talk to me about how you got to right people, right seats from a sales perspective.
[00:12:11] Jason Flanzbaum: I mean, from my perspective, it’s always bumpy, right? And it’s, it’s always a bit of trial and error. There’s really no other way, right? I mean, you identify something that is what you’re looking for and then you’re trying to find somebody that fits that, and sometimes they fit that right off the bat. Then that changes over time. Uh, and sometimes people are just naturally that we are lucky to have some people who have been with us a long time, who are naturally that, we rely on. And as we try to grow the organization, you know, that’s Michael’s challenge is to try to find those new people that fit into that. And then even.
[00:12:48] Jason Flanzbaum: It’s taking some people who are at other positions and moving them up into these new roles, and I am tremendously grateful that I have Michael to do that so that I don’t have to really focus on it.
[00:12:59] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. So you’re pivoting the, you get the, you’re line in on right people, you’re starting to get a sales strategy. You’ve got a new ICP. You’ve got these initiatives that are, that are being built around this. Where, were there challenges as you started to make the shift?
[00:13:13] Lee Brumbaugh: Or, or was the marketplace really receptive early on? What, how did it evolve? Talk to me about the pathway there.
[00:13:19] Jason Flanzbaum: I mean, there’s lots of challenges, right? I’ll speak to some, I’ll let Michael do it as well. But I think the thing I’m most focused on now and have been over the last few years is bringing everybody into alignment on messaging and how they are qualifying leads and customers as they come in. Because not everybody’s equal, but salespeople wanna chase every opportunity. And we have, like you’re saying, this ideal profile, but it’s, it’s not black and white. There are areas of gray in it, but they have to be able to get that discovery done as opposed to just really looking to make a quote. And salespeople want to get the business and they want to get the, you know, make the customer whole and give them a price and move to an order.
[00:14:02] Jason Flanzbaum: But we really try to identify things that help us just. Without just giving a price. And I think that’s been probably our biggest challenge is with some of the, the people is getting them into this process, uh, a good discovery process upfront.
[00:14:19] Michael Wills: Yeah, so while the company was well structured, is well structured from a sales organization, it was not so, uh, did not have a CRM. So, uh, they were using the ERP tool as a CRM, which doesn’t work. So we needed to install HubSpot and get people. The rhythm of HubSpot, the, the capabilities, and train them to what it’s able to do.
[00:14:41] Michael Wills: we didn’t have well-defined job descriptions and we had zero incentive compensation. So we built out the incentive plans and now people have clarity and how much more money they can make. And they do. The people are well rewarded by doing the things that we want them to do. And the other thing that, uh, incentive plans do and that we did here was we targeted to the strategy.
[00:15:04] Michael Wills: So obviously it’s a different strategy. So, you know, we had strategies of margin growth. We had strategies of selling. You know, we have a ceramic bearings and non ceramic bearings we want to sell and become the industry leader in ceramic bearings. So we had, um, incentive plans on. Selling more ceramic bearing than non ceramic.
[00:15:26] Michael Wills: And then we have team bonuses against that. So we identified what the sales strategies were and then built incentive compensation that matched all of those strategies. and that really accelerated things we had taken. The margin for the company up many, many points overall, over the couple of years we’ve, we’ve been able to sell now we almost got there we were 49.8%, uh, ceramic revenue last year.
[00:15:54] Michael Wills: Uh, versus we almost got to the 50 50, which will be, you know, considering where we started, where it was almost a, a 70 30 against, we almost got there and we, we had a, a record year last year. And, uh, and we’re now at 50% growth over the last few years. So, these things start with infrastructure.
[00:16:14] Michael Wills: They start with creating the cadence within. And then with the OS we have weekly sales meetings that are about an hour and 20 minutes long each, that are, the L 10 meetings that are highly structured. We have the, uh, bimonthly one-on-ones to really keep people having clarity using.
[00:16:31] Michael Wills: HubSpot to really drive some of the data behind those conversations,
[00:16:35] Michael Wills: so we use HubSpot to support the one-on-one meetings, uh, to be able to validate sales activity, number of deals, how those deals are moving forward. So we’re able to use that tool to hold people accountable, but also help them bring value.
[00:16:52] Lee Brumbaugh: Most companies don’t have the bandwidth to build a high functioning sales department to allow them to meet the revenue targets with Sales Xceleration they don’t have to. Our experienced fractional sales leaders consult and implement your sales strategy, infrastructure management, and team development.
[00:17:09] 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.
[00:17:22] Lee Brumbaugh: we get this question a lot, right? whats a good sales L 10 look like? I mean, there’s, I think oftentimes the leadership L 10, you’ve got an implementer, US implementer, um, integrator that’s working and, and make sure you have a great level 10, the leadership level, but sometimes that, that pull down to have great sales L 10s it can be a little bit more problematic.
[00:17:40] Lee Brumbaugh: So talk to me about how you’ve, you’ve structured kinda that sales L 10, what, what works and what, what challenges did you have in kind of building that?
[00:17:48] Michael Wills: So the most important area of a quality sales meeting is for the sales people to feel at the end of the meeting that it was for them. And if, if your sales meeting is about going in and hammering the team for not doing all the things you’re looking for them to do, you can have other things.
[00:18:10] Michael Wills: You can do that at other times of the week. Sales meetings gotta be about getting together, looking at best practice, sharing, identifying the, uh, the things that are in front of ’em that are hurting their performance, you know, whether it’s non-selling activities. That are denying them the ability to have all the time they need to follow up.
[00:18:27] Michael Wills: So once the sales team really believes that it’s about them, then they start holding themselves accountable. So we have a very good, uh, process where people make issues about their own performance. I’m sorry I didn’t make enough phone calls or I didn’t, uh, do these things that you expected me to do. And that again, then holds my personal accountability but asking people to help them to get better.
[00:18:51] Michael Wills: And we do a lot of that as well. And I think that’s a real strong reflection of a quality.
[00:18:57] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, I love that because. For those listening. If you are a business owner in the SMB space and you’re holding a sales meeting and it’s really just a pipeline review that’s not what this is about. It’s about growing together, knocking down barriers for the sales team so that they can explore and sell more. And again, when you’re focused on just the same pipeline over and over, run a WIN lab run a pipeline review once a month, have your stuff updated in cm. That’s all fine, but that’s very different than a good effective sales meeting that actually enhances what the sales team is delivering upon. So we’ll put Michael. So we’re going through this. We’ve talked a little bit about tools, CRM, anything else that you guys have built as you’ve made this shift from a technology standpoint that you’re utilizing? And again, kudos to you both for amazing growth. 50% is outstanding and, and especially in time when you were pivoting.
[00:19:41] Lee Brumbaugh: But what other tools have you used that have helped support kind of your growth engine?
[00:19:45] Michael Wills: Being here for a couple years at this point, I could see the big struggle in building the sales organization is the fact that Jason manages a business with tens of thousands of parts and part numbers and it’s complex.
[00:20:00] Michael Wills: Boca Bearing has tens of thousands of part numbers, and those parts satisfy different applications for different customers. We, we manage, we supply parts, uh, ball bearings all the way from a, just a regular fishermen to NASA. And, we have ball bearings that go up in space. We’ve got bell bearings.
[00:20:22] Michael Wills: That are in, um, medical devices, surgical, uh, centers, robotic surgical centers, we have ’em underwater. Uh, so we’ve got, it is very technical product. And so, and you don’t find people, in your geography that know much of anything about bearings. So the challenge was it took about 18 months for people to start feeling comfortable.
[00:20:45] Michael Wills: In being able to identify and recommend, ask the right questions, and really bring a lot of value to a customer. And before that, they are asking questions internally, they’re grabbing other people with a lot more experience. It’s, you know, it’s like an all hands on deck sales process, which is inefficient.
[00:21:03] Michael Wills: and challenging. So we identified that AI could really come in and revolutionize this process, and we built an AI agent brain that we brought in all of our data, all of our company information that a sales person would need from sales processes, how to use the IT system, all the different, a lot of the different bearing types, all the information around it.
[00:21:29] Michael Wills: Uh, price points. And from that they’re able to go in and type or, or vocalize this customer needs this, this is the application. Uh, this is how many they need. This is the price that they’re interested in paying. And the system will tell them, good, better, best. And so we created this and then talking points around that.
[00:21:52] Michael Wills: So now we’ve been able to have a sales person start. And be comfortable in a few months instead of 18 months. So what does that do? it doesn’t tie down other people in the organization for a long period of time. They feel comfortable. They start, they start seeing their own value. They feel better about what they’re doing, and they’re making more money.
[00:22:12] Michael Wills: They’re getting commissions and bonuses that they weren’t able to get before because their sales were lower. So this has really revolutionized our sales team.
[00:22:21] Lee Brumbaugh: Love it. Great use of efficiency. I mean, so, so many times customers are, we see our clients are trying to find that AI solution, but when you see the real world application of what it meant for your business from an efficiency standpoint, organizational standpoint, you can see the power of it. Jason, anything that that you would want to add to where you guys have gone from a technology standpoint, tool standpoint that jumps out to you?
[00:22:40] Jason Flanzbaum: I guess again, we, we love technology and we, we like these tools, so we, we do have a, a lot in terms of our technology stack.you know, something just as simple as our ERP package. You know, we use, um, business Central Microsoft Dynamics, which is a ERP package for multimillion dollar companies.
[00:22:58] Jason Flanzbaum: And, you know, we’re under 10 million, but we, we rely on that and we put that in really right before COVID hit. We didn’t miss a beat when everybody went to work remotely. Our entire ERP was in the cloud and everything worked really seamlessly and that was a tremendous benefit to us. But, we are an EOS company and that technology alone is transformational, but we use 90 ninety.io.
[00:23:24] Jason Flanzbaum: So when you talk about running meetings, it’s structured, you know, you really don’t have the ability to go off on too many tangents. You’re really kept to a particular agenda and. We’re focused on issues, we’re really focused on trying to put up issues, solve issues, deal with issues, and that the L 10 for me is the thing that lets me sleep at night and 90, particularly because I have full visibility into every team, every scorecard, every to-do, every issue, every rock. You know, we have it centralized in a way that I don’t really have to chase or worry about it. Um, so I think that in terms of technology has been tremendous for us. we’ve also recently implemented Profit First, uh, using an app called Profit Pro. So that is a more of a company management tool. But before that tool, we were suffering from cashflow problems and cashflow problems.
[00:24:18] Jason Flanzbaum: Breeds culture problems because it creates these fire drills where employees feel as though things are a little bit outta control. You’re cutting costs and you’re pulling back on initiatives and you’re, you’re changing, uh, employees quite frankly. And they feel that, and once we use this new system, we really got a handle on all that stuff.
[00:24:38] Jason Flanzbaum: And I think it’s changed the culture tremendously.
[00:24:41] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. Yeah. Really cool. Again, how all the different tools you’re using intelligently and it, and it speaks of a well run business. I think clients can count on and consistently deliver. So Jason, you had mentioned that obviously you found Michael through, through the network. you know that connectedness, right?
[00:24:56] Lee Brumbaugh: It sounds like you’re exploring that. how else have you found other, as far as relationships and networks and, and other resources that you’ve used your network to introduce you to? Has it been tools or other, uh, individuals or just talk to me about how you use your network to help support your business.
[00:25:12] Jason Flanzbaum: I mean, that network is everything. that network really all came through Grow Florida, who introduced me to CEO, the CEO round table concept that put me every third. Days at a table with a group of individuals doing the same thing I’m doing. And that tool, that network alone is really why I think we’re here today and why Michael’s here with us and why all those programs we’re using are being used.
[00:25:40] Jason Flanzbaum: And it’s all because of that network. And a lot of that, I’m sure, I don’t know if you’re familiar, but a lot of that really stems from the Edward Lowe Foundation out in Cassopolis, Michigan. Who has, uh, supported and, and exported a lot of these programs that we’re talking about. And I try to go every year to a retreat at the Edward Lowe Foundation.
[00:26:02] Jason Flanzbaum: It’s a business retreat. I go, uh, every month to the CEO round table that, uh, is thrown by CEO Nexus, but again, is is part of this, uh, bigger program. and I go every year to the. Uh, CEO Nexus event, which brings a lot of these people together, uh, locally here, uh, usually up in central Florida. But those tools really are the reason we use all these other things.
[00:26:27] Jason Flanzbaum: It comes through that group.
[00:26:29] Lee Brumbaugh: Love it. Yeah. And again, being a leader, the challenge yourself to always be learning, learning from others, taking that advice and putting it into practice is really amazing to see. And again, reflects on the growth that you guys have had. So,
[00:26:41] Michael Wills: one more thing, Lee. You know, one of the big values that a fractional sales leader. Also brings to a client like, uh, Boca Bearings are relationships that I have and best practices and, and, uh, really strong people that, whether it’s tools, people that will facilitate the growth.
[00:27:03] Michael Wills: So, you know, I like to say, you know, we have a periscope we’re meeting people all the time, we’re testing out tools, we’re being introduced to new things. And uh, and Jason’s been extremely willing to, uh, to listen. And when it makes sense, we, we bring it in. you know, with the ai, the AI agent concept he was very willing to do.
[00:27:24] Michael Wills: And I think that that’s, that’s really great to have a client that has that kind of willingness to listen and, uh, embrace change.
[00:27:32] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, I think that’s oftentimes what gets missed within Sales Xceleration because yes, we have decades of sales experience. it’s typically sales executive experience. And so I can tell in talking with you today, you two have a partnership together, right? Not only exploring sales, but growing the business overall.
[00:27:47] Lee Brumbaugh: And so I think when you get a Sales Xceleration advisor, yes, you get a sales process structure, methodology, but you also get somebody that’s helping to grow the business overall. Because again, we love it when we’re delivering 50% ROI, like you guys have done together. I think that’s a really good point, Michael. Jason, we’re gonna have a lot of business owners in the SMB space that are gonna be listening to this. Um, you made the decision to go with an SX advisor and, and Michael, and obviously it’s been great results, but for some of those business owners that are thinking about that next level of, of getting an SX advisor, any last thoughts of, of what that has, that relationship, that partnership has, has meant to you and the growth of your business?
[00:28:25] Jason Flanzbaum: there’s a few things that really stand out to me. The, the first thing is that when Michael came to me, you know, his value proposition to me was, I’m gonna build your program, I’m gonna build your processes, I’m gonna build your team, and then I’m gonna find my replacement and I’m gonna step aside. And we decided not to do that. And we’ve kept Michael in that position. there’s a lot of reasons, right? But I think these things that we’re talking about, building out HubSpot and identifying your customer profile and doing these things is not a short process. And it takes a good amount of time to get right.
[00:29:00] Jason Flanzbaum: And that, that first year or that second year or whatever it is. You know, changing that position to somebody else, I feel like I’m, I’m gonna lose a lot of this. you know, it’s really intellectual property on, on a lot of levels, right? It’s our customer, it’s our company advantage, the knowledge that we’ve acquired, the knowledge that Michael has acquired, and I wanna build on that.
[00:29:23] Jason Flanzbaum: I don’t wanna remove that. So I personally have stayed with this model because I find it to be beneficial. The other thing I find beneficial is that when we had a full-time sales manager. A lot of times what that looked like was that looked like a guy who was selling part of the time and managing a sales team part of the time. And inevitably what happened to us was that all of that selling. Tends to become the priority and the managing slowly gets smaller and smaller in terms of priority. And then when there is the managing, what it looked like a lot of times was a lot of handholding and babysitting. You know, there’s no other way to really say that, but Michael doesn’t have the time because. Part-time fractional. He doesn’t have the time to do some of that other stuff that I would consider to be low level managing that isn’t priority. That forces the sales team to either step up or step aside.
[00:30:22] Jason Flanzbaum: So if they need that kind of support. They’re not right for the organization, and we identify that and we’re capable of identifying that.
[00:30:29] Jason Flanzbaum: Michael’s capable of identifying that. If they’re willing to step up and really be more self-managing and self-directed, then they’re the right person and they’re staying long term. And I think having a fractional CFO forces that with the full-time guy, I really feel like we always got lost in that weeds.
[00:30:48] Jason Flanzbaum: The guy’s always gonna want to be focused on selling because he thinks that brings the most value to the company and the managing part doesn’t. But I know because I know how hard it was for me that all the things that Michael is doing are all the things that are a priority and it, he’s able to be laser focused on that.
[00:31:06] Jason Flanzbaum: So that’s been the value for me.
[00:31:08] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, I think that’s really well put. And you know, when we think about it, the perspective too, you want it, at the end of the day, you want accountability. Your sales team, you want a strategy, but then you gotta trust them to go out and execute. So, you know, having a, a pivotal part of the week where they come in and say, here’s, here’s what we’ve done, here’s what we’re progressing, knocking down barriers and obstacles and moving forward, and then letting them go and do what they do well.
[00:31:29] Lee Brumbaugh: That’s not a bad thing either as well. So I think that’s really well put. Michael, anything you would, you would add that’s, that’s been missed here
[00:31:35] Lee Brumbaugh: today?
[00:31:36] Michael Wills: I’ve done this now 10 years, so I’ve got, I’ve had over 45 clients in those 10 years, and I can say I’ve met so many business owners and they all want to grow. Everybody wants to double, how do I get there? You know, what’s it gonna take? And the, the couple of, you know, shortcomings with that is one, they oftentimes don’t understand that it’s a process, and it’s a longer process than they believe it should take.
[00:32:02] Michael Wills: You know, the snowball, you, you put the infrastructure, you start building the processes, you get the people aligned, and you start seeing incremental success. But a lot of times they become frustrated ’cause they think that success should happen in a much faster period of time than it does. But the big success really happens in year 2, 3, 4, not in the first six months.
[00:32:23] Michael Wills: And secondly, you have to have an owner that is. Committed to that process
[00:32:29] Michael Wills: you need to bring in an expert that understands how to run sales and run a sales team and brings in all of this experience of, of all their other, personal history and business history and then creating a trust in a partnership so that letting that person do what they need to do and you run the company.
[00:32:48] Lee Brumbaugh: kudos to you both for, for the growth that you’ve had at Boca Bearing. Uh, Jason, great to hear your story and, and all your success and really transitioning the company, and I know how challenging that could be. So. remarkable that the success you’ve had together, um, I thank you both for, for being on This has been, another episode of Sales Against The Odds.
[00:33:06] Lee Brumbaugh: Join in, in two weeks where we’ll have another business thought leader that talks about their, uh, their,
[00:33:11] Lee Brumbaugh: changes and shifts and how they’ve grown their business. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Michael.
