In this factual episode, Nicholas Loise, Founder of Sales Performance Team, shares how to build scalable sales teams and integrate marketing for growth. If you struggle with duct-tape sales processes and being stuck in selling, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What avoiding “one” dependencies like single salespeople prevents risks
– How to align sales and marketing to avoid silos and boost revenue.
– Why creating playbooks turns average reps into consistent performers.
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the Start scale and succeed podcast. It’s the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a founder, I’m your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to talk to those founders out there who’ve built a company, not just started a business. You’ve probably made it to stage four. We’ve talked about that before and hit a wall. But a big part of that wall we haven’t talked much about is the very real world of sales. You see at this stage so many founders, sales function still feels like it’s held together with duct tape and hope, especially those who are particularly good at sales themselves and have have struggled to find a way to reproduce that in others. So if you’re in that stage where you’ve stepped back from just about everything else, but you can’t figure out how to get out of the way of sales, you are in the right place, because Joining me today is the one and only Nicholas Loise, who’s a seasoned sales leader, entrepreneur and marketing executive with a proven track record of helping small to mid sized businesses improve their sales and marketing systems, having served as VP of sales, president and chief revenue officer, Nick specializes in building integrated processes and playbooks that drive growth, profitability and long term customer value, his experience spans from startups to Fortune, 100 companies, where he’s revamped sales structures, developed business development strategies and enhanced customer retention. He’s here with us today. Nicholas, welcome to the show. So glad to have you here. I want to jump in because you you talk about something that a lot of people don’t talk about. In fact, a lot of people talk about the opposite, which is what you call the diseconomy of sales scale. What in the world does that mean? Why is it relevant to our conversation here today?
Nicholas Loise
Well, first off, thanks a million for having me on and thank you for all the work that you’re doing. We are in the founder space all the time. We’re in the small to mid size business space. You guys do a phenomenal job at at scale architects. And really, you know, my hat goes off to you. It’s, it’s, it’s, you’re, you know, the driver of any economy, no matter what Wall Street says or what the Wall Street Journal Bloomberg says, really is small to mid sized businesses, and you really focus on helping them. So thank you for that, too. Is, you know, I think the most important thing is, you know, lot of times founders because, as you said in the beginning of who you guys talked to, they were good at building their business, right? They just intuitively know how to sell. They I could wake them up at three o’clock in the morning. They could close me, right? They know intuitively if a customer says something or a prospect says something five minutes in, they have to answer that with a story about 18 minutes in, or else they’re going to get an objection at 24 they just know the process. But the problem is, is they, they have a difficult time articulating that to new sales people. They have a tough time creating that architecture, if you will, because it’s innate to them. They just intuitively know what to do, when to do and why to do it. And so we kind of come in and focus on helping them build that platform, that sales architecture, if you will, so that they have a machine that they could kind of plug and play the players in and get the results that they want. Not as well as a founder, right? No, no sales person in the world is going to close as well as a founder will. But we go on to put them into that we’d like to say, you know, we are like the New England Patriots, right? Bill Belichick, who, you know, as we’re listening to this, didn’t get in the first ballot, but we’ll get them eventually. You know, they just had a program, and they could plug and play players in based on the talent, based on their skill, but they had a very meticulous playbook, and that’s the same thing that we help founders create.
Scott Ritzheimer
I think it’s gaining some traction. I think more important, people are thinking these terms. But that’s an option, often not the option most people take right out of the gate. What are some of the ways that folks try to solve this problem that ultimately doesn’t work.
Nicholas Loise
First off is they hire somebody from a big business and bring them into a small business, and maybe they call in the same same type of clients, right? Or maybe they’re in the same space, but they came from a big logo, a big business, and now they’re in a small business. And then the founders wondering why they can’t sell. That’s the first mistake that everybody makes. We try to unwind that or stop that before that happens. Two is they hire a bunch of salespeople, hire a headcount, right? Give them a little bit of training, and say, Go get them. Charge the mountain guys. Well, you know that doesn’t work either. So that’s the second mistake that they do. The third mistake that they do is that sometimes they get enamored by sales people, and that person will never sell, right? It just, it’s just not in their DNA to be a salesperson. But they either fell in love with the person they play golf with their father. Or they play golf with their with their spouse, something of that nature, and they’ve got the wrong people on the wrong seats of the bus. So those are three of the high level things that we see, Scott.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, you. You mentioned earlier, what I think is really at the the core of this problem. And these are three ways that they’re trying to solve this same problem. That is that they can’t find a way to get something that’s in them out of them. And what I think is so challenging about this, because folks listening to be like, that’s not a new problem. We talk about delegating all the time and this and that, and that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about this deeply innate skill that most founders weren’t actually born with, but were born predisposed to develop, right? And so they come up with a way of of doing all of this intuitively. They didn’t go to Sales Training, most of them, right? They didn’t have someone give them a process for how to sell and and so they’ve had success in handing other things off. But for want some reason, this sales thing seems to stick with them longer than the rest. Why do you think that is?
Nicholas Loise
Control. One is control, right? You don’t want to give up the revenue driver. You like to eat. You like to you like to feed your employees. Your employees like to eat your children. Want shoes, right? So you want to control the revenue side. Two is they’ve talked about what we talked about, where they’ve had their heart broken, or they’ve hired people, that person has, he or she hasn’t sold. So then the owner has to jump in, the founder has to jump back in and get the revenue to where it goes. They don’t want to do it, but they realize that they kind of have to hold on to it and to kind of re, re, I guess, retell what you just said, because you said it so articulately. I always use the story of Jack Nichols, best golfer. Well, one of the best golfers. Now, Scotty schiffler and and Tiger are taking over for that. But somebody ran up to him and said, How do you hit a one iron? He says, Well, you take the one iron, you swing and you hit the ball right? So he couldn’t articulate how to do it. He just intuitively knew how to do it. And that’s a lot of times what founders have they just one is they want to eat. Two is they had to grow the business. Three is they probably started on a folding table or an extra bedroom, and they had to get the business going. And they picked up the phone and they sent emails and did LinkedIn, and they worked a Rolodex, and they got deal flow going, and then they learned a process in the system, and they just need to, we come in to help them replicate that processes and system.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Nicholas, one of the big sticking points is that for a founder who sells, to some extent, more emotionally than than logically, that sale is free. You know there’s no sales commissions. You know you’re you’re paying it to yourself and and so one of the things that I’ve found is a real challenge is, how do you structure compensation, and what role do you see as compensation playing in this, this struggle to get a team up and running?
Nicholas Loise
Well, first off, that’s a great line. I’m going to use it. I’ll give you attribution to it, but that’s a great line that they think all the sales that they create are free. So, I mean, a sales compensation plan is created to drive the behaviors as well as the outcomes that you want, right? It’s simple. So that’s what we have to do for some long term sales. Maybe there’s a production portion of the sales compensation plan. A lot of times it’s a percentage of revenue. We like a percentage of profit, or we like a percentage of cash coming in, but really it’s set up to drive the behavior and to drive the outcomes that you want. So you have to reverse engineer,
Scott Ritzheimer
yeah, and what do you find? They just decided to blow leaves right outside my window. So I hope you can’t hear that, but you probably can.
Nicholas Loise
I mean, I think they find out when all the podcasts are happening, and they have master list, and every you know that, they say in the morning, okay, I have to get over by Nick’s house because he’s doing a podcast and I’m going to do the lawn. So I actually had a problem here in Chicago. So you’ll hear a, you’ll hear a you’ll hear a snowplow go by on my end. Yeah, don’t worry about it.
Scott Ritzheimer
I had a problem with it, where they were always doing it right after I was done, and so I put a red light outside to show when we were recording, to make sure they got it right. So everyone listening, we tried not to do this. But no, you, I don’t know what I was going to ask, but I’m going to ask this. You mentioned this earlier, and I think it’s another one of those things that gets in the way, and another sticking point, and that is they can’t sell as much as me. And I think that shows up Nicholas a couple of ways, and I love for you to speak to it to us. There’s one of like, Hey, I’m just not going to get somebody else because they can’t sell as much as me. But I think there’s also this need that goes on even after you have a team to, like, jump in and save the day, where it’s like, the big sale, or we’re a little down in a month. And what’s the cost of that, especially over the long run?
Nicholas Loise
So the cost is huge. So the first the first point the cost is going to cost you points on your exit. Okay, so if they can’t sell as much as me, so therefore I don’t want to build a sales team, the sales process and all that, no one is going to buy your business, or they’re going to buy it for a lot less than you think it’s worth, because they like I got to buy myself a job, or I got to find a salesperson and train that salesperson up. I’m going to take a hit on revenue. So you’re doing really long term detrimental value to your net worth and to your exit. And for many of the people that we work with, and I’m sure with you also Scott, their business is their number one asset, right? It’s it’s going to fund their retirement. It’s going to fund the kids college funds. It’s yada. It’s going to let them pay back to what they want to do, or start a foundation. So we want them to maximize as much as they possibly can. And the best way to do that is have a really tight sales process and have a number of sales people, not just one really great sales people, but a number of sales people that drive the revenue. Now you’ve got a machine, and people will buy that, or private equity will look hard at that. So that’s the first reason why. The second reason why is something not only founders, we see with founders, but we also see when everybody does the kiss of death, they take the best salesperson and they promote him to sales leader. And so his intuitive instinct is to drive deals right? So he doesn’t coach up the team, he doesn’t move the team. He runs in and jumps in when the deal is stalled or over the edge. And we see that a lot with founders, too, is the deal is stalled and they want revenue, right? Because that’s what they’re driven and we all are always fearful of the shoes gonna drop on the other foot. So I don’t, I’m not judging them. I’m just saying is that that will do detrimental value and it will start to demoralize your team. So you have to stay away from doing that. Sales leaders have to stay away from do that. And you never don’t hire sales people.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. You, you mentioned sales leadership, and maybe even in your bio, sales management there. What’s the difference between sales sales management and sales leadership? And what does a founder at this stage need most?
Nicholas Loise
So it depends on where they’re at from a revenue perspective, if they are in the let’s say, under $5 million dollar stage, they probably need sales, keep sales people blocking and tackling, moving deals forward, picking up the phone and prospecting, doing discovery, doing you know, objection handling and all that. Right? So that’s what they need. Probably at that three to 5 million range they could think about a fractional sales manager or leader. That person is, what we’ll say, the zookeeper. And I mean that would love it and admiration. I’m a salesperson myself, so I got four people, four fingers going back at me, but they’re managing the inmates, if you will, right? So they’re managing the team, they’re managing deal flow. They’re doing a lot of mentoring. They’re listening to calls. They’re walking them off the edge. Has where you and I are speaking. I got a team that we’re managing and their sales persons texting me because they think the other person is stealing leads, right? So dealing with all of those things that a sales leader shouldn’t be dealing with and a founder should never be dealing with. Now you’re going to get to five to 7 million, maybe 10 million. Okay, you still probably maybe move that sales manager to full time. Then now you’re going to get ready for a leader. A sales leader really is focused on big deals, right? And how do I move revenue? Maybe at a zero, maybe at two zeros, right? What’s our distribution channel? Do I bring in partners, you know? So they’re looking at all the different channels, if you will. And they think about the world strategically. Sales people are doing the work. They’re the worker bees, the ants, if you will. The sales leader is kind of directing them. Sales Managers kind of directing them, making sure that the the raw materials there, and they’re trained up. And the sales leader is saying, here’s the mountain we’re going to go and it’s going to get us this. And they’re really kind of building out the high level plans, 30,000 foot 10,000 foot boots on the ground type thing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Nicholas, I could ask you about 5000 more questions on this. I just love your approach and the clarity that you’re able to bring to it. But there is one question that I want to make sure we have time for. And this question I ask all my guests, and it is this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Nicholas Loise
So it’s a great question. So I think the one is sales is both the science and an art right? You got to get the science part right. The art is dealing with people, dealing with prospects, dealing with that, but you got to get the science part right. Got to get the foundational formula correct. And then we can make we could do the the art form, but focus on the science of sales, the blocking and tackling of sales. They execute. Question of it, and then you get into the nuance of the people skills.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, I love ordering this Nicholas. There’s certainly folks listening to this, and they’re right there the duct tape and hope thing isn’t working for them anymore, and they really want to find a way of building a scalable, effective, sustainable sales team, where can they find more out about the work that you do and connect with you.
Nicholas Loise
That’s very kind. So they could go to our website, salesperformanceteam.com, we got a bunch of freebies on there. We give back right? So there’s a lot of information. There’s a lot of lot of stuff. And they just, if they go to Sales pack, dot sales performance team, calm and let us know that they’re a person of the show. We’ll send them our books. We’ll send them all of our stuff. We give back, right? We’re a content producer. Folks, that’s the easiest way they go to LinkedIn. Hit me up on LinkedIn. That’s fine too. That’s probably the most active media that I’m on. Maybe a little bit of Facebook. They send me an email at [email protected] and the last thing I’m going to lead them with is the second thing I wish everybody knew there wasn’t a secret, is one is the most dangerous number in sale, in sales and in business. And it’s one sales person is dangerous because if he leaves now you’re back to selling. It’s one provider. It’s one source of income. It is one media, whatever that is so focus on more than one, especially on the sales size. Have as many as possible.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. There’s probably like five more episodes just in that last statement. But Nicholas, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Really was a privilege and honor. Having you here with us today, I appreciate it. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us, I hope you got as much out of this episode as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Nicholas Loise
Nicholas Loise is a seasoned sales leader, entrepreneur, and marketing executive with a proven track record of helping small to midsize businesses improve their sales and marketing systems. Having served as Vice President of Sales, President, and Chief Revenue Officer, Nick specializes in building integrated processes and playbooks that drive growth, profitability, and long-term customer value. His experience spans from startups to Fortune 100 companies, where he has revamped sales structures, developed business development strategies, and enhanced customer retention.
Want to learn more about Nicholas Loise’ work at Your Sales Recruiter? Check out his website at https://salesperformanceteam.com/
Connect with Nicholas at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasloise/