Episode #55 The Seller's Journey ft. Richard Harris

In today's episode of Revenue Reimagined, we're joined by Richard Harris, Founder and CEO at Harris Consulting.

Richard, a sales legend and founder, shares his personal journey of becoming a consultant after being let go from his previous job during the 2008 financial crisis. He discusses the challenges he faced in finding new employment and how he secured his first clients through networking. Richard also reflects on the evolution of prospecting and soft skills in sales over the past decade and shares insights on setting expectations for fractional sales roles. He emphasizes the importance of clear communication and adapting to changing circumstances. Richard also touches upon the challenges of ineffective leadership in sales roles and the importance of hiring the right sales leadership for startups. He shares about his new book, "The Seller's Journey", and shares how he feels as though the buyer is the one we think about when crafting our message, but the journey is really in that of the seller. Throughout the conversation, Harris emphasizes the importance of resilience, adaptability, and effective communication in sales.

During today's show, Richard shares his secrets on:

- the importance of soft skills in conversation

- digging out of an economic crisis & leveraging a network

- setting expectations in a fractional consulting role

Any founder, entrepreneur, or business leader can steal the lessons Richard shares in this episode and use them for their own success.

Follow Richard - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rharris415/

PS - huge shout out to Sendoso for sponsoring our show.

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Transcript

Adam Jay (00:00.837)
Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined podcast. I am designated as Dale's EA today, but still the boss. And we have with us today Richard Harris, who is a man who needs absolutely no introduction, founder of the Harris Consulting Group, co -founder of Surf and Sales, host of the Surf and Sales podcast, and an all out sales legend. Richard, welcome to the show, man.

Richard Harris (00:24.688)
Thanks, man. I appreciate it. You know, I have to do my shameless plug of author of the new book, Seller's Journey. So I don't mind being that guy who shamelessly plugs their shit. So that's all right. That's all right. Well, that's why you're an assistant. So.

Dale Zwizinski (00:31.502)
authored.

Adam Jay (00:34.821)
Be that guy. Shame on me for not doing it.

Dale Zwizinski (00:37.422)
Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Adam Jay (00:41.157)
Fair point.

Dale Zwizinski (00:43.726)
Richard, so I'm in the process of book writing as well. Are you a writer or are you an author?

Richard Harris (00:51.056)
I think, well, I think, I mean, I think it's both. I think, cause you're like me, Dale, like we, we write a lot, right? Whether it's blog posts, LinkedIn, stuff like that. So we definitely are writers. I think once you put a book out, you can claim you're an author. Like that's the, you know, I assume that's the legal definition. I don't know.

Dale Zwizinski (00:52.462)
or both.

Adam Jay (00:56.645)
Hahaha!

Dale Zwizinski (01:00.128)
Yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (01:07.022)
Okay. Yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (01:11.598)
Cool. So Richard, first time we've been meeting met in person, but you've been you've been doing like the consulting world sales stuff before it like was even cool, like way before it was cool. So tell us a bit about like why you decided like I'm going to jump in. I'm gonna start my own consulting group. I'm going to start building my business. Like what's that origin story where you're like, I can't stand like working for other people.

Richard Harris (01:17.488)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (01:35.248)
Yeah.

Well, I think that's always been a challenge of mine, not playing nicely in the sandbox with others. I was always the loud complainer and I wasn't good at how to navigate the internal politics of stuff. And I lacked the patience for it. So all that being said, I don't think I learned that until after I became a consultant.

Dale Zwizinski (01:54.318)
Right.

Richard Harris (02:05.008)
How I became a consultant though is very different. I got fired, I got let go. And that's the funny story. The true story is I was working for a very cool company called Mashery and they were about to go through an acquisition through Intel. And at that point I was running sales ops and Intel didn't need another sales ops leader. And Mashery, the founder, Orin and Rock, who was my VP of sales, they really hugged me out the door. They gave me a nice package.

lot of, you know, several months of salary, several months of insurance, and that gave me some runway, which is, you know, back then, this is 2011 and 12. I, you know, that was shocking to me, right? I was so used to like, if someone got let go, you gave them, you might give them two weeks of it, right? So, so anyway, so I think that's part of the journey. And then I was interviewing like crazy, and I was getting to like a third and fourth interview, and I just wasn't closing it. And I

Dale Zwizinski (02:48.878)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (03:03.28)
was super frustrated. And then all of a sudden, someone I'd spoken to a year before asked me if I would, you know, help them. I'm like, Sure. So I had this client, right. And I was going to Austin for a month. And then my first week flying back, I sat down on a plane, sat next to this guy. And I remember vividly jeans and, you know, suede shoes, like legit. And I'm like, this guy's got to be a startup guy. And he's got to be a family man, because nobody leaves Austin on a Friday unless you have family.

Adam Jay (03:29.349)
Haha.

Richard Harris (03:33.2)
Turns out that was Nick Maeda from Gainsight. Gainsight had like 12 employees. And so all of a sudden I had this second client. We started talking on the plane. We had this great conversation. We got shushed by the flight attendant twice because we were just being loud, but we weren't drinking. We were just having a great conversation and asking me what I do. And all of a sudden here I am with a freaking Yahoo email address. And I wasn't even cool. I wasn't...

Dale Zwizinski (03:36.91)
Huh?

Dale Zwizinski (03:59.406)
You

Richard Harris (04:01.84)
I wasn't even cool enough to have a Gmail at that point. And I had two clients, I had two 30 day clients and I was making in 60 days what I would make in six months. And I was like, it can't be this easy. So I called John Barrows and got his advice and he's like, I get this call all the time, Richard, and I know you, you can do this. Like it doesn't happen the way it's happening for you, but you could do this and there's plenty of business out there. And so that was the kick in the pants I needed. I took...

at that point, five grand, because that's what it took and built what I call a validation website, right? That just sort of shows that I exist. I all of a sudden had two customers I could reference, right? And one customer got the next, got the next, got the next. And I was off to the races and have never looked back, you know. So it was not a it was not a conscious choice by me. It was very serendipitous. And the world sort of said, you should do it this way.

Adam Jay (04:58.501)
It's so interesting to me because like how many how many years later are we here now?

Richard Harris (05:04.08)
12, 11 or 12.

Adam Jay (05:06.309)
So over a decade, you know, in one of the original folks who got into what we'll just label fractional work or consulting, and now it's like everyone wants to be fractional, right? Everyone wants to be a consultant. Like it's just, it's not working out here. I'll go be a consultant. How have you seen it change over the years? And has it changed in your perception?

Richard Harris (05:16.944)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (05:27.184)
Yeah, yeah, it definitely has. Certain things have changed, certain things have not, right? The pains are still the same. You're not hitting revenue targets because the revenue targets are too high. Nobody's teaching the reps how to have the soft skills and conversational skills of, you know, managing a conversation. How do you talk to procurement? How do you, you know, prospecting has probably changed the most in the last 10 years, you know, from an execution perspective. So all the pains are there.

The fractional stuff is interesting because I think a lot of people have gone fractional because they lost their job. And then they had one or two people who said they would pay them, which is fine. Like I love this. Like I'm glad people can support their livelihood. What so many people don't understand, and which is what I've saw over the last 10 years is you're good for about six months. And then what happens? You're good when you work your network, right? And then the good ones know how to hustle and grind and build it out and make it happen. Others don't.

And then they also don't like the insecurity of it. They don't like, where's my next deal coming from? Like when I started, it took my wife and I, both of us, about two years to realize there's always another deal coming. And again, it's hard. I've been super fortunate and lucky that most of my business is inbound and always has been. It has certainly downshifted in the last year, but it's downshifted for everybody.

Dale Zwizinski (06:38.35)
Hehehe

Adam Jay (06:41.669)
Hard.

Richard Harris (06:56.016)
everybody I know, John Scott, everybody, you know, KG, Kevin Gaither. So it certainly has downshifted and it's finally picking back up. But that's, that is the role of the other fractional stuff is. And I think as when the economy does finally turn, which I still think is not going to be till next year, all these fractional people are going to go back to real jobs because they want, you know, they want job security. Health insurance is a big deal. Like, you know,

you think you're making a hundred grand as a fractional or 200 grand as a fractional, yet all of a sudden you're paying $36 ,000 out of pocket for your family of four for health insurance. When in fact, you know, that was not the case back in when you had a full -time job. So I love it. I think it's going to make the salespeople and anybody, I would say marketing leaders, salespeople, anybody who's had to go and do some fractional work and done well and then decides to go back to...

you know, a traditional W2, I think they're going to be so much better because they will have gotten so much more unique specialized experience. Right. I think that's going to be, I think.

Dale Zwizinski (08:03.31)
Yeah. If they really, if they really like do the work, like we're, well, we're thinking it's just so many people like pretending to do some work and not really actually getting the work done, which is why they're pushing back into, pushing back into full time. I saw, I saw Scott post something about a lot of people that are going back into full time after doing fractional are actually having a hard time getting jobs because people don't want to hire.

Richard Harris (08:09.616)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Richard Harris (08:15.024)
Totally.

Dale Zwizinski (08:32.91)
the fractional leader back to a full time job.

Richard Harris (08:35.76)
Yeah, because they think they're going to leave again. Right. And so, you know, and now there's an easy way around that, right. The easy way around that is I would get rid of the word fractional on LinkedIn and I would just say consultant. Right. Because I think that's not a big deal. I do agree though, if you know, if it's, if I've done fractional or consulting as RichardHarris .com and that's my website, then people are going to be like, now is he going to go do this stuff?

Dale Zwizinski (08:38.766)
Yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (08:48.878)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (09:04.976)
So, you know, it is a unique situation that it will work itself out. And the real reason I think people might be hesitant to hire fractional is that they might have a greater selection of people to choose from. When we get back, and we will get back to a 2020 to 2020, well, post COVID 2020 to 2022 economy, and there's not enough people, then people aren't going to

Dale Zwizinski (09:23.342)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (09:34.736)
They won't be able to care about that. So, yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (09:36.366)
Yeah, it's a swing. They're all markets, right? You'll just I mean, you remember the dot com bus and I remember going through that and it's

Richard Harris (09:44.112)
I was a part of it, yeah. So.

Dale Zwizinski (09:46.798)
Yeah, I went through the same thing. And I remember like, you know, I thought about it at the time I was getting my grad degree and I saw a lot of people like they lost their jobs and they just had to go full time back to their grad back to grad. And I thought to myself, I have to remember this time and what's happening in this space, because it's gonna happen again. And now here we are again, going through very similar things from a from a market perspective. These are all markets and pendulums that shift.

Adam Jay (09:47.493)
Hahaha!

Richard Harris (10:00.464)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (10:08.368)
Yes.

Richard Harris (10:14.288)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (10:17.486)
what challenges become opportunities, right? So.

Richard Harris (10:20.944)
Yeah. So I can tell you a story. So 2007, 2008, right? I'm old enough to have been there in the real world. And this is actually how I met Scott Lease. I was a VP of sales. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I know, I know. He keeps writing my coattails and it's so frustrating. He's so heavy. I'm getting tired. But I was a VP of sales.

Adam Jay (10:35.909)
Hahaha!

Adam Jay (10:41.861)
It's, hey, tell me about it.

Richard Harris (10:49.584)
running a sales team, running sales managers, sales leaders beneath me, and then a sales team beneath them, lost my job because of 2008. 2008, we just had a baby. We bought a house. The day we closed our house is the day the loans locked up for 2008, right? Literally that day. And then in November of that year, I got laid off.

Dale Zwizinski (11:06.094)
Yeah.

Adam Jay (11:06.405)
Mm.

Dale Zwizinski (11:14.606)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (11:14.768)
And so I was freaking out. I was 39 thinking I'm old who's going to hire me. Right. And I went to, I took a very hard look and decided to call one of the reps. I knew to say, if they see if they knew anything, someone I had trained and hired, I was like, it's very hard for a VP of sales to call an old rep. And at least for me, it was like as a, as a Jen Exer, who doesn't like to ask for help.

Dale Zwizinski (11:34.606)
Yup.

Richard Harris (11:41.552)
If he knew anybody, he said, you should talk to this guy, Scott least. He's got something going on. I went from making 180 grand full benefits and everything to a $50 ,000 base with no insurance. Right. And, and yeah. And so that was from no, no, that was not Scott's fault in all fairness. That was the business he was running. And the founder of that company was, was unique to say the least.

Dale Zwizinski (11:56.366)
Phew.

Adam Jay (11:56.741)
Mm. Mm.

Dale Zwizinski (11:59.598)
Scott's a shark.

Richard Harris (12:11.28)
but I took, I interviewed with Scott like in November or December, I got laid off in November, interviewed with Scott, like the first week of December started the first week of January. And I was just so relieved. I was not going to have a big gap in my job history. Right. I was like, well, it's no big deal. Like, well, what happened to, you know, you left in November, I got a new job in January. That's an easy story to tell. Right. And in 2008, you were talking to people who were into, you know,

In 2009, they were unemployed for six months, a year, 18 months. And I was so afraid of that because the longer I went, the more scared I was going to be. I was going to be seen as a dinosaur. So, I do owe a lot to Scott. and it's turned into a great friendship and business partnership too. But, you know, that that's part of the origin story. Like sometimes you've got to take a big old piece of humble pie and eat it. And sometimes you've got to take something that's so beneath your skillset because you still have to provide.

And I think that was a big turning point for me just in my life and career. So.

Adam Jay (13:18.437)
Yeah, it's so funny to look at.

of our careers have changed, you know, how we all got into like Dale got me into, you know, what I'll call fractional work after I love telling the story, I got a job that he didn't. And, but the funny part is he dodged the bullet. But when I was done, he's like, dude, like, why are you putting yourself through this over and over and over again? He's like, you're

Richard Harris (13:25.328)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (13:34.224)
Mm -hmm.

Dale Zwizinski (13:36.462)
You

Richard Harris (13:42.0)
Right.

Richard Harris (13:47.664)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Jay (13:50.661)
I was petrified, Richard, like petrified to go out on my own and similar to a lot of things you spoke about. Like, sure, I have a network that I could get the first gig, but where's the next gig and the next gig and the next gig and the go -to? And like, knock on the wood desk. We've been, in my opinion, blessed beyond belief. There could always be more, but we've been very fortunate. And you're right, the next gig is always around the corner. But it's, I think founders have really funny, Scott Lees is texting me.

Richard Harris (13:54.032)
Me too.

Richard Harris (14:00.752)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (14:07.408)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Jay (14:19.333)
Founders have really interesting expectations of fractional leaders. And we have a lot of founders that listen to the show. I'm curious. I want you to.

Richard Harris (14:28.112)
And let me poke on that for a second. Is that the, yeah, this is how I interpret what you said. Founders want to hire fractional people because it's cheaper than hiring someone full -time. And you agree that it's going to be a fractional role, but the founder still wants full -time access and work. They still expect 40 hours a week. That's, you know, and it's like.

Adam Jay (14:49.989)
That about covers it, sir. So how do you set those expectations? And for the founders that are listening, how do they understand what that balance is and what you're getting? Because it's not a, and like I have it happening right now, a founder who will remain nameless, but we're like, we're in audit stage, right? And even in audit stage, it's like, well, how about you join this call? And what are your thoughts on this? And what about this? You're not paying me for this.

Richard Harris (15:02.32)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (15:09.84)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (15:14.992)
Yeah, yeah. So that's what I say, right? In my contract, it says, here are the deliverables, right? I don't put a time frame. I don't charge by the hour. They're like, well, how many hours a week do I get? And I'm like, well, based on the deliverables to have it by this time, which you've asked for, it's however many hours it takes. That's what you're paying for, right? And then you have to now.

Adam Jay (15:26.885)
Yep. Yep.

Richard Harris (15:43.312)
Again, in the context of what the founder's asking you, you have to be very direct with them and say, hey, that's not something we've agreed upon. That's part of what you want me to train you on, right? And so that becomes the challenge there, right? Is that you have to just tell them, say, hey, if you want to start asking me to do these things, let's have a business conversation about it. And that's how I say it. Like, let's like, you know, it sounds...

Sounds like you want to get some more work, you know, me to do some more than what we originally talked about. You know, let's talk about it next Thursday. Right. And then during that conversation, it's like, hey, you know, just want you to understand, like, if you're going to ask me to do these things, then we need to sort of re -examine, you know, what our business situation is. But I don't send that in an email. I want to do it face to face because I know they won't take the meeting.

Adam Jay (16:34.821)
No, no, no, no.

Richard Harris (16:38.96)
And I want them to know that I'm on their side. I want them to hear my tone of voice.

Dale Zwizinski (16:39.214)
And they.

Yeah. And I think the other challenges, I don't even think they really know what their problems are half the time. Like they think they know what the problem is. Like I need more top of funnel you and the rest of the 10 ,000 people that are trying to get top of fun.

Richard Harris (16:52.496)
Right, my god.

I hear this every month and I'm having this challenge with two clients right now. Specifically, so I agree with you. They had two people come to me in April and May saying they want more prospecting and I said that's not your problem and they said, what do you mean? I said your problem is is that you're not closing enough and you're not converting what's already in the pipeline and lo and behold, it took them forever to get the deal signed. Now it's June and they're like, well, we don't want the prospecting training to interrupt our closing.

Dale Zwizinski (17:16.43)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (17:24.816)
And I'm like, isn't that what I fucking told you two months ago? And it worked, it is what it is. I'm like, look, if you want me to do this, I'll do it. I mean, I'm not gonna turn down, if it's the right fit and I can help them, I'm not gonna turn down a contract, but that's the challenge that I see consistently.

Dale Zwizinski (17:24.878)
No.

Dale Zwizinski (17:43.47)
This is a true story. We had a, we had a founder and a company that we were working with. Like we need more top of funnel. We went in there. They had, I don't know, 400 leads in HubSpot, not touched. And we're like, okay, let's start with the 400 that you already have in here that you haven't touched. And then as Adam dug in a little bit more, it's like, okay, they have 178 workflows that are overriding each other. So like the lead would just come in and like go into like oblivion. Like they wouldn't be assigned to anybody because they ever assigned to everybody.

Richard Harris (17:50.608)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (17:57.104)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (18:06.928)
Right.

Richard Harris (18:12.144)
Yes. Yes. I mean, that, you know, and that's a standard problem, right? Because it's, you know, salespeople, by the way, do this. it's been sitting there for so long. I'm not going to call them again. I called them six months ago. I'm afraid I'm going to annoy them, right? When in fact, they tried to reach out three times, not the 15 that it takes, right? And, you know, they don't realize that, wow, you know,

Adam Jay (18:25.445)
Ha ha ha.

Richard Harris (18:40.784)
That's a challenge, right? It's kind of like salespeople, I think, are really good at going to all the closed loss deals and re -engaging and seeing if they can surf or something. Other times they are, but then they take the flip side of that where nothing's ever happened and they're afraid to touch it again. It's like it's poison ivy now.

Dale Zwizinski (18:58.094)
Mm -hmm.

Dale Zwizinski (19:01.742)
I think they just get they have like an ego about it. Well, you didn't talk to me in the first place, so I don't want to talk to you again.

Richard Harris (19:06.544)
Mm -hmm.

I don't think it's an ego thing. I think they're afraid. I think it's fearful. I think they're afraid they're going to annoy somebody. And I'm like, okay, so what happens? Well, it's like, well, I don't want to annoy them. They'll never be a customer. I'm like, well, they're not a fucking customer. Like, what's your problem? Like, what do you, like, you know, and, and again, I've done this, like everything I'm talking about and complaining about. I've done, I've been that sales rep. I've been that sales leader. I've thought the same things. I've operated from a.

Dale Zwizinski (19:12.238)
Hmm.

Dale Zwizinski (19:21.71)
Hahaha!

Richard Harris (19:37.297)
from a fear perspective. So I'm certainly not here to say, how could you be so silly and stupid? I was silly and stupid, right? And sometimes we just need that, someone to tell us, to be direct, right? And I think it's so interesting. And again, I think, tell me if y 'all run into this, you know, a lot of times people are like, well, we want to hire a trainer because we want to do something good, but we also want them to hear it from a different voice, right? Which is true.

Dale Zwizinski (19:43.918)
Of course.

Adam Jay (19:49.925)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (20:07.056)
There's nothing wrong with that. But that also tells me that how they're communicating isn't going well. And or they have not been taught how to do it in a different way. That's the challenge of leadership. But I'm going to pause here for a second. But I mean, is that what you're seeing, what I just suggested?

Dale Zwizinski (20:14.574)
Right.

Adam Jay (20:32.709)
Yeah, I mean, we get a good amount of different voice. We get a good amount of ineffective leadership. We get a good amount.

that's nice to have leaders who don't necessarily want to be leaders or who haven't been trained or don't know how to be leaders. Like having a CEO title or being a founder doesn't make you a leader.

Dale Zwizinski (20:57.422)
Yeah. And I think the other part is like politics, politics creeps in a little bit. and so as a leader, you're like, your T like you may have hired the people you may have been coaching them. You may have been saying that these deals are going to close to your boss. And so I think you have these, I think what happens in those spaces is you get political and you got to figure out how to play the ego game and check the ego at the door. And I think.

Richard Harris (20:59.888)
100 % by the way.

Richard Harris (21:04.048)
Mm -hmm.

Dale Zwizinski (21:25.582)
having someone come in from a third party can help a lot. I, I tell this, we, we both tell us to a lot of the founders. It's like, we're able to say stuff that your sales leader is never going to tell you. Like, yeah, you could just be like, look at this is what you have to do. Yeah. Yeah. You could just say it without having like the fear of kickback.

Richard Harris (21:37.68)
Yes. Sorry, go ahead.

Go ahead, I'll cut you off. You're able to say stuff.

Richard Harris (21:49.072)
Yeah, I agree.

Richard Harris (21:53.424)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. I see that too in the sense of like, you know, the average tenure of the VP of sales at 16 to 18 months when they go hire the new VP of sales, what are they going to do? All the stuff that the other one told you, except you just didn't want to listen.

Dale Zwizinski (22:08.526)
Right. And like, I don't know about like, I know Adam and I talked about this, but I would stop taking VP of sales jobs. If it was the first one, like I had to be, you had to have gone through like two or three of them to like, for me to go want to work in there because you have to go through your, your iteration of like what the challenges are, how you're struggling, what you're going to go through and hear a bunch of different perspectives before you're like, okay, this one makes sense.

Adam Jay (22:19.461)
do it again.

Dale Zwizinski (22:35.694)
I'll keep you know, I'll stay out of it a little bit like we some founders get into the middle of it and like, they hire you to do a job, but then they want to micromanage it and that doesn't always work out.

Richard Harris (22:38.768)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (22:45.392)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they think they can read a book over the weekend and become an expert in sales. Right, like I agree.

Dale Zwizinski (22:50.702)
I used to get a founder that this is in past life. Every week they come in, they read some passage from some book or saw something on LinkedIn and they're like, okay, we're doing, you know, whatever sales today. Yeah.

Richard Harris (23:00.24)
Yep.

Richard Harris (23:03.664)
This. Yeah. Yeah. I had a founder once who pivoted the product and didn't realize that he literally just wiped out the entire pipeline and we're going to have no revenue. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, what do you want to do with these old deals? He's like, well, can't you just call them and resell them this? I'm like, I can try, but that doesn't mean that that's a whole new opportunity. We're starting from zero.

Dale Zwizinski (23:29.966)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (23:30.416)
Right. Now in fairness to founders, right. In fairness to them, they don't know what they don't know. Particularly in the world I swim in, right. Which is a lot of startups, you know, most of these founders are technical founders. They're, you know, with an engineering background and they're very good at just reading something and going with it and doing it. Right. So they don't know what they don't know. And I think that goes back to what you say about, you know, being the third VP of sales, not the first VP of sales.

Dale Zwizinski (23:57.758)
Yeah. Yep.

Richard Harris (23:59.728)
You know, so.

Adam Jay (24:00.453)
No one should ever be the first VP of sales in my opinion. You need to work shameless plug for us or for you or for Scott or for anyone. VPs of sales, not Scott, you're right. VPs of sales are not typically builders. They're just not. And if you haven't built a startup go -to -market engine from the ground up before, get expert leadership who can, who could set up that first VP of sales for success before you burn $300 ,000.

Richard Harris (24:08.88)
Well, not sure.

Richard Harris (24:30.0)
So that essentially my last VP of sales job was like that. And it's, I actually got seduced out of my consulting business. I was like a year and a half or two years in and decided to take, I got seduced by this cool technology and I am a builder, right? I am that VP of sales who can take you from zero to 10 million really well. And, but I agree with you. Don't go hire the pedigree. Don't go hire some VP at Salesforce who hasn't built something.

or Oracle or some large company where they haven't actually built it from scratch because they have no clue. Right. I agree with you. I also, yeah. Also, you know, I also think too, I agree with you. Like, you know, there's a value, right? So to some extent, I would never come in at this level, but I've always encouraged founders to think about hiring that director level person who wants to earn the VP role.

Adam Jay (25:06.597)
Never hire someone from Oracle.

Dale Zwizinski (25:08.718)
Hahaha.

Richard Harris (25:28.496)
right? Who's going to hustle because that director is a little closer to the ground. They've probably been on more sales calls more recently. They're comfortable with building all that kind of stuff. So make it a stretch versus the VP of sales first hire.

Dale Zwizinski (25:44.046)
Get the hustle, get the hustle, like get the people that want to end up doing the work. You know, the other thing as, as a head of sales VPSS, whatever, when you're coming into startup companies, we're, we're talking with actually a very large company right now, a hundred over a hundred million. The problem is still the same that you can't build and try to like coach the team. Like there's, there's probably like 10 priorities that all have to happen at the same time. And you could probably only handle like.

Richard Harris (25:46.64)
Mhm.

Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (26:04.304)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (26:12.144)
Mm -hmm.

Dale Zwizinski (26:14.19)
one to three, but like four to six are just as important to one to three. Like have a co -pilot, a side, like have another person there, have a fractional, have a consultant help you go through that process to go four to six because they're so close and tied together. You can't decouple them.

Richard Harris (26:15.856)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Richard Harris (26:28.912)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (26:38.032)
Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that that, you know, that's the challenge, right? Like I see this all the time too of, you know, people want prospecting and sales training and they think they have to be done separately. If you've got two different teams, you can do them together. If you've only got one team, you know, that's AEs and you want them to do prospecting and to learn prospecting and sales training, then you can't do it together because it's just too much to absorb. Right. So.

I agree with you. You kind of have to look at those projects and decide what can be done, you know, parallel to each other without disrupting the other, right? As you pick those one to three, you know, can I do this in parallel? Can I do sales training and rebuild my sales process in Salesforce? Yes, you can easily like that's not a problem, right?

Dale Zwizinski (27:29.198)
Yep. Yep.

Richard Harris (27:31.76)
because guess what you did as a founder or early stage companies, you didn't have Salesforce or HubSpot or whatever you're using, right? So they, you know, and then it's like, well, but then how are we going to track everything? I'm like, what is your problem? Tracking shit or closing revenue? Cause if it's closing revenue, we'll get you to better tracking, but don't delay the training for six weeks, right? Cause now you're, you know, it's June, six weeks delay of training means you're going to hit August.

Dale Zwizinski (27:53.902)
All right.

Richard Harris (27:59.856)
which then means it's going to be mid to late August for them to start to implement anything, which then means you've only got four months to close the year. If you just start with training, which could literally happen tomorrow or the first week of July or post the holiday, you're going to get more traction, right? You're going to get more bang for the buck. So sometimes people don't know how to multitask their priorities, which is different than multitasking in general, because I don't think people can multitask.

Dale Zwizinski (28:29.902)
Adam tries all the time. It's amazing.

Richard Harris (28:32.144)
Yeah, good luck.

Adam Jay (28:32.773)
I mean, I do, and it's, and I openly admit it's a horrible habit, right? Like you, you, it's, you have this false mindset of, I'm gonna get multiple things done, but you're really getting nothing.

Dale Zwizinski (28:38.134)
you

Richard Harris (28:41.424)
Let's, yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (28:45.07)
He was just texting Scott Lee says he was talking to you, Richard. So it was fun.

Richard Harris (28:45.296)
Yeah.

Adam Jay (28:48.261)
Scott least texted me. Let's be clear.

Richard Harris (28:49.072)
Exactly. Yeah, did you tell him you're talking to me? Do you say stop interrupting my conversation with him? there you go. So yeah What else can I share with you guys?

Adam Jay (28:52.357)
I actually sent him a picture. I said I'm busy right now.

Dale Zwizinski (28:58.638)
Yeah.

Adam Jay (29:03.781)
So we're gonna go a little over. I wanna know about the book. I wanna know what the thought process was for creating the book, where you hope to go with it and how it's gonna help people. And why I don't have a copy back here? The answer is because I haven't bought one, but go ahead. I'll answer it for you.

Richard Harris (29:11.12)
Yeah.

Richard Harris (29:16.336)
Cause, but if you send me your address and I'll send you one, both of you. But the audio book's coming. I just finished recording the audio. Yeah, no, they're not. The purpose of the book was a coupling one, it's validation, right? Like you're, you know, it creates more validation of who you are. You're somebody cause you've written a book.

Adam Jay (29:25.829)
Dale doesn't know how to read. Too big word, too, the words are too big in that book, Richard.

Dale Zwizinski (29:28.398)
Does it have pictures? Does it have pictures?

Richard Harris (29:44.944)
The other is that there's a lot of tactics that are missing in people's playbooks. Like there's two parts of this book. The first part is really about the mindset and understanding. And then there's 13 tactics. Like there's a tactic in there about how do you deliver price to reduce discounting and what to actually say? How do you negotiate with procurement? Cause nobody ever teaches us that, right? How do you drive accountability to your prospects? Like all these little things that I'm sure your clients want your teams to, you know, they're, they're salespeople to.

get better at. So that's what's that's part of that's so it's meant to be very tangible. You know, so I wrote it for validation, I started writing it like four years ago, and got lazy about it. And I should have put it out four years ago, I think business would be better if I already had but but that's why it's there. That's what I did it for. And it's meant to be helpful, like, you know, like it, it has a money back guarantee.

Right? Like if you like the first sentence of the book is my email address. And if you hate this book, I will send you your money back. Send me your Venmo. Right? Like, so that's sort of the approach to it.

Dale Zwizinski (30:51.694)
Love it.

I love that. It's a labor of love for sure, right? You have all this stuff in your head, you wanna get it out and it's like, takes a long time.

Richard Harris (31:00.208)
Yeah. By the way, there's one last piece of it that I'll share. So the book is called The Seller's Journey. And the reason it's called that is because I do not believe there's anything such as a buyer's journey. I think we've all been force fed that idea. And the only thing that matters is the buyer's experience through the journey. And that journey is created by sales and marketing. They've had some experience, whether it's an inbound or outbound, they've had some experience that makes them want to talk to you.

Dale Zwizinski (31:28.014)
Hmm.

Richard Harris (31:28.336)
And at that moment, they're on the seller's journey, my journey that I create. And my job is to make that experience amazing for them. So that's how I see it.

Dale Zwizinski (31:38.958)
I like it. I like the perspective. It is a flip on the buyer's journey, which I talked to, which I talk a lot about. Like there is no sales process. There is a journey and I, and I usually say that buyer's journey, but you make a good point. Like the seller is still, you're bringing people through a journey. yeah.

Richard Harris (31:43.984)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (31:50.512)
Mm -hmm.

Richard Harris (31:56.976)
Yeah, you're leading them, right? Like it's your yellow brick road, right? Like it's your yellow brick road that they're walking down. They have to make the choices. They have all the distractions. They have all the objections. And the question is, well, what's your experience like through the journey? And are they willing to continue? So.

Dale Zwizinski (32:13.261)
I love that.

Adam Jay (32:18.565)
All right, let's dive into some rapid fire before we wrap it up. The rules here, 10 words or less or else Dale jumps through the computer at you and you definitely don't want that because that would be bad. Richard, you're advising a startup. Where do you start first, marketing or sales?

Richard Harris (32:21.296)
Go for it.

Richard Harris (32:27.536)
Mm -hmm.

Dale Zwizinski (32:28.974)
Hahaha.

Richard Harris (32:34.0)
Mm -hmm.

messaging and you can define that as sales or marketing. It's up to you.

Dale Zwizinski (32:41.454)
Yeah. What's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning?

Adam Jay (32:41.541)
Great answer.

Richard Harris (32:48.336)
Hmm, probably my calendar, just to make sure I know what's happening that day.

Dale Zwizinski (32:55.086)
Probably. You don't usually know?

Richard Harris (32:57.84)
Sometimes I look at the news. If it's really early, I might look at the news.

Adam Jay (33:02.693)
I'm diehard news in the calendar always before I go to bed, so I know how fucked my day is the next morning.

Richard Harris (33:05.968)
You know what, I'll rephrase. So I think CNBC is probably the first thing I look at because I play in the stock market and I like to see what some of my stocks are doing.

Adam Jay (33:17.829)
Nice. What a early bird and a night owl.

Richard Harris (33:23.888)
Probably more of a night owl, but I can be an early bird easily.

Dale Zwizinski (33:29.934)
If you weren't in tech, what profession would you be in?

Richard Harris (33:35.344)
teaching.

Dale Zwizinski (33:37.006)
Yeah, I like that.

Adam Jay (33:37.797)
Very cool. We haven't got that answer before. How in the hell have you put up with Scott Lease for so many years?

Richard Harris (33:45.776)
It's going to take more than 10 words, but it's a true story. The true story, Scott and I didn't even realize this until a couple of years ago. The same guy who introduced me to Scott when I was looking for a job, tried when I was at that last VP of sales job where I was making 180 or 200 grand, he brought me Scott's, I don't remember this, he brought me Scott's resume and said, I think you should hire this guy or interview him. And I looked at Scott's, apparently I looked at his resume and like, guy's got no sales experience, I'm not hiring.

Dale Zwizinski (33:47.534)
Hahaha!

Adam Jay (33:48.005)
Hahaha!

Dale Zwizinski (34:09.71)
You

Richard Harris (34:14.96)
So I'm so that, but Scott and I didn't know that we were both like, that's hilarious. So.

Dale Zwizinski (34:19.534)
That's funny. That's funny. Last one. Dream vacation destination and it can't be Costa Rica.

Richard Harris (34:27.472)
Yeah. but it is Costa Rica. No. I think, I think Greece is my favorite. I've been there once and I would, I just, the idea of Greece and the Greek islands and just the chill and the vibe, it's one of my favorites.

Adam Jay (34:43.333)
Dale's gonna kill me when I say this because he loves when I go on vacation, but we have we have a 12 day Greece trip booked Don't worry Dale. It's not till the end of 2025

Richard Harris (34:50.928)
We were supposed to go. Yeah, we were hoping to go this summer to do it, but last year we did Africa. So we went to Uganda and South Africa and that is an amazing experience. And I mean, to go and trek with gorillas and be 10 feet away from like silverback gorillas is just amazing. Like literally you're on the ground, they're on the ground.

Adam Jay (35:01.285)
So that's my dream.

Adam Jay (35:14.469)
Did you do like a, you did a full safari?

Richard Harris (35:18.608)
Well, that was a gorilla track. Yes. But then we did go to South Africa and do a full safari. And we did a little bit of a safari. I mean, we did a safari in Uganda, but then we also did the real safari in the traditional safari in South Africa.

Adam Jay (35:31.917)
I'll definitely have to connect with you on that. That's my dream vacation.

Richard Harris (35:35.184)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Jay (35:38.053)
Richard, where can people go to get the book? Where can people go to find you? Where could we refer overflow to?

Richard Harris (35:44.08)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm crazy. 1 -415 -596 -9149, 415 -596 -9149. It's my legit cell phone number. It's not some fake number. It's the same number my kids refuse to respond to when I call or text them.

Adam Jay (35:53.285)
Wow!

Dale Zwizinski (36:02.35)
Richard just wants someone to text him.

Richard Harris (36:06.672)
Yeah. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm Richard Harris with the little TM. And you can certainly get my book, The Seller's Journey on Amazon. But those are the easiest ways to get a hold of me. And just my only request is to just say, hey, if you're going to call me, which I will gladly take, maybe text me ahead of time to say, hey, I heard you on Revenue Reimagined with Adam and Dale, just so I know who's calling or texting me. But yeah.

Dale Zwizinski (36:31.79)
Thank you.

Richard Harris (36:34.896)
And I give it out all the time. I've given it out on hundreds of podcasts. I get maybe four calls a year. Nobody ever calls. Nobody ever texts. Yeah.

Adam Jay (36:42.245)
Crazy. Crazy. Richard, thanks for joining, man. I appreciate it.

Richard Harris (36:47.888)
Thank you guys, I really appreciate it. Dale's pleasure to finally meet you.

Dale Zwizinski (36:48.046)
Thank you, sir.

Yes, you get the good side.

Adam Jay (36:55.109)
Ugh.

Richard Harris (36:55.472)
Hahaha.