Driving Sales in Manufacturing with Paul Black, sales-i

Hi, this is Clint,

And this is Lizzy.

We had a great interview today with Paul Black, CEO of sales intelligence company sales-i.

Paul has an outstanding attitude. It's obvious he's taken adversities, turn them into opportunities and really obvious from his career successes that he knows sales inside and out.

Another thing that that Paul knows really well is the manufacturing and distribution space. He's lived it as a seller and built a company focused on solving sales problems for those industry sectors. He's definitely an expert when it comes to how to help grow a manufacturing or distribution company.

And one of the things he's seen in manufacturing is multi-generational companies. And the challenge is of the kids taking over their grandparents businesses, and he talks about how that works and how it doesn't work.

Paul is an absolute salesman, he knows the space inside and out. You're gonna love today's episode learning from Paul on how he grew his own company, and how he helps other companies grow as well.

Definitely. Enjoy!

Thanks for joining us today on the Fuel Growth podcast.

What is the right growth equation for your company? Is it pipeline?

Brand?

Products?

Customers?

Employees?

Join us as we interview CEOs, entrepreneurs and seasoned executives to explore what it takes to propel your business into growth. Joining us today is Paul Black, co-founder and CEO of sales-i, the leading sales intelligence software company for manufacturing and distribution companies around the world. Paul has dedicated his career to revolutionising the way businesses approach sales strategies and customer relationships. With an extensive background in technology and a passion for empowering sales professionals, Paul has emerged as a trailblazer in the field of sales intelligence. And in addition to his day job, Paul is also an accomplished semi professional racecar driver. Welcome to the pod, Paul!

Paul, thank you for making yourself available for us to share your wisdom today. On every episode, we always start with one question just to get to know our guests a little bit better. And from our past conversation, I know that you're a thrill seeker. So I was wondering, what's one of the challenges that you've taken on the past few months that you're most proud of?

I've lived a bit of a life of adversity, I suppose. In recent years, I've had a pretty serious medical condition, which I've had. And I've now overcome. This has taken some resilience, help from friends and family. But it's made me a better person. Before I was a pretty huge skydiver, I'd take to the skies whenever possible. And wherever I could in the world. A good example is I'd have a skydive impact both in the UK and the USA. So I could jump weekends wherever I was. And my ambition is pretty much to do some more jumps this year, when it warms up a bit. As mentioned by you, Clint, I'm a bit into Racing GT cars in endurance. I've done it for many years, I've been lucky enough to do it all over the world and race in many countries, including yours in the USA at a reasonable level and hope to continue to do so again this year.

If you don't mind me digging a little bit more on that. You mentioned it, you open the door. So I'll push through the door. You've had some some medical challenges in the last few years. I've had a chance to talk about I love to share with the audience a little bit further, because it's frankly, amazing that you're doing any of the things that you just described, right. Could you maybe tell us a bit more about about what happened and how you got to where you are today?

Sure. In 2019, on a Friday evening, I was at home and walking down one of the corridors in my house and fell over. And I had been out with the lads that evening. So I wasn't quite sure if it was drink or what it was. But I know I got up in the middle of the night and I couldn't stand and I've got up in the morning and I couldn't stand and I couldn't walk. And they thought it was an-ear infection when I went to the hospital, which is playing with my balance. Which does make sense because I'd actually lost my balance nerve. I'd actually lost a few nerves in my head because of the size of a brain tumor that had been growing there. And found out not long later. So yeah, lost facial nerve, balance nerve muscle, my hearing on my right-hand side. And yeah, I spent 11 and a bit hours in surgery. And then later on I spent nine and a bit hours in surgery have had two lots of radiotherapy. I've had probably about a dozen to 15 procedures to try and get my face to work again on the right-hand side because it's not working.

You wouldn't know that talking to you at all. You walk, you talk as if there's no impediment whatsoever. It just it's a it's an amazing place where you're at today, compared to what you described just a few short years ago.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the people who know me well have seen me go through it. You know, I had full facial palsy of the right-hand side of my face. I couldn't eat solid foods. There's words I still can't pronounce now. My face is still frozen, which I know is a face, you know, not a good face for radio.

You have a perfect face for radio.

Yeah, well, I can do that Roger Moore impression because I can lift one side of my face and not the other. So it's made me a better person. It has made me about a person, I think the adversity that you go through, when you have this gap, this is going to sound a little bit over the top. But when you've clinically died twice in a year, then you know the the world is finite. And you've got to take benefit to it. And when people have told me that I can't do things, I've gone and done them. And I think you know, some of those examples, but it's heart of the people that I've got what I've got will never leave the house again.

Were you adventurous before this incident? Or did this come afterwards?

Oh, God, yes, hugely. But being fit. Staying out there. Having a daughter that's now 10 years of age makes and helps you get through it. Because I'm living my life to see her grow up.

That's beautiful and nothing short of inspiring. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, absolutely. And you're back into the driver's seat of the race car, and you're getting ready to jump out of a plane again.

Yes, I will promised myself that I'll jump out of an airplane this year. I last couple of years, I spent quite a bit of time on the Nurburgring in Germany. I'll do the same thing again this year. I've already booked track time over there. The Nurburgring is 13 miles long, 154 turns, scares the living daylights out of me. If you're going to crash there. It's always big, but it gives me a huge adrenaline rush, particularly with your friends.

Well, let's let's unpack that adrenaline rush energy that you bring to the table and tell us a bit more about your your background that professionally speaking that led you to founding sales-i and ultimately having that focus on manufacturing and distribution industry. I'd love to unpack that background.

I've pretty much always been in sales. My my first part time job was as a lead generator for a kitchen seller. When I was young, I called standing up really old bench with a bunch of phone box in front of me at the weekends and evenings calling homeowners. Most of the time, 99% of the time, having the phone put down on me, taught me some life lessons about being disciplined, determination, the pure numbers games, the metrics of sales. And then I went into recruitment after education, which started with me finding vacancies via the phone 120 calls a day, I think it was there are there abouts with the hope to get five connections, one vacancy a week. We used to use a handwritten card box system to track our calls, which I suppose you and me would think of as basic CRM nowadays. And it was seven weeks and I know how long it was because it was seven weeks until I got my first vacancy on the books. So that's about 4000 dials. So I'd made about 4000 dials until I actually got my first vacancy. It was hard work. It was a sweat box. In that time, at least half a dozen other people that were doing my job had already lost their job. But, you know, I was there two years later, moving up through the ranks, plenty of battle scars, teaching me about lead management, prospecting, and the work of sales. And then after a small period in leasing sales. I then worked at vector software corporation where I met Kevin McGill. It was my first experience of selling sales intelligence. It's the more sales job I've ever done. Loved it. But my success meant I got headhunted into the Capgemini of this world. And I went there that went well. I then got headhunted. And I've got bought into Hewlett Packard. I was Hewlett Packard's first direct salesperson in the UK that always sold through the channel. And my job would be to go up to a channel salesperson, and then the channel partner themselves, who might be looking after a 3 million Carlsberg account and telling them about it's now mine. I've taken it away from them. I was incredibly unpopular. And I felt like I needed danger money. I used to park a car miles away from the office because of the grief I used to get. But you know, that was the first time Hewlett Packard I'd ever sold direct. And I move inside the business, looked after a global account,and it's Picard's largest account outside the public sector and military. I had my own team, which was actually global, but I was lucky enough to be on their management program. They didn't remunerate me particularly well. And that's when I decided I needed to do my own thing. And that's when I started to think about sales-i. I know you may have spoken about it before but it was Office Depot that started me thinking, the Florida-based company. They arrived in the UK, if you bought a ream of paper off them, the next day in the post you get an offer for some envelopes. Because email wasn't what it was then, but, you know, I want to offer you something else and an Office Depot wiped out two of the 5000 Office product dealers in the UK in about 18 months. They're now a customer of ours, and I now know that all of that was smoke and mirrors in their offering, but it helped me initiate my thoughts. So I wanted to create a solution, which would host transactional data, data of our customers from looking at buying patterns. And it would then direct them to issues but more importantly, opportunities and address all customer sizes, and the salesperson wouldn't need to go and look anything up. And once again, you know, I know we've talked it through, but the Aberdeen Group have produced some fantastic papers over the years, and one of their recent ones late last year shows that a salesperson will spend about 43 hours of a month, that time taken looking for information for him to go and help him sell more. They're looking for the sales answers. But my argument has always been a salesperson. Yeah, he doesn't know what the answers are. But he didn't actually know what the questions were to ask in the first place, either. So I do I, you know, we've made it. So we deliver it, we create send actual sales insights to low tech uses in manufacturing and distribution without the reliance on data input. It's that simple. But at the time, it was incredibly hard to do because it was something that no one had ever.

That's a great recap. Thanks, Paul. And by the way, I'm most impressed that you could go back to the start of your career and remember the stats of your your calls and vacancies and whatnot.

It's burned into your memory, right?

Yeah, matrix of sales are incredibly important. And being able to work out what you need to be able to do to be able to get where you need to get to.

Absolutely! For sales, and I'd say for many other things in business, too. So I'm keen to learn from your many years working with companies in the manufacturing and distribution industries. And I'm sure that you've had your fair share of overcoming obstacles. We do want to get to that on this episode today. But first, I want to start with what are the most common challenges that you're seeing in these two spaces? Generally speaking, what are observations that you've seen?

Okay, so we'll cover a couple of models. I think the first thing you need to cover off is that manufacturing, distribution, and I'll also add wholesale companies, are pretty much identical. They use identical models throughout the world, across industries.

In terms of how they design processes, right?

Yeah, the sales process and the way they set up and the way they distribute is almost identical. You could take a company from Australia and go and put it in the UK, and it would just do the same thing. And once again, in Germany, but one of their biggest threats. And the biggest threat for the distributor is the opening of the market via the internet. Meaning you can buy most things from other countries delivered to your door, I've done it last week, I ordered something and you know, had it delivered from Germany. And because it's below a certain amount, I'm not having to pay tax etc. And this opens up the opportunity for manufacturers to sell direct, but most importantly, getting to know and build a relationship with the end customer. That's the bit that's important. They get to know their needs, their requirements. Now, what they are having to do is they're having to try and balance a distribution channel, who are also meant to be their partners and their sales outlet. But this is becoming more and more common, especially in repeat sale, consumer goods, and it's getting wider and wider. This has happened for years. It's happened since Dell computers sold direct, and it's waterfall through our all businesses since. And since the Internet of Things has become more intertwined in our lives, it's become easier. But now you've got massive players, the likes of Amazon, Shein, Alibaba; all are huge threats to the distributor. They're wiping out complete wholesale giants we have inside markets. But once again, it's an opportunity for the manufacturers to sell direct with one to many marketing benefits. It gives a direct channel to the end user is now simplified beyond all recognition, which is a major plus for the end user. And as I said, it's leaning towards the consumer buyer at the moment, but he's becoming more and more common in business-to-business sales. That's a big piece.

That's a big shift, right? Manufacturers selling primarily through distribution. Now they're selling direct. How do they balance that change distributor distribution and wholesale companies probably feeling like that they're under threatened by the very companies that they are partnering with. Massive change.

It is a massive change. But there is good news as well. You know, there is good news as well. And that is the good news, though, is that many, many businesses, to do business-to-business transactions, they still need knowledge, and they still need skill to transact. Let's think of an example. So how many times have you gone on the internet looking for something and then having to give up because you're not sure if the kitchen fitting you're looking is compatible with what you have or, for example, a car part will fit on a 1960s classic car. You need an expert to give input into it's either same way. A maintenance manager in a building needs help with a heating unit when it breaks down. It's a simple fix, and the manufacturer could absolutely send you the product direct and sell it to you direct, but only when you have the right part and the right knowledge. And even better if you've maintained it over the years, with the right parts, and the right schedule, and the right relationship, with the right distributor representative. And they will give all of that. That representative should know all of the machines that you've got in the building, for example, all of the cars, you've got, all of the houses that you maintain, for example, you have to know these things through maintenance intermediaries. And they should be saying, well, car parts, or what building parts or what machine parts need replacing, rather than getting to what is called a distress purchase. A distress purchase is when you're replacing a broken or worn out part, and then you get a load of downtime. And that's the last thing any of our customers want, because partner machinery down is lost time, it's lost money. Our partners can build all of that they can beat those things, because Alibaba is never going to go and address any of those issues, they're not going to come and see you and understand your maintenance schedule, or the machines you've got, or anything else. Big benefits over issues, because there are plenty with inside that market. Across the board, the biggest challenge for all of our customers is attracting the right talent. And sales talent and a sales team is is an incredibly competitive market. I think it comes down to one thing, a salesperson will go where he believes he can get the greatest recognition. And that's down to the position for him, as well as his money. We find that being able to offer a salesperson a technology solution, which is going to direct him to opportunities and earning possibilities is an easy and good way, and an attractive proposition to a salesperson. Our customers know if they use technology well, they can cover territories more effectively. And I would say in some cases with less salespeople. It sort of helps in that area. Now, one, there's a number of number of areas, but let's just cover on two more. One is supply chain issues, supply chain issues at the moment, they sort of get a little bit better, and then they get worse, and then they get better. And they get worse. We've got a Suez Canal issue again; we had a massive Suez Canal issue when somebody decided to go and ground their boat there a number of years ago and block it. And the world saw what effect just that canal could have, we've now got walls that are affecting it. We've got Russia, we've got Ukrainia who is still not manufacturing. I remember when the market opened back up after COVID. But there was no point the sales representative going and pointing out. Well, thanks very much buying product A but you're not buying product B off me, when they couldn't supply product B, they just couldn't even get product. So that is a big issue to manufacturers, because they're not getting the component parts to build what they want to and the distributors because they're not getting the product to go and supply to the customer. And that is why some secondhand items now are still more expensive than they were when they were made. And then the big one, it's happened to me today on a on a demonstration. I know it happened to some of the team over the last week, particularly our customer success team. And it's coming up more and more. And that's deflation, deflation at the moment, we've gone through a big period of inflation, we're now in deflation. And our customers have reported a good couple of sales years, their numbers have been up, they've had high revenue sales, and lots of taking market share. But this year, their numbers are going to be down if they're not already down. And the main reason for this has been charging much higher prices than what they've been to be able to do so before so extreme, something that was $20 is now $100. Deflation now means that item is going back to where it was, and sales locked down. Because the company could sell less of something, but their revenue would still be high. Customers now need to look at over units of measure rather than revenue, the numbers of items sold transaction lines, gross profit, the issue is they've just been hitting all of these numbers, they were selling less and you know, knocking it out of the park. But now they need to sell more again just to get the same revenue result. And it's not it's not it's not a great look for the customer, if you know what I mean.

Let's take a different look at the manufacturing industry as a whole and even the distribution industry as well. I know when I've worked with companies in those sectors, I often see that they're family-owned multi-generational companies. Have you seen that also?

Yes, absolutely. I've met many business founders which have or will be handing down the reins to a family member in Some cases, what they built, then becomes phenomenally scaled and huge success. In some cases, what they built becomes not so because I've been in rooms where you can see the disappointment. And I really do make the disappointment of an owner whose success or does not have the drive or where to take the business on. I absolutely believe in sales do I absolutely believe in it, I believe it's built into most of us from the time you negotiated and ice cream on holiday. I believe it's there when you're asking a mom, and she says no. But you then went on to the next decision maker who's your dad, totally understanding the risks and the rewards of that action. And everybody has different levels of that. An original business owner will have built the business on customer service, a right product, the right service of that product, but in the main event, may he's built it on relationships, which are and can be deeply seated. The original family member doesn't really understand why the business is not doing as well. It's not growing, and he's definitely not flourishing. The one thing that has happened, though, is it's changed. And, you know, I've seen that in in my business. And I'm sure, Clint, you've done the same. That the greatest amount of appointments made at sales-i in a single day, is when I made them on my own. The most amount of sales done in a month was by two of us in the early years. And of course, anybody is just going to turn around and ask why. And I think the only answer you can put that is that the world's moved on. There is more competition. There's lots of, forms of competition, a first-year market, economic, global pressures, we now sell much bigger deals, ones which don't turn around in a month. But it is progression. Don't get me wrong. We still do deals in one, two days and three days. We still do deals on the day. But some of the deals because they're slightly bigger, it doesn't happen. And, to me, those multi-generational business, when I look back at them, you have to be open to that learning, you have to be open to that change. And I feel it's hard for multi-generational companies to survive, because they get out innovated, unless that blurred, invests in bringing new ideas, and new channels to market.

So that's, frankly, to a certain degree, a common theme, even in movies and books where the the next generation comes in to take over the business. And and they bring new strategies, what are what are some of the things that you've seen work best when when that next generation is bringing something new?

I've absolutely seen it recently, we've got an electrical contractor down on the south coast of England. And the new blood brought in a way to be able to create and formulate the electrical fittings bought online for the first time. So instead of somebody having to send papers and documents in or email them through, for somebody be able to go and do it, they then created an online portal for them to be able to go and do it themselves, to be able to go and price it themselves, to be able to go and work the distribution then sales, to get it to the end-user, to get it to the specifier to make sure they were happy with it, get it to the architect, so they were happy with the way that it looked. And there is no way the founder would have thought or even use technology in that way. And, you know, they created like a little separate business out of it. So yeah, there's lots of instances of that.

So, Paul, I know at the heart of any successful company is an unforgettable work culture. And I'd like to understand from you how you've seen manufacturing businesses build a what's called a sales-lead culture. Goes back to actually one of the challenges that you were talking about just a bit ago, with attracting talent, probably.

Yeah, sure. We all know, don't you it? Yeah, we all know people and culture make a winning team. Let's not try and be, you know, to TLA's in our words, and you know, business speak but all pulling in the right direction, pulling over czar, pushing the boundaries, not being afraid to do so etc. I only get to see the sales cultures of our customers when I go and visit them. Or on the regular times they come visit our offices or training or meetings. But gauging their culture is difficult. I've got to say it is it's difficult. I can gauge mine but building gauging theirs there's a little bit more of the three pillars of agriculture. If I if I can turn it to that, if you don't mind, please is a bit of, you know, it's it's honesty, it's loyalty, it's hard work. Everybody, and I mean, everybody sales-i talented, and if they weren't talented, they wouldn't be working here. But how well they do is down to their attitude and their behavior and living our values, not their talent. Do you see where I'm coming from? I expect their talent to be you know, to be obvious. I believe culture has had a setback due to COVID. And I think that actually has happened in manufacturing and distribution as well, as well as our sales. And we've had it within, you know, the connection with us as a company as a whole. We are lucky, we've had individuals come back to sales-i, when they realize the culture and the type of employer that they have left. We're only a month into 2024, we've already had an employee come back to our company, after a short spell at Jaguar Land Rover is a very prestigious, culturally based organization. In my view, you can't treat a culture with rules, but you can equate it with expectations. And expectation that we, as a company, are here to get behind our customer to help them sell more. And we will do everything we can to make that happen. And it starts at the first interaction, employees need to know why they're coming to work, there is no point a developer in creating some software, unless they know the positive, lasting impact that that solution is going to have on our customer. So, to me, I want my team to deal with setback and failure. Don't be afraid of it. I want us to you know, because we learn more in adiversity. And when there's an issue, we tend to learn more things than when they're going right. You need to remember that you also learn when things are winning. But please make sure you don't get comfortable or will end up them being punished. And my sales team know, there is no such thing is the next month. And they also know you're only as good as your last deal. You know, they're they're classic examples. So it's a team first culture, which is important. And everybody in my team knows that being the man of the match is not a great result.

If we tie that back , Paul, to what you were mentioning earlier, in that we were chatting about the challenges and one of them being attracting talent, are those things that you feel that you're you have a strength in interviewing for when you're attracting talent? Or is it more of we're gonna go off of resumes and experience being the person in and if we find over time that the values and behaviors aren't there, they're gone? Can you describe that a bit more?

Well, I think you start to pick it up. But but let's all get straight. You very, very rarely meet a failed person in an interview.

Especially in sales, right? If they can't sell themselves in an interview, they're probably the wrong career.

I can tell you, I've never met a failed salesperson in interview. And when the first person comes into me, and I said, "How are your numbers last year?" and they say, "Do you know what? They weren't great. And I get about 90% of my quota", I will probably hire them. Because yeah, I've still never met anybody that's failed in sales and interviews are the same things. So it's trying to get into, are they going to be accountable to each other? Are they going to be team-first? Will they live those values? It's individuals, to me being engaged creates energy. I do not understand how anybody could ever go to work and watch the clock, because it's totally an utterly draining. So I need people that are engaged, create that energy, you know, the classic sort of high performance, doing amazing things, etc. And you can only do that through questioning. But I think we all know, you only get reality three months down the line.

I think we're already starting to hint at it a little bit here. But let's let's shift gears and and ask one of our final questions here that we always like to ask every one of our guests here on the Fuel Growth podcast. Learning to be the best comes from doing things right, and also making mistakes. What are the top two or three mistakes you made as a sales leader? How'd you learn from it?

So to me, my lessons learned? Everything comes down to talent, everything comes down to talent. So it's closely connected to what we've just talked about, everything that I have done well, is employing a good person. And every single thing that I have done badly comes down to employing a bad person. And I've I've done some Krakens I've done some real good, good examples of of both cases. And you then need to you know, you also need to do the leadership and the guardianship, and all those sorts of bits and pieces. So for example, at the start, there's almost no proper sales management function. But it's not really needed, because there's only one or two of you. So, you don't have any coaching, you don't have any feedback, you don't have any playbook, you don't have any battle cards. But the areas that you can fail, I'll touch it from a sales leaders point of view. It's direction, because, it's the poor understanding of the business. So it leads to errors, no vision, no strategy. And then of course, the talent which overrides the top of it. I'm told the the average, the average tenure of a sales VP is about 24 months. If your sales VP is no good, he has probably burnt and already damaged, and lost a number of your decent salespeople and that's into us. So the biggest mistake I have made in the company's history is hiring a poor, and that's a massive understatement, sales leader. That's my biggest mistake. I think that's a that's a pretty big one, isn't it?

That's a good one right there. You bet.

I think it's a big one. Another lesson I've learned was is that most Sales VPs have a revenue goal, or maybe even a strategy, but they don't have individual sales people behavior plans or actions. And those actions are necessary to achieve those goals. And I do go on about this quite a bit inside our business. And if they don't have those, they end up managing the numbers. And managing numbers is to me a lagging indicator, not the behaviors. And behaviors, if you manage behaviors, instead, they're the leading indicators. Now, to me, what selling behavior does give somebody the need to execute and be measured. And if they do, you can ensure success. These behaviors might be the number of new prospect meetings, the average deal size, the closing ratios, those metrics will be more predictive of future results, and can be adjusted accordingly during the year to avoid any shortfalls in their performance and better success. And if you can measure that, the sales VP or me can coach and develop any skill gaps to help increase effectiveness. I've learned without leading indicators, most salespeople, most sales VPs, including me, you spend your time in a supervisory reporting role. You're running reports, you're adjusting forecast, you're putting out fires, instead of coaching, instead of doing talent development. And they're the bits that you should be doing right. And, you know, for me to be successful, or any sales VP, neds to learn the lesson that there is a premium on coaching and staff development, right? That is the thing they absolutely need today.

You're just saying how, as a sales leader, you can get caught up in firefighting, and not spend the time on coaching. And I've seen that play out in not just in sales, frankly, in every function in the company. But that's it. That's a really good insight.

And, by the way, I'm incredibly guilty of it. I'm incredibly guilty of it myself. Because since most sales VPs come into the position from a sales background, they typically tell their teams what to do, but they still don't invest time in teaching them how to do it. And that was absolutely the case of me. And I'm still a bit guilty with it. I just expect others to be able to do what I did. In the same way. You know, you go back to your previous question of the multi-generational companies.

That's a great call out, Paul. Thank you! So we're wrapping up here and we have one last question for you today, which is where can our our listeners find you?

Yes, sure. So, standard things, which is obviously sales-i.com, sales-i on LinkedIn, Twitter, or X. I think I was meant to call it now even though everyone's still calls it Twitter. So yeah, all of those handles.

Outstanding. Well, thanks for being with us again, Paul. I enjoyed the conversation and you you've built a wonderful thing at your company and you've survived some some pretty significant trials along the way. You're quite an impressive.