Riding the Road to Sales Success with Jim Ward, BrainSell

Hi, this is Clint,

And this is Lizzy.

Today we interviewed Jim Ward, founder and CEO of BrainSell.

The first guest of ours who leads a software consulting company.

I've known Jim for many years; he's been quite a character, and today was certainly no different.

For sure. From hiring to how to grow a company and how his company engages with clients, Jim shared a wide range of advice and jokes, of course.

Yes, he did. He did, didn't he? And you know, what I liked most today about this podcast is how Jim really went into the details about how he runs his company, had great insights in there. Probably gave us more hands-on advice than we've heard from most of our other guests.

Definitely. Yes. And actually, for any of our listeners, who are bibliophiles, you may appreciate the many books suggestions that Jim throws out in this one. See if you can catch them all. 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 Jim Ward founder and CEO of BrainSell the growth enablement company helping other companies of all shapes and sizes across North America crush their goals with business consulting, and technology solutions since their founding in 1994. Jim is also the host of the Growth Enablement Madness podcast, a certified pilot and a proud Harley writer. Welcome to the pod, Jim!

Hi, Clint. Hi, Lizzy. First of all, thank you very much for this invitation. It's amazing to be here and talk about our company talk about logistics, and how it's going all over the world was specifically in Colombia and in Latin America is having a huge wall warm. So it's very interesting.

Well, Clint, that sounds sexier than I anticipated. Thank you!

Well, we are happy to have you here today with us, Jim, I am particularly excited because I need your bold personality in my life this week. First, I want to kick off today with a GET TO KNOW you question. I think your company is back to working in the office. Is that right?

Yes, we are. Yep.

Let's talk about how a good day starts in the office for you.

First of all, unlike a lot who have moved to remote, we have not. We're hybrid remote. That doesn't mean we don't have remote people because we have people across the United States. And they obviously can't make the trip in. But a good day for me starts with just sensing the energy of the office. I love being around people, sensing their energy. You can get a vibe of the energy in the office that that juices me for the day. So that's a starting point, of course. Let's be honest, any sales that come in make you happy, too. So, you hear about it; if you hear a gong, we have a Gong in the office. So Chicago goes off. It means though, we have a successful sales taking place in there, we're going to be helping a customer be better by doing business with us.

I missed those gongs. I'd forgotten all about that. It's been so many years of being remote. Do you show up in the office before your team?

Oh, that's an embarrassing question. No, I don't. But I stay I stay later. So on the other end. I'm more of an evening guy than I am an early morning guy. So I'm in between 9 and 9:30.

Oh my god.

Yeah, that's true. And I can't I cannot tell a lie. Otherwise the nose "voop". I know you can't see me a video folks. But you know, the "voop" was my nose growing. The folks that do come in earlier have different habits. And we have that flexibility. And they know not to book anything before 9:30. But I'll be there till six-seven at night.

I respect that. I'm also a nine o'clock 9:30 person myself. Let's switch over to a not so good day. What does that look like for you?

Gosh, and not so good day? Well, over the years, I've really tried to maintain positive thinking. So, with positive thinking and positivity, you try not to view things as a bad day, but a day where you can find opportunity. There's always, and I tell them to the team; regardless of what the situation looks like, if it's a bad situation, there's always opportunity hidden in that situation. So, that's my mindset; I suppose a bad day is we're just something has gone wrong, because it's quiet first for us. If there's somebody that's not happy, that will make me go into problem solving mode and make sure that we have overcome any issues; that would be a bad day.

Understood.

So let's play off that a little bit more. Tell us more about yourself and your company BrainSell. Maybe start with the name and BrainSell. That's that's a different type of name. Tell us where the name of BrainSell came from.

So when I started the company, I had a tagline first. And, of course, that goes back 30 years. I'm just gonna mention I'm the tortoise not the hare. BrainSell is a bootstrap company. We've grown sizably over that 30 years but stay a long time. Because it's a bootstrap company. You do not take funds from anybody: no banks, no shorter lines of credit, have it reinvested in the business. And BrainSell, in its origination had a series of pillars that I was following in the starting the business. I had come out of a family business, which was a manufacturing company. What I started with the tagline, I've always been more of a sales and marketing person strategically. And the tagline was intelligent sales, productivity solutions. And back then if you recall, Clint, you know, it was contact management, it was salesforce automation, the evolution of the naming conventions, has been significant to CRM, to CX customer experience. That tagline drove me to the name and thinking about what we're going to call it. So it just seemed like when I came up with it, BrainSell, felt like it's supported the intelligent sales, productivity solutions. But today, we do so much more, rather than just sell solutions. That's no longer applicable, but they the name stuck.

So you started the company through decades ago, by the way, congratulations, you started in 1994. 2024 will be your 30 year anniversary. What inspired you to start the company overall, what what led you down the path to to becoming an entrepreneur and and doing that in the consulting industry?

First of all, what's the saying? "Necessity is the mother of invention", which was one of the reasons why I started the company. I needed a job. Yeah. And , don't laugh, it's true. I had been in the family business manufacturing company, went in a different direction. And I will tell you this, as I reflected upon it, and reflected upon it recently, I thought, Gosh, what was it? I was listening, I listened to a lot of books, and I read a lot of books, and I was listening to Arnold, his book. And he was talking about, you know, having a purpose or so, I was listening to some grit, something that you really, really love. And as I reflected back upon it, I just really dug software man, this is going back, to '94. You remember, there's so much changed since then; I was working on VisiCalc at the affiliate business putting formulations in, I was the only one using contact management. Ultimately, a brand that you may or may not know, I become like became big believer, and it was maximiser.

You needed a job? Canadian company, I think it was.

It was a Canadian company out of Vancouver. The love of software started me but I was also doing consulting in the turnaround world. So I was brought in by a turnaround specialist during the recessionary time of the '90s. Later, latter 90s. And I was in helping a company in Montreal, with their sales and marketing efforts. And I wanted to bring the software and I thought because it's been so helpful to me, let me see if I can apply it to a team get their forecasts in, and start to manage them towards success. So, as a result, I ended up calling Maximizer. Maximizer, by the way, it was not the number one product. Act was considered the number one product as I recall. These products today are I don't know if they exist, but nothing like they did in their heyday. And I always say I'm up river swimmer. I don't often go with the number one brand; I always go with somebody I think really has the better product. And Maximizer was it. Next thing I know that I became a reseller, along with being a consultant for turnarounds, and the next thing I know, we were like, top three in the country in a very short period of time. I then started just to focus on software and CRM, as it was not called that back then, but on implementation and becoming a reseller for that productT then just exploded into other things. And that's Sugar in the way.

Outstanding. Let's go back to BrainSell, then. So, Jim, I read your company mission statement on your website. Very focused, super clear. And I'll read it for our audience, the people listening in: "We help you thrive by solving your business challenges with guidance and technology". Had that right?

Yes, you do. The website is in constant evolution to make sure that the website and the content evolves with what we're doing. Because we're we evolve a lot; I really have this solid belief that especially in the tech space, if you're not evolving, you're dying. And you've got to stay ahead on a leading edge to be successful. So, we're always moving with the cheese, because the cheese is constantly moving. Anybody remembers that? So we do. And one of the things that has come out of that, Lizzie is that we have a consulting group. Now, I would liken it to what a center does, we're not a center. But we're very focused on our consulting. That's a different approach. We have our CEO, who's Accenture, has built out our pods and what we do in that group, and we have some IP, it's a proven business process that we've come up with that does all the people, process and then apply technology and or change management first. And so we call that blueprinting. And that's how we've been really successfully helping folks succeed in software implementation. Because, oftentimes, folks buy software thinking it's a silver bullet. And it's not, if you don't have the appropriate planning in place, the architecture in place, the eye, and aligning it with your strategic objectives. You really need to understand the strategic objectives of the company, or the division. What are the outcomes you're expecting? Otherwise, it's like going cross-country and a half tank of gas in a VW with no roadmap: you might get there, but it could take months, or you'll never get there.

So, I hear accenture, team member, and a group of consultants that are very outcomes-based, that have a blueprint, we'll call it a blueprint format that they're following, to help identify your customers or prospects, business challenges,

Yes. And then as a discovery process that identifies it's a fit that not all people will go through that; it's not for everybody. It's really focused on mid-market, mid-enterprise, oftentimes, companies that don't have the resources, as an enterprise company may have the resources to do it. But our focus or our ICP, our ideal client profile would be mid-market and mid-enterprise. But, oftentimes, the companies that are coming in have a very clear idea. And they're, they're not high on the risk scale of failure. We have a series of questions that give us a sense of what's their level of risk. You know, are they a 1, no risk? Or are they a 10? And they're gonna fail? Absolutely. And then there's numbers in between. So that gauge is whether we're going to suggest a consulting project first, or whether we go right to point solution.

Once your team has been involved in the project, or the implementation for any given customer that you've won, what is your team doing to maintain that and ensure that the customers continuing to receive the value or continuing ongoing conversations around whether they're they're realizing value from any prior implementation?

We're very process driven, Lizzie, and Clint; we're an EOS company, Entrepreneurial Operating System, we followed by traction is a plug for traction. Gino Wickman, is the book, please read it, I think it's great to help guide your company. So, everything is process-driven; we have playbooks for everything. It's not completed, it's an evolution that will never stop. But so our customer success managers, for example, who have who have historically committed kickoff, learn what the project is about, what are the outcomes, so that when they take over, which is that completion go live, they're already informed and working on that customer, with helping them with what we call "Customer Success Reviews". We do those on a cadence, understanding, are they hitting their goals, we try to really get deep with them, letting them understand that we truly are a partner in this; we're not here just to sell you a product; we want to make sure you're successful. And that's our commitment. Now through that you find opportunities to help. The other thing that we're big on, by the way, is Selling with a Noble Purpose, another great book, which means that we need to be able to demonstrate even through proposal that we totally understand your outcomes that we're not just selling, we're selling with a noble purpose that you are going to be better by doing business with us. And our salespeople need to work in that fashion, speak to that, and even writing proposals to that so that they have a deep understanding. Your question, you know what, repeat that question. Because I got the train went off the track.,

You're running on the track! It was it was asking for your customers who you've had prior project implementation. So how, how are you ensuring that there's ongoing satisfaction with that implementation or whether new projects need to be kicked off for that customer? And you've said it you have customer success reviews.

Yes, I remember now. So, we've just hired a VP of Sales six months ago, and he's changing our sales framework. So that's still going to apply. But now we've moved from customer success to account managers. So, rather than having two hands to shake, it's there's another way to say that like to throw it's the choke, but we don't want to use that. You have one hand to shake. So, one person is going to be absolutely responsible for your account, your success, etc. And then we have with those customer success reviews, leadership reviews, all of those interactions. So we get a sense of a leadership perspective, just one head, we're thinking, "Okay, what can we do to help this company?"

So my final question on this topic is, we think about and you hit on it actually touched on a couple of times, the evolution of technology. And with that comes the evolution of processes and process changing within your organization. How is your team learning or cross sharing information today, so that they can become more educated and have that competence when in front of customers and show that they understand their customers use cases or challenges?

You did, with a lot of content in sales enablement, which is perfect. It's great to hear. That's also a great question. What we are doing and have done, is that we have what's called a in the parlance of EOS, we have rocks. That means they're going to take us a quarter or more to do it. Its continuous improvement. We've created a rock teams. This year, which was announced that our first SKO ever, which was last week, which is how I left COVID was a new super rock. And every person who has any selling responsibility is going through a series of enablement classes. And we're doing something called Customer Excellence as well. So they're gonna go through enablement and customer excellence. They're gonna go through, the speak, the understanding, for example, how to ask questions to understand risk, when to bring in a consultant or business analyst, or business process expert, or a senior solution architect, or a data analyst, because data has become very big for us as well. Data is huge. And what you get out of your not just your CRM, but all the systems and surfacing that data that's allowing you to make good predictive decisions, ongoing, real-time decisions, etc. That's become a big part of what we're doing. So I think I think I answered that, but with more... Because it's very pointy, because it was just announced last week the whole project. So, I'm thinking through everything you're talking about here, and I want to come back to the the guidance that you give companies, because this is certainly an opportunity for our audience to, to hear these nuggets of wisdom coming from BrainSell, and you specifically. When I think about helping companies grow and thrive, my mind goes to finding new business, building the pipeline, right? So, as you work with your clients, I've got to expect that that many of them are always looking for ways to enhance their lead machine or build a lead machine from scratch sometimes, right? What's your approach to helping them do that? Let me first start by telling you what we're not. We're not a digital agency. That may be in our future. But we don't do that today. So we're not working with them on content, or creating leads for pipeline. But we're showing them the technologies and understanding what their needs are to get them ready, as well as understanding the processes that they're going to need to create if they don't have them.

Tell more about this, as opposed to lead creation per se.

Yes, exactly more about sales operations, sometimes more about, let's say, we're doing marketing automation, understanding, not only what marketing automation does, but giving them the nuances of how to maximize it. But let's just say we walk into a client or they don't have any folks inside, I remember these days, that actually are responsible for content marketing automation, by itself isn't gonna do anything. Right, you need to build it to drive it with content, for example, to drive lead generation if you're going to be an inbound company. And certainly, there's so many other ways to build lead generation; we do speak to it, but it's not our focus.

Gotcha.

And I want to make sure that it's clear. So when you come to us, you might be looking for a new solution. What we truly want to understand is all the outcomes and lead generation is one of those things; we're gonna peel back the onion, making sure they understand what they're going to need to do from their side. But from our side, we're going to get them on to say platforms, once we understand outcome and strategic objectives on platforms that will deliver for it,

So, would it be fair to say that you may be focused more on on velocity, how to how to get leads through a qualification process quickly?

That would be part of it. But it also would be data that helps them with that, perhaps identifying accounts and using workflows or we're working on some AI methodologies to make sure customers are, oh I'm sorry, six prospects in the pipeline are monitored, and that there's activity. For example, you can have a pipeline, that looks great, but there's no activity occurring in your individual sales rep. So, they're not progressing pipeline. So, we would work on things like that, to show them how to get them on technologies to do that, and our ideas that we're working with them not only to increase sales through that, but scale, not having to hire. And I know a lot of people are afraid to speak to this. But the reality is, you need to have a good healthy net income, or a healthy EBITA. And so scaling to me means you're hiring in every corner of growth. That's not to say you're not hiring or you're laying people off. But you need to become...usually, payroll is your biggest expense item. So, you need to be really tight on that. Right. And so, everything we're going to do is thinking about scale. Everything we're going to do is thinking about increasing revenue, but not having to necessarily hire at every corner.

Can I hit on something? Jim, you had mentioned that your your team, sounds like they're pretty transparent about what's going to be needed on the client side before you engage and start building something out. We're talking about leads since that was Clint's question. Do you ever find that your your teams and conversations are being transparent about what the project needs will be on the clients' side? And the client's reaction is maybe disappointment? Maybe surprise that they're going to have to do as much work you talked about, like content build out?

That happens less and less, Lizzie, because of the enablement that we've provided for our group. I certainly can tell you historically, and I'm not saying it doesn't happen today. But somebody's coming in with an outsize expectation, it's our job to reset expectations. And I'd rather have them get disappointed on a call rather than invest in something that's not going to return for that. That may mean, they'll come back at a later time when they're ready. And we'll stay in touch. I believe that's what you're asking. But yeah, I'd rather not sell them something that they can't take advantage of. How many times have I walked into a company who bought marketing automation and, I keep using marketing automation, but that could apply to CRM, but they simply don't have the plan. And they're using it, as in CRM's case, is a glorified Rolodex, or they're still using spreadsheets or marketing automation. They don't have an idea of how to build content, how to be an inbound marketer or any of those things, and then that leads to complete disappointment, then they're angry at the person that sold it to them for misleading and,we as a company, we need to have the integrity to make sure, again, back to Selling with a Noble Purpose, that we don't sell anything like that, that we make sure folks have what they need to be successful.

Yeah, let's let's segue actually, because we're talking a lot about your people. And it sounds like your people is, or your product, rather, at BrainSell is your people's expertise. And that falls in line with the sales enablement side of things. I'm looking to understand from you, how do you find great people to join your team? You think about your sales people, your consultants?

Yep.

What's your mindset on that? What are you looking for? What are you asking for, from people maybe in interviews, to have a dialogue around that?

Okay. So first of all, back to our operating system, we have a process for hiring. That process is consistent amongst all types of hires. And it is, I believe, it's a four-step process. This sounds very cold, I don't mean it to sound cold, but we identify in the previous year based on our sales, our company objectives, what bodies we're going to need for the upcoming year so that we can start budgeting for it. So it's a very regimented way of thinking. And then, once we identify the bodies, you're looking for right body right seat, anybody who's familiar with us will understand what I'm saying. But you could have theoretically, or no, it's it happens all the time. It's not theoretics; you could have right body wrong seat, right? Great person, culturally fits our core values - we have for its core values we live by - but the seat that we put them in, somehow has set them up for failure. So maybe they're not a good salesperson, but they would be a great support desk person, let's just say that's an example. And so it's our job to make sure that we setting them up for success. Because if it's a salesperson, there's a series of things they go through. And our four-step process includes discovery call. And then it goes to assessment; we use an assessment program to measure cognitive scores, to measure personality profiles. And in sales, for example, sales profile. I have found that this particular test is outstanding and identifying those who will be successful at selling. And so, if they don't come in recommended or highly recommended, it's pretty hard to convince us that you're gonna go for it. If you get that, then you go to interview and our interviews are separated with the appropriate parties. Sometimes it's leadership team, or it's the departmental, and that is also measured in a rubric. So for us and EOS data, you can't argue with numbers, right numbers and numbers. Everything is data-backed. So we go through the rubric individually, there may be three people and they talk to them individually and then there's a scoring period. And in that case, we can't talk to each other. We have a rule no selling or unseling of any candidate. And then we get together review our rubric. It is numbers-based and then it's a okay: we go four not go go four. Four is roleplay. Usually, roleplay. That's how we identify our best folks. We've had had folks that stay with me for a long time. We have OGs. We have Gs. OGs. You know, "Original Gangsters". They get jackets, by the way. And we have some OGs that have left. They've stayed a long time, and they needed to find something new, or something changed in their lives, and then you wish them well. But for the most part, when we do this, right, it sticks. It really sticks. It's been great for us.

Four steps. I like it. Thanks for spelling it out for us!

You've talked a lot, Jim, about how if you're not evolving, you're dying. You're always the one embracing change inside of the company. So, as I think about that, learning to be the best comes from doing things right, and also making mistakes. So, what are the top two or three mistakes you've made as a CEO or as a sales leader? And how did you learn from them? You've got several books here that you should be getting royalties off of. You've done a great job calling them out.

Again, reinforcing: mistakes, it's the only way to learn failures, the only way to learn, and I'm sure I've got many more than I'd forgotten. We've instituted a BDR program, Business Development Representatives in the past that was something we analyzed. And really, if unless you can do it at scale, I don't think it's effective. So we stopped that, and found more effective approaches. So that was, you know, a failure in a sense, it didn't prove to be profitable, or have an appropriate return on the investment. So that would be something I would consider a mistake. The other thing that I am in the company is if you read Traction, like he referred to it, God, he's I hope, you get the referral. It's Elegant, The Noble Purpose, Traction, Enterprise Operating System, these are all fantastic books. The Transparent Sale, which is wonderful, by the way; so, a lot of books, and we've interviewed them on our Growth Enablement Madness podcast. So one of the things I identified when I read the book was that, you know, he was a visionary and an integrator. And when I read it, I thought, Oh, my God, I am the visionary. But I'm not an integrator. So the integrator takes care of all the details, overcoming obstacles. In our case, we call her a shock shooter of squirrels. So I oftentimes have in the past brought in, because I love technology, anything, I think, that would really help this company here, or, you know, this great scale, oh, my God. And so I bring it in. And then I didn't realize the pressure I'm putting on internal staff, which is: "Hey, we got kind of things to sell". Now, we've got a lot of things to mark, we've got a lot of things to educate the public on. So that was a mistake. And they they have helped me control that, we now have something called BrainSell Labs. So, before, I'll put it in the lab, we'll look at it, we'll go through it. And then I have to, or any member has to build a business case. So, it slowed down that process and it's created the process around me slowing down, bring in just all kinds of cool technology. Does it makes sense?

You bet. So, the pace of change in the company, I kind of want to go back for a moment, too: you tried out putting a BDR organization in place, and it didn't work. So many companies these days are thinking about how they have Business Development Reps, or Sales Development Reps, BDRs, STRs. And putting that in place as a as a way of doing more structured lead qualification, or even doing outbound prospecting and you found in your business that it wasn't working for you, I'd love to kind of unpack that a little bit more.

For us, we didn't have the scale, meaning we didn't have a numbers of people to make it work. That's number one. But today, versus when I had that, and maybe with a few years ago, when we started to remove it. And we've got a hybrid of it today, Clint. But it's not truly what it's intended to be, which is outbound, outbound, outbound email, outreach, sales, loft, you know, sequences, cadences, etc. We do it a little bit differently now. And I do believe that the market is going to shift, I do believe that the BDR will become, this is probably an extreme word, but obsolete. And if not today, it's coming really quickly with the advent of all of the AI that's coming out, including voice AI, and we are right now working with a company on voice AI.

So leaning more on technology, AI technology to do prospecting as opposed to backfill during the prospecting, the function will probably still be there, but not not staffed by people but staff.

Yeah, it's wild. It'll be, as with anything, fun to see where it goes. Lots of new challenges that come up with the whole AI topic. I have our last question for the day, Jim. Where can our listeners find you? Or BrainSell?

Exactly. I remember brewed some of these voice AI conversations that have the ability to have a sales conversation, it's really quite amazing that they think they're gonna fix the slight pause. While maybe AI is thinking, but that will change. This is only going to change. I believe it's also ticketing. I think, the ticketing software days, they're not numbered, but it's going to change. I think people prefer, I know, even at my age, to work with a bot to get faster answers. So, that's going to change: just submitting a ticket. I think you submit a ticket once you've exhausted the bot. But, oftentimes, the answers are there, through your interaction with a bot, and AI that's learning technology. So, I think a lot of lot of things are changing in the horizon and really quickly, it's here. It's not a dream anymore. And it's been here for a while, but it's really starting to come to the public's attention. They can find us, of course, at our website, which is www.brainsell.com. You can find me on LinkedIn: Jim Ward. I'll be sitting on a Harley, if you're looking at the picture; you can find me by calling the office 978-887-3870. There's automation that will get me. But let me promote my podcast. It's the Growth Enablement Podcast. It is on our website. I believe it's under Resources. But if you just type in to the Googles, or the Safaris Growth Enablement Madness Podcast, we'll come right up.

Wonderful!

Because you know, we're mad about growth.

As it is our way.

I'm gonna agree. I'm not here. It's the crazy man.

I love it! Well, thanks, Jim. I really appreciate your time. You've been awesome to chat was in no surprise, bold as ever!