In this episode of Recruiting Insider, we dive deep into the inspiring journey of Scott Lease, a sales powerhouse who has defied all odds to achieve remarkable success. Scott’s story is one of resilience, determination, and unwavering belief in oneself.
Hailing from Northern California, Scott’s path to sales stardom was anything but conventional. A promising athlete, his life took an unexpected turn when he faced a severe health crisis in his early twenties. Overcoming immense physical and emotional challenges, Scott emerged from this ordeal with a newfound perspective and an unyielding drive to succeed.
Scott’s introduction to the world of sales was unconventional, to say the least. With no prior experience, he landed a role in a high-pressure sales environment and quickly proved his worth. His ability to connect with people, coupled with an insatiable hunger for success, propelled him to new heights.
Over the years, Scott has honed his skills and developed a unique approach to sales. He emphasizes the importance of understanding your target audience, building strong relationships, and leveraging technology to optimize sales processes.His ability to identify untapped markets and disrupt industries has been instrumental in his success.
In addition to his sales acumen, Scott is a passionate advocate for personal and professional development. He has built a thriving community around his book, “Addicted to the Process,” inspiring countless individuals to overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
As the sales landscape continues to evolve, Scott believes that building strong relationships and leveraging networks will be crucial for success. He also emphasizes the importance of embracing new technologies and adapting to changing market dynamics.
While AI and automation are poised to transform the sales industry, Scott remains optimistic about the role of human connection in the sales process. By combining technology with human empathy, sales professionals can create exceptional customer experiences and build long-lasting relationships.
Scott’s journey is a testament to the power of perseverance, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of excellence. His insights and experiences offer invaluable lessons for aspiring sales professionals and entrepreneurs alike.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- The importance of resilience and determination in overcoming challenges
- The power of building strong relationships and networks
- The need to adapt to changing market dynamics and embrace new technologies
- The importance of understanding your target audience and their needs
Watch and listen here. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review!! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Transcript:
Mary (00:00.73)
Scott Lease, welcome to Recruiting Insider.
scott leese (00:03.758)
Happy to be here, Mary. Thanks for having me.
Mary (00:05.689)
I’m so excited. So I am actually super excited about my guest today. Scott has been at the forefront of numerous success stories throughout his career with an impressive track record that includes being a part of 11 exits and working with 12 unicorns. Scott has had a remarkable career journey making significant impacts in the sales space. And from what I understand, you didn’t get into sales until you were about 27 years old because it sounds like
You were a professional athlete. You were pursuing higher education. You got super sick, hooked on opioids, a super crazy journey. Could you share with our audience just a little bit about your background and how you initially found your way into the world of sales?
scott leese (00:43.723)
Yeah.
scott leese (00:51.053)
Yeah, you kind of said it in the Cliff Notes version, but I grew up in Northern California, like super proper Northern California, not like San Francisco, Northern California, like three hours north of San Francisco. This little town called Chico and went to school in the Bay Area, played two sports in college there for four years and spent the first half of my life really in and around the Bay Area.
Mary (00:54.609)
Hehehehe
Mary (01:03.095)
Okay. Yeah.
scott leese (01:20.141)
did a quick stint in Arizona, went to Arizona State for graduate school. And then when I came home, it was right before my 23rd birthday. And I started getting sick. I started having these GI problems out of nowhere. Didn’t know what was going on. I mean, I lost like 55 pounds in six weeks. You know, just nightmare kind of situation for anybody, let alone a 23 year old.
Mary (01:40.726)
Jeez. That’s terrifying.
scott leese (01:47.916)
you know, athlete who thought they were bulletproof. And I quickly landed in the hospital and they started trying to figure out what was going on. And I eventually figured out I had ulcerative colitis, but it was like not normal ulcerative colitis. It’s like some, the doctor basically said, look, I could have had it for 20 years. And so I bounced around a couple of different hospitals, had to go to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, but before I eventually…
landed at UCSF hospital in San Francisco and I was more or less there for four years. Which is a hell of a journey. I had four major emergency abdominal surgeries. I have no large intestine anymore. Total colectomy, just like, you know, nightmare scenario and…
On top of that, you’re not really thinking about it at the time because you’re in pain and you’re sick, but they were pumping me full of pain medicine for four years. So by the time I started healing from, you know, my health condition, I realized I had a pretty serious opioid addiction at this point in time. So I had to, I had to kick off of that. And so, you know, now I’m 27 years old. I’d really never had a career kind of job before I had.
Mary (02:45.33)
Cheers.
scott leese (03:05.962)
worked at a tennis club, giving lessons, because I played college tennis and I coached soccer teams because I played college soccer. I had done like little internship type jobs here and there, but I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was going to do with my life and everything that I had studied in school. I had a master’s degree in learning and instructional technology. I had an undergraduate degree in psychology. Basically in my mind, I had forgotten all of that, right? Cause it was like four years ago and then
Mary (03:08.633)
Mm -hmm.
scott leese (03:35.274)
I had a friend who I played tennis with in college who was doing software sales and he was making good money at the time. And he was like, man, you should check out sales. You’re hyper competitive, you’re obviously resilient and tough as nails. You should give it a shot. So I’m like, well, I don’t know what else I’m going to do. And this guy is making pretty good money.
What I learned about startups at the time was like, you don’t need any experience necessarily. They’re just, you know, throwing bodies out there and like, let’s, let’s see, see what works. And I’m like, well, fuck it. Let me go, let me go to a.
Mary (04:08.079)
Perfect.
scott leese (04:13.321)
you know, let me see what I can do. And the very first place I got an interview with was this little startup selling online lead generation to real estate agents and automotive dealerships and stuff like that. High volume transactional kind of sale, boiler room kind of situation.
And you know, that when in the interview process and this guy was like, what have you been doing with your life? You know, you, you have no jobs. Like why would I hire you? And I, and I kind of told him a brief version of my story. And I’m like, man, I just need somebody to give me a chance, you know, because I have things that other people don’t have, which is this extreme sense of urgency. I got to catch up for lost time. I have a deep appreciation and respect for every opportunity. I fought for four years to be sitting in this room with you.
and I’m looking around your sales floor right now and there’s a lot of dudes who are just happy to be here. And there’s a lot of people who, you know, are taking cigarette breaks all day long. It’s like, I’m not that guy, you know? And he took a shot on me and the rest is history, as they say. But it’s been a hell of a, it was a hell of a journey to get to that point.
Mary (05:22.287)
Wow, that’s amazing. I’m so glad that he took a shot on you. It sounds like that was kind of the beginning of what was an incredible career to this point. And so you’ve helped companies grow from zero to $25 million in ARR, right? In less than three years with what I understand, $100 million to $500 million in valuation in a series C growth stage. Tell us about that. What’s your secret? How did you get them there?
scott leese (05:27.559)
Yeah, me too.
scott leese (05:33.031)
Thanks.
scott leese (05:53.287)
Well, I mean, it’s evolved, you know, at first I just kind of figured out how it’s sell what was working for me. And then I just started teaching what was working for me to other people. And then I would, you know, just grew the very first team and we did okay. And then, you know, I, the second time I didn’t really have, there was no like tech.
Back then we were not, we didn’t have a tech stack. There was no like operations kind of roles or process. It was literally just like brute force. So my only really move as a leader was like inspire, motivate, push people hard. Right. So I was really one dimensional and, and not amazing probably in a lot of areas. I only appealed to like one type of.
a salesperson probably, you know, somebody who had like been through hell and was ready to, you know, kind of hack their way out of it. Right. But that only can get you so far. And then I started to pay more attention to tech. I started to pay more attention to brand building and networking and got in early on places like LinkedIn and.
I matured a little bit and I started to learn from other people. I started devouring resources that didn’t exist when I first got started. One thing I became really good at was this sprint from kind of zero to 25. And so when I did it the first time and I was looking for a job number two, I’m like, well, I did that thing already. Why don’t I just do that?
And then I did it a second time and I’m looking for the third job and I’m like, this feels really similar. Why don’t I just do that again? And so rather than, you know, trying to like cover an entire roulette table.
Mary (07:34.223)
Yeah.
scott leese (07:40.707)
with like, okay, I did an SMB thing. I did a enterprise thing. I did a zero to 25 thing. I did a hundred to 500 thing. I’m just like, let me just get really, really good at this thing. Like who’s the number one person in the world at going zero to 25 as a VP of sales. I want to be that guy.
Mary (07:59.279)
Yeah.
scott leese (08:00.406)
And the more you do this thing, you start to know there’s a pattern and there’s a process. I’m not much of a tinkerer. When something works, I’m going keep doing that thing until it doesn’t work anymore. That’s a really simplified explanation, but I just got really good at this one motion and I’ve been able to replicate it time and time again, fortunately.
Mary (08:11.663)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mary (08:19.375)
Yeah.
Mary (08:27.727)
Could you give us some specific examples? So you said that you got really, really good at noticing these patterns and these processes and these little things that you would do that really would work, especially when going from zero to 25 million. What are some of those specifically?
scott leese (08:38.433)
Yeah.
scott leese (08:44.93)
Well, for one thing, you have to understand that nobody cares about what you do or who you are or what you sell until they not only believe they have a problem, but they admit it to you. And I wrote a whole book about this called Addicted to the Process. Kind of…
basically I mirror the addiction and recovery process to sales. You can’t get somebody who’s got an addiction problem to get interested in rehab if they don’t believe that they have a problem. The first step is admitting you have a problem. So to me, I was just like, how is that any different than getting married to buy this piece of software? So that’s a specific example in terms of like a sales strategy or methodology.
Mary (09:14.371)
Yeah. Yeah.
scott leese (09:28.417)
Right? After I had done it the first time, you know, before I went to the second gig, I brought people with me. I kind of talked to them. I was like, Hey, I’m about to do this thing. Would you want to come with me? So then I realized it’s very important to bring people with you from one job to the next. And you kind of have these anchor tenants, if you will, who know your system, know how you think, know your process, and you know that they’re good. So there’s less risk involved. And then I started realizing, you know, by time four and five and six,
There’s certain things to look for in founders and how they operate, how they communicate, how fast they are to respond to you. Do they send you messages late at night or on a Sunday? So I started trying to optimize for the right type of founder that I believed in and then I started looking at the product. I’m not much of like a…
I don’t become very zealous about a particular product or industry. I’m more of a mercenary in terms of that. I look for opportunity and opportunity to me is is there an industry that is like an antiquated system using bad products ripe for disruption? Is it not crowded? Right? Is it a platform? Is it something that people have to have versus nice to have? And
Mary (10:43.855)
Mm.
scott leese (10:53.983)
That’s all of these things are pieces of the pattern. And when you identify those things and you know how to sell and you’ve got the right people around you, it’s not as hard as it sounds to go from zero to a million. Right. And then you layer in different systems and you scale it out, you know, from there. And that.
Again, I’m simplifying things in like a two minute description, but you know, those are some of the patterns and that’s some of the process to look for.
Mary (11:17.807)
Yeah.
Mary (11:24.847)
there are a lot of people out there that are looking for that next disruptive piece of technology. So what makes you different? How were you able to identify that?
scott leese (11:30.395)
Yeah.
scott leese (11:38.398)
Well, you know, that’s a good question. Number one experience. Number one experience. I didn’t nail it the first time or the second time or even the third time. So there’s that. I stuck around long enough to have enough experience to be able to identify things that are likely to blow up successfully versus blow up negatively. I became a fan of very like non -sexy industries.
Mary (11:41.839)
Yeah. Yeah.
scott leese (12:08.317)
You know, like the last job I was at SVP of sales at is in the title insurance industry. Do you know what title insurance is?
Mary (12:16.175)
I couldn’t define title insurance off of the top of my head. Most people probably couldn’t. That’s smart, yeah.
scott leese (12:17.98)
Exactly. 100%. I don’t know. I didn’t know what it is. Listen, I worked there for three years and I still can barely tell you what it is. The point is, here’s an industry, title insurance companies and real estate attorneys, they have to use a piece of software in order to power transactions. Every house that gets bought or sold in America at some point runs through a title company.
Mary (12:24.879)
Yeah.
scott leese (12:44.955)
So when you control that software, you control every real estate transaction in the country. We’re talking about trillions, dollars plus industry, right? And the pieces of software that were the kind of incumbent market leaders were such trash. I didn’t believe it was real. I remember telling the founders.
Mary (12:50.799)
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
Mary (13:05.647)
Bye.
scott leese (13:07.803)
Like there’s no way this is the competition. This looks like some Oregon trail shit I saw when I was a junior high. Like there’s no way. And they’re like, no, no, no, really. So I’m like, okay, here’s a massive market opportunity, terrible competition. We by far have the best product, right? Nobody knows anything about this industry. I’m not selling, you know, the latest and greatest like marketing automation tool. I’m not selling to other startups.
And so I look at those things. I don’t look at what’s getting all the buzz on TechCrunch. And so I started to develop this eye, if you will, and this philosophy of trying to see what’s around turn three and four on the racetrack rather than what’s on turn one. Most people only look at what’s right in front of them and I’m trying to look beyond that. So I look at the…
the sales landscape now for the last year and a half or so. And I’ve been telling people like cold outreach is dying. It’s not dead yet, but it’s dying. We simply do not behave the same way we used to. My ringer is off 24 seven. So you, I don’t even hear it if you call me, right? That wasn’t the case 10, 20 years ago, right? We all have spam filters everywhere.
Mary (14:20.301)
Yeah.
scott leese (14:26.808)
Direct to voicemail, whatever you want to call it, and then look at email. You know how many emails we all get every single day? We’re trained now not to be excited to get an email, but to expect trash. Somebody’s trying to sell me some shit, somebody’s spamming me, somebody in West Africa somewhere is trying to appeal me for some money to get my cousin out of jail or whatever scam is happening. So we avoid all these notifications.
Mary (14:48.715)
Yeah, for sure.
scott leese (14:53.404)
And then you look at younger people today like my kids, I have two teenagers, they don’t talk on the phone to their friends. It’s a dying medium. So how are you going to convince me that in 10 years when they’re like, you know, professionals like you and I, and you’re going to cold call them or you’re going to cold email them. That’s not the way the world is headed. And people who are looking only right in front of them at turn one, they get pissed off when I tell them that.
They think I’m fucking with their livelihood, right? And they don’t want to hear it, they don’t want to see it. But that’s the way things are headed. And so I just sort of trained my eye to kind of not be afraid necessarily of the thing right in front of me, not be seduced by the latest and greatest like AI tool that’s out there, right? But instead to look for some of these businesses that have been entrenched for a long time that are slow to adopt.
slow to evolve and that’s where the big opportunity is. I’ve been saying for a while if I had unlimited resources and an ability to raise $100 million or whatever, you know what I would do right now is I would build software used in hospitals.
and completely rip it out and gut it. Because I don’t know when the last time you were at a hospital or a doctor’s office is, but I encourage everybody listening to look at the software that they’re using. It is absolute trash.
Mary (16:16.07)
It’s awful.
scott leese (16:24.25)
The reason nobody tries to build this is it is a fucking monster to try to build. You’re talking about years of development, probably. You’ve got a million rules and regulations and HIPAA laws and compliance things and all this. And then you have to sell into a hospital, which is red tape city. So you’ve got a long sales cycle. So nobody wants to do it. But if somebody did it, that is a massive, massive win. And so I look for things like that. So.
long answer but hopefully people can get a sense of how I try to view the world.
Mary (16:59.812)
Yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s very insightful. And I, what immediately comes to my mind are those horrible federal government and state government websites too, whenever you’re doing your taxes, they’re, they’re so antiquated. It’s like, my goodness, you guys have seemingly all of the money in the world. And there’s, you know, I think that that’s so smart to look at different opportunities that maybe aren’t quite so sexy. Like you said, people aren’t.
scott leese (17:10.201)
Yes.
scott leese (17:15.257)
Sure.
scott leese (17:26.327)
Yeah.
Mary (17:26.722)
on the forefront of everybody’s racing toward this one thing, you’re thinking a little bit outside of the box to be like, okay, this is something that has all of this money attached to it and their systems are just so antiquated and there’s so much room for advancement and disruption in that area. And you mentioned also that the cold call is cold outreach is dead, it’s dying. And I completely agree. Not dead, yeah, because I get a ton of
scott leese (17:51.904)
Daiying. I wouldn’t say dead yet, I would say daiying. But it’s headed in that direction. It’s in route to the cemetery right now.
Mary (17:56.937)
I agree. I agree. Yeah. So what do you see as kind of that next step in the evolution in the sales world? If cold outreach is going away, what’s next? Yeah.
scott leese (18:10.776)
There’s a, yeah, there’s, I have, this is a two part answer. So near term, let’s say the next like five years or so I’m making numbers up cause who knows, but in the next five years to me, it’s all about relationships. It’s all about leveraging your network and other people’s networks to break into and influence opportunities. So here’s an example. Let’s, let’s say that, I’m trying to get ahold of Jane Doe and I don’t know Jane.
But you do, and you and I are pals and we’ve known each other for however long and we trust each other, right? I message you and I say, hey, Mary, I’m trying to get a hold of Jane. I don’t know if she has this problem, but my new company does XYZ. If you’re open to it and you know her well enough, do you mind reaching out to her and seeing if she’s interested in taking a call, taking a meeting with me? And you say to yourself, well, I know Scott, he’s a good person. You know, I think the product solves a real pain. Sure, I know Jane.
Let me see what she says. So you message Jane and you say, hey, my friend Scott does this thing. I don’t know if you have this problem or not, Jane, but if you do, you might want to talk to him. I believe in what he’s up to. Jane gets that message and Jane says, well, I know Mary. She’s not going to waste my time. She says this guy, Scott is cool. Like I do actually have this problem. Sure. I’ll take the call. And then I talked to Jane and maybe Jane buys. And when Jane buys, I break you off a piece. 10 % whatever.
Right? Which is way cheaper than paying a freaking SDR to open these kinds of opportunities. I break you off a piece, 10, 15, 20%, whatever. You’re happy because you got paid and you helped two people that you know.
Jane is happy because her problem got solved and she didn’t have to be bothered. She didn’t get put in a sequence and get 19 emails and 17 phone calls and all this stuff. She was approached in a way that felt natural and comfortable for her and I’m happy because I helped somebody, I closed the deal and I didn’t have to spend all day long cold calling and getting hung up on.
scott leese (20:17.108)
So that network led growth, that near bound kind of play, that I think is like the immediate next thing, if you will. If I zoom out farther than that, it gets real dystopian and real scary for me because I don’t believe that people will always want to or need to buy from people. And that’s the argument that I hear all the time. People will always want to buy from people. That is not true.
We don’t go to the mom and pop store to buy stuff anymore. We buy shit on Amazon. Do you go to the grocery store or do you Instacart stuff?
Mary (20:53.689)
I have it delivered, for sure. Convenience. Yeah.
scott leese (20:56.372)
There you go. Same thing. That’s Instacart delivery, whatever, right? That’s what I do. I don’t go to the grocery store. I Instacart things. So I’m not talking to a person. I just bought an investment property with my brother a month or two ago. $1 .1 million investment property in Chicago, Illinois. I never talked to a human being on the phone. Didn’t talk to the realtor. Didn’t talk to the lender. Didn’t talk to the title company. Didn’t talk to the inspector. Nobody. Because I don’t want to talk to anybody.
Mary (21:12.825)
Mm -hmm.
Mary (21:16.663)
Wow.
scott leese (21:27.219)
and go back to younger people than me, teenagers for example. You think they want to talk to somebody in order to buy something? Do you think that’s the world they’re growing up in? I don’t. So what I think is going to happen is a lot of sales jobs in particular are going to disappear and go away. Everything will be automated away. Buyers will have more information than ever before at their fingertips. So…
And we will get more and more comfortable spending more and more money without talking to somebody. So whereas right now you could say, well, nobody will buy a piece of software for 50 K without talking to somebody. That 50 K number is going to start moving up. Soon they’ll buy a hundred K deal soon. They’ll buy a million dollar deal and they really won’t have to interact with somebody unless they really want to. Right.
And that’s very scary if you’re a seller. That’s very scary if you think about the economy and how many jobs are potentially at risk. But I think that is the longer term kind of direction that we’re headed.
Mary (22:30.834)
I agree, you know, and kind of going back to that, the short -term direction, and I do want to touch on AI just a little bit too, since you, since you mentioned it, but yeah, I feel like companies now they’re kind of forced to, to build that relationship. So in the past, maybe they didn’t have to think about building that brand, right? So that makes social media incredibly important, building their brand up, building up their network in that way, creating customers or, you know,
scott leese (22:55.344)
Yeah.
Mary (22:58.325)
establishing relationships that they can use as a brand advocate, essentially. And what you alluded to is, you know, building essentially affiliate programs too, where people, different people are advocating for and selling the product on behalf of the company and getting a chunk of the, of the change, which obviously that’s something that’s already happening. And a lot of companies are super successful because of it. And I think that that also opens up the
doors of opportunity to a lot of people to become entrepreneurs and to build businesses, opportunities that did not exist before, especially when sales was completely reliant on door -to -door marketing or cold calling, cold outreach, whatever it might’ve been. And I do agree that that long -term utopian future that you mentioned is kind of terrifying, and it’s terrifying for a lot of people.
scott leese (23:32.849)
Yes. Yeah.
Mary (23:57.42)
You know, how is AI, what is it going to look like in five years and 10 years and 20 years? Is it going to take over all of our jobs? And I’ve, you know, I’ve seen a lot of rhetoric on LinkedIn lately too, where it’s like, people are saying, it’s not necessarily going to take over our jobs, but you know, people that know how to use AI are going to be the ones that are going to have the opportunity. So you need to be able to learn and change and evolve with all of these different AI tools that are available to us.
So, you know, even though in the short term sales positions aren’t necessarily being totally replaced by AI right now, I could definitely agree, you know, that in that utopian future, it could be the case. But in the today and the now, are there any specific AI tools or strategies that you would recommend for anyone in the sales world?
scott leese (24:49.36)
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, in the, in the now version, I think you’re, you’re right. The people who know how to use these tools and control and interact with them, are the ones that are going to thrive in and succeed. So anything that automates, you know, part of your workflow and part of your day, as an early investor in this company called scratch pad, for example, automates notes. So you don’t have to type stuff into Salesforce anymore. I’m a.
And what do you call it? He called it an evangelist. I’m an evangelist for this company called Fixer.
Mary (25:25.804)
Mm -hmm.
scott leese (25:26.126)
and Fixer takes your email and automatically categorizes it without you doing anything into respond, marketing, all these different categories, right? And it auto -drafts a reply and they’re shockingly accurate. So anything that requires tons of thought, I don’t think the product is there yet, but anything that’s like back and forth or like, that sounds good, yes, that calendar date works for me or whatever. I just have to put a button, the reply is already done.
Mary (25:40.328)
Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Mary (25:49.672)
Yeah. Yeah.
scott leese (25:55.149)
Right? So things like that. Obviously, you know, kind of a…
all the content tools are interesting right now. I don’t think they’re good enough. I still think you have to do the last mile, but they can certainly kickstart your kind of content journey or experience and tasks. Call coaching stuff and feedback is becoming more and more interesting pretty soon. There’ll be an avatar version of me that will be live coaching.
Mary (26:10.248)
for sure.
scott leese (26:28.94)
any sales rep who wants my coaching. Maybe you could pull it off the shelf, like pick your 10 favorite LinkedIn talking heads. It’s like choosing a character in a video game. It’s like, I want Mary to coach me today. I want Scott’s style today. I want Richard’s style tomorrow. So, those are a few examples that I can think of off the top of my head.
Mary (26:41.237)
Yeah.
Mary (26:53.091)
Yeah, I mean, there are some amazing tools out there that at the very least right now, they can significantly boost your efficiency and pretty much everything that you’re doing. So I want to back up and talk a little bit about recruiting and sales because you’ve built and scaled sales teams across the country. Can you talk to us about recruiting and sales and what are some of the secrets that you’ve uncovered along the way on how to build the best teams?
scott leese (27:01.26)
Yeah.
scott leese (27:16.045)
Yeah. Well, the best thing I ever did for recruiting for me was to build my network as big as humanly possible. That was that was the original reason I started. Growing the size of my LinkedIn network.
because I didn’t want to spend money on an outside recruiter or an internal hire. I didn’t want to spend money on a job post, for example. I just wanted to be able to get online and be like, hey, I’m looking to hire AEs. If you’re interested, DM me. And sure enough, that’s what happened. I didn’t spend a dime on recruiting for the last like seven years of my career as a full -time sales VP, not a dime, right? Flip it around and let’s say you are a recruiter.
Mary (27:58.626)
Wow.
scott leese (28:01.899)
You run your own agency or whatever. Is it not in your best interest to know as many VPs of sales, as many founders, as many salespeople as possible? Yes, because you have all these roles that come your way and the more people you know, the odds are better that you can source and fill some of those roles. So that’s the best hack that I ever learned. The rest of it is very nuanced between what role you’re trying to hire for.
Mary (28:22.178)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s.
scott leese (28:30.153)
Hiring for engineers, can they do the work or not? Hiring for salespeople? Not as simple. Not as simple whatsoever. So the hack if you will for hiring that I really leaned into was I cared very little about your past.
your past resume, what you did, who you used to be. I don’t want to see like, I made Presidents Club six quarters in a row, whatever. I don’t believe you half the time, nor do I want to call and track down to see if you’re legit. What I care about is who is this person in front of me right now? Who are they? What are they made of? And where do they want to go? Why are they willing to do something right now that they’ve previously been unwilling or unable to do?
What has happened to you that you’re willing to change and evolve and grow and make more than ever before? Or you have, you know, you want to shoot for a leadership role this time or whatever. Something has gone on to produce a sense of urgency inside of you. And that’s what I try to optimize for. And people who wouldn’t open up or share or give me anything with that, I didn’t hire them. I don’t want to be around those kinds of people. I wanted somebody like Mary who came to me and said,
Well, I gotta be honest with you. Tough thing, tough thing, tough thing. I am never doing that again. All I need is somebody to give me a shot and teach me and boom, off I go. And the more people that had that kind of vibe and mentality that I surrounded myself, the better my company seemed to do. So that was, that’s a, perhaps, you know,
less intuitive hack for recruiting than maybe people were expecting. But that was one that worked really well for me.
Mary (30:27.449)
And I also want to talk a little bit about professional development because I know you’ve built this massive community on LinkedIn after writing the book that you mentioned, Addicted to the Process. And you’ve also been involved in building some amazing revenue communities and micro -conferences like GTM United and Surf and Sales. So why was your book Addicted to the Process so impactful in this journey?
scott leese (30:51.655)
Well, I think it was important for me to just kind of tell my story, you know, how I got into sales and like I’m nobody special, you know, I came from the poorest county in all of California. My dad is a teacher and my mom’s a nurse. I had no examples of salespeople. I had no example of business people. You know, I just went.
through hell, somebody took a chance on me and I figured it out. I became a student of the game and I followed this process repeatedly. Right? And so it was a journey for me of telling my story, allowing myself to be vulnerable, writing and getting used to writing, you know, all the time. And what happened was I realized there’s millions of other people out there just like me.
and they don’t necessarily relate to the Silicon Valley VP of Sales with a sweater vest and hair gel.
And they do relate to this guy who sometimes looks like a homeless person who talks like a sailor and wears a hat half the time. And they’re like, you know, I’m kind of an ex degenerate too, right? And I’m like, shit, there’s a whole army of people out here, right? And that became my tribe, if you will. And I tried to take care of those type of people and help those type of people, you know, best I can.
Mary (31:54.901)
Hehehehehe
Mary (32:03.484)
Hehehehe
scott leese (32:20.841)
So it became sort of a calling card or a launching pad, if you will. And it took on, it still takes on a life of its own a little bit. I had a call this week with a VP of sales who said, for the last three years, every single hire who comes through my company gets a copy of your book. And that’s the philosophy that we use when we sell. And I’m like, damn, that book is seven years old now. It’s still relevant for people. So.
That’s why, you know, kickstarted kind of…
crystallizing my methodology, my thought process, telling my story, writing and creating content consistently. And it’s become a calling card. I wrote two more after it, but now that I’ve written three, I think I’m done because writing books is not for the faint of heart. It is a labor of love. And if you’re looking for near term ROI, forget about it. That’s not the way to think of it. I’m not making
Mary (33:04.724)
Yeah.
Mary (33:09.778)
I believe it.
scott leese (33:23.88)
of dollars off of that book. But what it is, like I said, it’s a calling card. It’s a piece of content. And that content, now somebody knows who I am, they pay attention to other things that I do on LinkedIn. They see that I coach, they see that I consult, they see that I have this event in Costa Rica. And so you build up this…
kind of suite of offerings or products. So I got a $10 book, I got a $500 community, I got a couple thousand dollar event, I got a couple thousand dollar coaching program, I got a hundred thousand dollar consulting program. Now I got in theory a little bit of something for everybody. And it all started with, well the secondary stuff started with that book.
Mary (34:10.222)
Yeah. I think that that’s so important for people to know is, and I think that the vulnerability piece of that is critical too, because you could have done all of these great things, built all of these wonderful processes and filled out, you know, figured out how to get into the right place at the right time when it comes to tech. But if you don’t know how to be vulnerable, if you don’t know how to build those relationships and really relate to people.
on another level, you would not have probably been able to build the teams that you have built throughout your career and be as successful as you have. You have that personal narrative and that essentially that personal brand that you’ve created that really just kind of organically attracts some of that top talent.
scott leese (34:59.971)
Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said for that, you know? And I think more people should think about that who are getting into leadership or aspiring to be in leadership or who already are in leadership, you know?
Mary (35:18.733)
Yeah. How important do you think professional development is in your opinion? And how are these communities contributing to the professional development of these sales professionals that you serve? Yeah.
scott leese (35:31.105)
Well, it’s massive. It’s massive for anybody who wants to grow and advance and increase their income or their impact, all that kind of stuff. It’s super important because every single day I read horror stories about somebody who’s getting no training or coaching in their current job. And too many people sort of shrug their shoulders and say, well, I guess I’m on my own and they don’t do anything about it. So you’ve got to provide.
Well, in my mind, you got to provide opportunities for people to get tools and information that they need to get better. And if you’re out there and you’re stuck in a place that doesn’t enable or develop you at all, you can’t just sit there and accept that. You got to go find it yourself. Right. So, and that’s where some of these micro communities shot up. You know, I ran Thursday night sales for three plus years, became the largest virtual sales happy hour in the world.
Mary (36:16.968)
Mm -hmm.
scott leese (36:23.837)
hundreds of people on zoom every Thursday night asking questions about sales, leadership, career, all this kind of stuff. Slack channel with thousands and thousands of people in it, just, you know, supporting each other, trying to get better, you know, as, as a group. and so you’ve got to seek out like -minded folks.
You’ve got to find people who are at similar stages of development or people who have done what you’re trying to do that you can learn from. You have to adopt this kind of lifelong learning mentality. There are different ways people learn. Some people learn by reading, some people learn by listening, some people learn by doing. Some people learn through osmosis, just being around other people and taking it all in.
And you have the opportunity to participate in each of those modalities right now if you wanted to. None of that shit was popularized or existed when I first started. There was no LinkedIn when I got into sales. There was no podcasts when I got into sales. It’s easier now than ever before. But it still requires you to take action. Right? And too many people sit around and think about things rather than doing something about it.
Mary (37:39.3)
Totally. Totally. I’m such an action person. I rarely sit on something and think on it for more than five minutes. I don’t come up with any kind of a plan. I’m like a jump in and do it. Even with this podcast, you know, even though I had been thinking, I should start a podcast when I decided that I wanted to do it, I just did it, right? Otherwise you’re going to think about it forever.
scott leese (37:58.592)
Yep. Yeah. You’ll talk, you’ll find ways to talk yourself out of it. You know? Yeah.
Mary (38:02.884)
Yeah, all the time. Yeah. So many of our listeners may be business owners or even aspiring entrepreneurs. What are some initial steps that they could take to really effectively scale their own sales efforts?
scott leese (38:22.174)
Well, this is industry dependent and it’s hard to answer that in a non nuanced way. Number one, you actually have to put in the effort. It’s the first place I’ll start. You can’t just sit around and wait for clients to show up no matter how long you’ve been in business. Whatever that looks like, whether it’s marketing or coal calling or whatever, you have to be doing something all the time.
I think it’s a mistake if you’re ignoring a network and networks nowadays are online, they’re not offline. Your church network does not count anymore. You know, have a hundred other parishioners with you. That’s not a network. You know, you got to have tens of thousands of people that you can utilize, right? It might be able to help open opportunities or influence opportunities. I do think that you have to embrace technology.
Mary (38:57.536)
Yeah.
scott leese (39:18.428)
It is not the era for sticky notes anymore, right? You’ve got to get on board with that stuff and not fear change. You got to evolve a little bit. You really have to pay attention to how you sell. Nobody wants to just meet you and get all of your, you know, services and product information and features like barfed all over them. They don’t care about that. You got to have a much longer kind of.
Mary (39:43.072)
Yeah.
scott leese (39:46.765)
view of a relationship, right? Like Mary and I interact on LinkedIn and then Mary and I do a podcast together and then.
Hey, one of my clients needs recruiting help. I refer to Mary. Mary’s like looking for an event to go be around like -minded people. And she’s like, you know what, maybe I’ll go to Costa Rica and go to Scott’s Surfing Sales event. And then she’s got a client that needs consulting help and it comes my way. It’s like, you have to look at all of these relationships, not as potential transactions, but as something that can become long -term really beneficial for both parties.
Mary (40:10.78)
Yeah.
scott leese (40:26.043)
Those are some of the things that I think people should be focused on right now. And it’s difficult for some people because they’re so focused on getting their next dollar straight away. And they’re like, I can’t do anything unless it’s going to produce me a dollar today. And unfortunately, transactional stuff that, you know…
was big from the mid 80s to the mid 2000 era it’s going away if it’s not already gone and so you really got to adjust.
Mary (41:02.62)
Yeah. I mean, I think this entire conversation, it goes back to just, you know, that relationship and those relationships that you’re building. And, you know, for, for me, and I, I heard this on somewhere on LinkedIn where as you’re building your network, it’s kind of like you’re building up your bank account too. Right. So as you’re building these relationships, you want to be providing value to these people that you’re building the relationship. So you don’t want to just start building all of these partnerships and.
ask for, you know, jump in and ask for something right away and then ask for another thing and ask for another thing because your bank account will be a, you know, before you know it, you’re sitting at negative a hundred thousand in your bank account where, you know, if you’re providing, you’re building relationships, you’re providing value, you’re offering your expertise, offering your insights. That’s how you’re going to really build up your bank account. And then when it comes down to it, these people are going to want to help you. And when.
scott leese (41:37.88)
Yeah.
Mary (41:59.595)
you know, whatever it is that you’re doing. And I think from a sales perspective too, that can really help you, you know, as you’re building these partnerships, like you said, and focusing your time on building the relationships and providing that value.
scott leese (42:09.05)
Yeah.
scott leese (42:13.978)
Yeah, counterintuitive, but that’s the thing that’s actually gonna make your bank account grow.
Mary (42:16.063)
Mm -hmm. Yep, absolutely. So last question and high level, what do you want our listeners to take away from our conversation today?
scott leese (42:28.793)
Well, I would say a couple of things. I think the first thing that we both have been preaching is just take action and stop overthinking. You know, this phrase of action over words, something that I’ve used for a long time. I think the second thing would be nobody cares about your product or services or solution until they admit to you that they have a problem.
The third thing would be you gotta build a network because that is the future of sales. What’s old becomes new again. And you really need to make it like a daily KPI for yourself. You know, how many people did I add to my network today? The same way you track somebody’s cold call activity, you should be tracking their network growth activity as well. So that would be my three biggest takeaways, I think.
Mary (43:16.722)
Awesome. What do you have to now and where can we find you on social media?
scott leese (43:21.4)
Well, right now I’m kind of prepping for my, my surf and sales summit. There’s, there’s two events in November this year. You can check it out at surf and sales .com. I still run my consulting business. I work with.
Small business owners and early stage startups from all across the world. Help them with go to market strategy, sales playbooks, messaging, sales ops, recruiting, coaching, training, partnership building, everything under the sun, go to market. So those are my two primary things I’m working on right now. I’ve got a couple secondary things that I’m playing around with that I’m not ready to mention yet, but yeah, those are the two things, my consulting business and the
Mary (44:00.978)
Yeah.
scott leese (44:05.818)
and sales summit.
Mary (44:07.378)
Awesome, thanks for coming on today, Scott.
scott leese (44:09.784)
Yeah, happy to. Enjoyed it.