Ep482: Collin Mitchell – Sales Is the #1 Skill You Need to Have

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk taker and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it, go to my worst investment ever.com and join our Facebook group to connect with our community of guests and fellow listeners. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests. Calling Michel Conlon Are you ready to rock?

Collin Mitchell 00:36
I am always ready.

Andrew Stotz 00:40
Well, let me introduce you to the audience. colony's a four time founder. And I have to change your bio here needs to say, Cullen Mitchell is a four time founder for time father, and host of sales transformation, calm and take a minute and fill in some tidbits about your life.

Collin Mitchell 01:02
Yeah, that's the updated bio, I actually have three kids in the fourth is on the way, but we just updated that bio ahead of time, because for time founder and father for just sounds way cooler, then then father of three. And my kids are a big part of my life, you know, like, entrepreneurship has allowed me the freedom to spend a lot of time with my family, which is part of what I view success, you know. And so yeah, I've, I get bored easily, obviously. And when I do, I just started another company. But my wife says, I gotta slow down, so forth, company three have been successful. One was not and I ran away, you know, quickly, because it was just totally not for me, and I thought it was. But I've learned a lot along the way, made a lot of mistakes, because I've learned mostly by experience. And I'm totally prepared to share my worst investment ever with the worst podcast host ever.

Andrew Stotz 02:01
And that's me, ladies and gentlemen. Well, we have that in common that we both started for businesses, my first I started many years ago, and I sold it to my partner and got out. And then he ended up closing it. So I kind of I it was it was a close brush with loss. And then, and then my second one was a coffee business with my best friend here in Thailand. And that's 26 years old. So it's a 26 year old startup, that one has been a good investment. And then my third one was a tech startup. And that went south and really, really hurt, emotionally and financially. And then my last one is my own business, which is a combination of financial advising and also teaching. And so that's been able to survive. So we have that in common. And I'm just curious, like, when people look at me, they say, Okay, your skills are finance as an example. You're good with numbers and figuring those things out. What's kind of your secret sauce? What's your skill set? That's unique to you that you've developed over time, just so that the audience gets to know like what you're all about?

Collin Mitchell 03:12
Yeah, you want to know what my superpower is? Yes, my superpower is sales and relationship building. Something that I love doing. I have managed and trained hundreds of salespeople. I have, you know, my wife and I started our first company by 11 years ago now, and I still have that company today where it bar so we sell hardware equipment and consumables and things like that. And you know, we have over a million products, there's probably like 400, that are actually our top sellers that we sell to mainly school districts and government. And so we built the sales team and we bootstrapped that company, zero spent on marketing, all sales driven. we bootstrapped that to 5 million in annual revenue in 26 months. And so that was the first company that I started. And I found in that company, that the further I got away from like really in the trenches of like building new relationships and sales, the more unhappy I was with the company, like I really enjoyed that stuff, a lot of people are quick to want to get away from that. And then be more of a, you know, manager of people rather than actually being in the trenches doing some of that work that most people don't enjoy, like cold calling, or, you know, building new relationships, negotiating contracts, things like that, but I really thrive in that. And I've always liked to lead salespeople by example. So you know, that kind of looks like, Hey, I don't know if I have all the answers. We're going to try this new thing. Maybe it'll work but let's do it together and figure it out. Maybe it will, and we'll get some results and maybe it won't, maybe we'll learn something. So that's kind of my superpower is relationship building sales is something that I really enjoy, mainly because I grew up dirt poor was raised by a single mom We didn't have any money. So I didn't, nobody was telling me school was important. So I didn't go to college, I barely made it through high school. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just knew I didn't want to be poor, I didn't want to be living check to check, I didn't want to struggle to pay the rent, or be on food stamps, or all of those things that my life as a child looked like, and sales was my way out, you know, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for somebody like me. So when I got that first chance, I feel like say, sales provided me an opportunity and a lifestyle that I could have never, you know, been able to get otherwise.

Andrew Stotz 05:34
That's fascinating story. And, you know, where, where we all come from, you know, sets our direction in so many ways. And what's interesting about it is that like, in my case, I was like, digging into books and learning stuff, and, and all that. And then I worked for big companies, I worked for Pepsi, I worked for Citibank, you know, I worked for big name places. And that's sold itself. So what I could do is focus on, you know, writing my research, crunching my numbers. And, you know, common, I missed something really significant when I started my own business, and that was, you got to sell. And when you got no brand, you got nothing you think you got I got my experience, and I got a lot of people that know me, sorry, sorry, you know, there's nothing that replaces having none of those big brand names behind you. And I just didn't see that very clearly in the beginning of my career in setting up my own business. And it's been a hard journey. And I know a lot of my listeners, engineers, financial guy, men and women that, you know, really good at digging into the numbers and doing their work and being alone in their office and cranking away and creating something really powerful. But we miss some that you got. So maybe you could just give us some thoughts on you know, how someone like myself, who would prefer to dig into some numbers for four hours, rather than doing sales, calling and sending out emails following up how you doing? What do you you know, what's the struggle? What advice would you give, based upon all that you've learned?

Collin Mitchell 07:07
Yeah, I love this question. Just been chomping at the bit to answer it. So thanks for teeing this one up. So I like to tell all entrepreneurs, you know, salespeople generally have like entrepreneurial spirit, because in a lot of cases, they're sort of running an operating their own book, a business or business within the business in a lot of cases. And so anybody who wants to start a business, like sales is the number one skill that you need to have. And so if you're thinking, I want to maybe do my own thing, or have a side hustle or start a tech company, that's all great. But if you can't sell the product, if you don't have hard sales skills, you could have the best tech product ever. And nobody's going to care. And so that's, that's, that's an important piece. And learning how to sell is something that you should do and go get that experience somewhere. So find an organization that has a good training program, start to consume content, there's so much free stuff out there. I mean, there's awesome people on social media that you can follow that are giving a ton of stuff away for free. There's tons of great blogs, there's tons of great books, there's tons of great sales, podcasts, those are all good places to start to try to find things that feel and resonate with you and your style and your personality, because there's different types of selling styles. It's not just a one size, you know, sort of fits all. But get that experience, get that education, before you try to go do that thing, because you're going to set yourself up to be in a better place to be successful. And a lot of selling is really a lot of people that are lack experience in sales. Typically, those conversations or engagements sound like me talking about my product and my service and my features and benefits and how awesome it is. And it kind of sounds a lot like that. And it typically results in either none or very little deals closed. And the best sellers are more like doctors where they're very curious. They ask a lot of questions. They get to the bottom of like, what your pain really is, what it means for you to solve that pain, if you even care. What does it look like if you don't solve that because a lot of times, most people are losing deals not to their competitors, but they're losing deals to the prospect doing nothing. The status quo not changing, not doing anything figuring you know what, it's just really not worth the hassle of taking any action. So in most cases, that's what you're going up against. So you're trying to identify what the problem is, Are you the right fit to solve it and helping your prospect understand the value of solving it, and the repercussions of not solving it and position yourself as the next option to get to that future desired state.

Andrew Stotz 10:10
That's some great, you know, gold for the listeners out there, you know, I just love that idea of a salesperson is more like a doctor. You know, okay, so where's your pain? Does it happen at night? In the middle of night? And does it happen at payroll time? You know, tell me about your pain and then understanding that being and then, you know, even realizing, and this is one of the things that's kind of strange, is it a good salesperson may do a lot of investigation and realize that their products are not suitable for this person?

Collin Mitchell 10:42
Yeah, yeah, I'll give you I'll give you a classic example. Right? Everybody knows, like, oh, you know, let me get my prop here. Everybody knows, you know, sell me this pen, right? Everybody knows that. Right? And it's really a stupid concept. Because, okay, your, your, your, your seller that doesn't have a lot of experience or skills is going to tell you, hey, this pen is made from NASA, you know, metal, blah, they're going to go on about how this is the best pen ever, right? And a great seller with a lot of experience is gonna be like, well hold up. I don't even know if you need a pin. Let's back up a step. You know, what are you trying to accomplish? Maybe a pencil is better. Maybe you don't write on paper. Like, there's just so many questions that I could ask to identify, like, let's first figure out like, do you even need a pen? Before I try to sell you?

Andrew Stotz 11:33
In the field of quality management, we have the five why's as one of the tools asking why five times to try to dig down to what's the core. And you remind me, you know that constantly asking to try to find what is the core problem? And if you find out that you don't have a product or service for that person, you may have just made a friend. Yeah, yeah. So let me just ask, before we go on to the big question, what's the best way for people to follow you and learn more about what you teach and what you share?

Collin Mitchell 12:06
Yeah, it's very, very simple. Whatever podcast platform you are enjoying this episode on right now, you can go and search sales transformation, that is the best way to tune into everything that we're doing, we release five episodes a week. And that's the best way to stay current and up to date with whatever is going on in my world.

Andrew Stotz 12:27
Fantastic. And you remind me of a Thai friend of mine in here in Thailand, I hired this young guy in when I was a pretty young guy to back in 1995. And he turned out really to be the one of the best financial analyst I've, I've hired, his name is Kitty. And, and basically, he taught me we were traveling around the world together, and we were selling ultimately, our ideas. And he was fantastic. And one of the things I always remember what he did is every time he met someone new, you know, we were in London, sat down, and we exchanged cards, he put that card in front of him. And then he looked at it, and he said, and then he looked at the guy's name, and he goes, so Bob, let me tell you about what to do. And then he would say, Okay, let me tell you about what I think go Bob, this is an interesting and he'd used the guy's name like three times in a row four times in a presentation, and the guy's loved it. And I would just sit there. And I still found it hard to incorporate that person's name into my presentation. And, and I just thought that was such a great skill. But the reason why you reminded me of him is that he used to say to me, he said, Andrew, I was I was born with almost nothing. And, you know, it took everything in my family's power to get me into America to go to some, you know, not not a high play, you know, not a fancy school, just, you know, Chicago, whatever. And he said, I'm a Street Fighter. And that's how I got to this point. And it just made me think about you know, that, that got to get out there and make it and I kind of your story reminds me a little bit of that. So,

Collin Mitchell 14:05
yeah, I mean, our experiences are what molded us, right? So is much as a lot of the stuff that I experienced as a kid sucked. And I wouldn't wish that any of my kids ever had to experience a lot of it. It's molded me to who I am and given me you know, the resilience and the grit and the courage to do the things that I've been able to do so I wouldn't change anything.

Andrew Stotz 14:29
Well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstance leading up to them. Tell us your story.

Collin Mitchell 14:40
Yeah, I'd love to so that first business that I built, the one that my wife and I built two 5 million in 26 months in annual revenue, all fueled by sales, and $0 spent on marketing to most people Will that be like, hey, that's, you know, great, very successful business? Why wouldn't you just keep doing what you're doing? Right. And I don't know where I heard it, but you know, it just, it just, I had worked for some companies previously, where they just did the same old thing, you know, and never changed, never evolved and never had any new ideas. And I knew that I didn't want to be like that, I knew that that was a recipe for failure, you know, and so I was trying to come up with all these ideas of how to diversify the business, right, so a lot of the stuff that we sold was commodities and products, you know, sometimes they, you know, customers would buy these products, you know, few times a month, maybe once a month, maybe some larger purchases quarterly, but there was no recurring revenue, you know, and so I was trying to come up with all these ideas of how to diversify the business, how to get subscription revenue, recurring revenue, whatever you want to call it, you know, that MRR right, which is what everybody wants. And so, I tried a couple different things, we were selling it products. So it made a lot of sense to get into IT services, right. And so we found these different companies that we could outsource pieces to, and we could just basically be the sales engine and close these deals and be great. And it wasn't right, so we kind of fell on our face and spent some money trying to figure it out, and didn't have a lot to show for it. And so then we got into some other, you know, kind of similar services, we started selling, you know, backup recovery, and cloud backup and all these things that were, you know, really popular at the time, and we had a little bit of success there. And then a lot of people that were our competitors, were getting into this, manage print services, where it's, you know, you basically ship peep ship their, the consumables, the toner cartridges to the customers, and you have technicians that service the machines, and you get the customers to commit to a certain amount of print volume, right? Like they, you know, hey, this particular car dealership, or school district prints X amount of pages per month, you can, you know, create a price that's basically a cost per page. And you basically include all of the consumables, anything that they possibly need to keep those printers running, including, you know, fixing them, because they break all the time. And so that seemed like a great business for us to get into. And we started to kind of test the market and talk to some of our customers. And they're like, yeah, yeah, we'd love that we're, we're actively trying to, you know, cut our printing costs, you know, people are trying to print less at the time. And so I'm like, I don't know, if everybody wants this, I don't know how to deliver it, you know, we can find the products and ship them but servicing the machines and coming up with pricing and, and how to sell these deals or longer sales cycles. And we're used to, and so I started looking around, and I found a consultant. And, you know, he seemed like he knew this space, he had some, some clients that were similar to me. And we paid a boatload of money 10s of 1000s of dollars, to get this guy to help us build this offering for these clients that I knew they were so excited. And we received not a lot of value. And we spent more money and just like okay, maybe the marketing is wrong, we spend some more money on marketing. And so like we followed all these, we needed these fancy tools that he recommended and, and we needed to market ourselves better, we needed to redo our website, and we needed to do all these things to become an expert in something that we didn't know a lot about. And I can tell you that ultimately, we got a couple of bunts. But we didn't get any doubles, no triples, no homeruns, no ROI. And eventually, we closed that program down. We had a few clients, we service them for a while, we did an average job at best. And eventually we had to just pulley fully pull the plug and it was painful. Because I love a challenge. I love a challenge and I like trying to make things work. But we just didn't have the expertise or the knowledge or the right team to really execute on that. And the money is one thing, right? spending the money is one thing, but all the time and the energy that went into hiring people getting a we hired an employee to specialize in this for us we hired the consultant we redid the website, we did all of these things. They ultimately built up some debt for us and we didn't have very much to show for it. And so you know the money didn't hurt as much. But the the failure of the delivery have not executed on that hurt more. And also all of the time and energy that could have been spent doing something else is really what stung the most.

Andrew Stotz 20:07
Let me ask you, can you remember kind of the day when you just realized, this is gotta be ended?

Collin Mitchell 20:15
Yeah, so we started to scale back, we're like, Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna let this guy go, we can't, you know, we can't have somebody that we're paying, you know, good high five figure salary to sell this service that we just are not doing. And then we had some few clients, and we, you know, hey, let's, let's see the contracts out at least. And then eventually, we couldn't even really fully deliver on our contractual obligations. So we just eventually said, you know, what this is, this is we're not we not only are we, we've, you know, kind of stopped selling the product, or the service rather. But we can't even really deliver on the deals that we closed, and we're losing money anytime that we need to service equipment. So it was like, every time they'd reach out and say, we have a problem, we need a technician to come out, was like, Oh, this is horrible. Because we didn't even set we didn't package the deals, right. We didn't know what we're doing. And so eventually said, we had to send an email out to all of them, find some local recommendations of places that they could go to, that we had vetted out for them, and try to end those in the most positive way. Without, you know, with setting them up, you know, to be handed off to somebody that could properly service the accounts.

Andrew Stotz 21:43
So how would you summarize the lessons that you learn?

Collin Mitchell 21:47
Yeah, I mean, there's no, there's no shortcuts, right. And so I thought, like, hey, this was a service we could easily do, and it was just gonna, you know, rocket ship our growth. And I rushed into it too quickly, without educating myself about the industry specifically for that service, with the needs of the clients, with the capabilities with, you know, the staff that's needed, with the knowledge and experience that's needed. People that were doing this service, where people had been doing something very similar for a long time. And you know, what they learned through that other those other services that were similar was, you know, that experience and knowledge is what set them up to be able to deliver this. And I tried to skip some steps and jump to the front line.

Andrew Stotz 22:43
Maybe I'll share a couple things I take away from it. The one thing I wrote down while you were talking is that in business, many things appear more simple than they actually are, that they're more complex than they appear. And so we're like, like bees to honey, we go rushing into it. And so that's the first thing. Second thing I wrote down was core competency. Know, what is it that we're good at? And, you know, there's just so many times I mean, even in my coffee business, we're good at servicing hotels. And when hotels were shut down, because of COVID. What are we going to do? Well, we could reinvent ourselves and say, We're good at doing internet sales, but we're not good at doing internet sales. And we could, you know, try to hire someone, or we could try to build internal competency in that. But the reality is, and I think this is from an investment perspective, when I look at investing, you know, you have to look at what is that company's core competency, and, and so many companies die because they can't iterate away from that core competency. And there's a reason one, you know, like, it's hard. And, you know, so my question to you that I just was thinking about to about this kind of core competencies like, so, you know, how do you add a new part to your business that you want to add and be able to do it successfully, even though it's not your core competency, or it's not, you know, what you've been doing for a long time? That's the challenge. And my question to you is based upon what you've learned, how would you, you know, advise.

Collin Mitchell 24:24
So, there's a lot, I love this question, because this actually, you know, us, let's just call it what it is failing to execute on that plan led us to the next thing, which led me to my next business. So, you know, you got to look at failure as like, Okay, if failure can cripple people, so a lot of it has to do with the mindset like really, knowing when to pull the plug on something is important, but also being able to look at it from a positive mindset. Like, what did I learn through that experience? So that you don't, you know, tie your own like self worth to the outcomes of that? Because that's crucial. Because then you might just say, You know what, entrepreneurships? Not for me, I need to go get a job. Forget it. And that's not necessarily true. It just might be that you didn't have, you know, maybe that wasn't, that particular idea wasn't a great idea, or there were some things that you didn't know. So to kind of lead into answering the question here, is, you need to test right? Before we got on here, you had an idea of starting a podcast, right? And you didn't know if it was a good idea, or if you should start a podcast. So you tapped into your networking you I don't know exactly what your messaging was, but I would assume it was something like this, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this thing. You know, here's how maybe you can help me or I love, you know, to get your feedback on it, right. And the response was overwhelming, which was enough evidence to tell you that it was a damn good idea. And we should do it yet, right. Um, so just to kind of, you know, go back to my own experience here for a second. After that, before we jumped into the next thing, we went out and got some feedback. And the funny thing is, is, so we built that company, to 5 million in annual revenue in 26 months, we did a lot, we had many reps that spent a lot of time on the phone. And that's how we conducted business. And, you know, VoIP technology wasn't new. But a lot of it was still had a lot of problems. And so our sales team heavily relied on the phones, that was like our, you know, livelihood, the phones, that's how we made money. And a lot of times, we had issues with our phones, the phones would be down, they, you know, sound, the quality would be bad, we'd be you know, mid pitch and, you know, and then you know, you get hung up on because it sounds horrible, or, or I'd come in at, you know, 5am in the morning, and the team would all be angry because the phones weren't even working. And, you know, they basically, they're commissioned salespeople, they need the phone. And so I'm like, I wonder if some of our customers have this same problem. And they did. And there was a techie guy in our office building. And he's like, I think I got a solution that worked way better than all these things you tried, we had changed phone, VoIP providers five times in like a two year period. And I'm like, did, I will try anything, like set it up? I don't even want, I don't care what it is what it costs, like, just please solve this for me. And it worked way better than I ever imagined and better than anything that we tried. And it was complicated. And I never could have done it on my own. It was a virtual server connected to SIP trunks and all of this and, and it worked. And it worked great. And we didn't have any problems anymore. I was like, I think some of our customers might have these problems. And we started talking. And I'm like, Yeah, we do. And we'd love to solve them. And so that right there, told me that there was a need. And so then I started a unified communications company. And we scaled that to over 6000, almost 7000 users. And just that market validation. Research before doing the thing is so valuable. And it's what I didn't do previously.

Andrew Stotz 28:38
And for the listeners out there, you know, one of the great stories is in American history is the stories of Ulysses S Grant. And he failed at a lot of things along the way. And he turned out, of course, to lead the Union army to success. But one of the, one of the big failures or challenges that he faced was the Battle of Shiloh. And in this battle, his he was not actually on the scene when it happened in the southern side, basically attacked and pushed Sherman, his main general, and his other generals back very, very hard throughout the whole day. And by the middle of the day, Grant had arrived on the scene, and it was pouring rain at night and had been decimated. And Sherman went up to grant while they were sitting there under a tree. And he said it was the devil's own day. And Grant said, we'll lick them tomorrow. And they went to bed. Reinforcements had arrived from some other troops. And grant knew these were coming. He positioned them early in the morning, and he made his counter attack and he pushed the southern side back and he ended up winning the Battle of Shiloh and you know, I think it's it's a lesson that you know, that's part of business, you're gonna lose a lot but You know, you're going to come up with new ideas, and you're going to test and you're going to win in the long run. And that's the challenge. So that reminds me of that. And for the listeners out there, you know, anything you can read about Ulysses S. Grant, I think is valuable in this space. So, based on what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Collin Mitchell 30:24
Yeah, do your research and, you know, do some market validation before you go take action on your idea? Because just because you think your idea is the best idea ever, doesn't mean it is.

Andrew Stotz 30:40
Alright, last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Collin Mitchell 30:44
Yeah, so our goal is to change the way people sell through relationship building. So we're on a mission to launch 100 Plus podcast. We currently manage about 40 podcasts currently. So we're on track to hit that goal. And so we want to change the way people build relationships through podcasting.

Andrew Stotz 31:09
Exciting. And listeners. There you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com and join our Facebook group to connect with our community and guests, and fellow listeners. As we conclude, Cullen, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting have any parting words for the audience?

Collin Mitchell 31:42
Now look forward to jumping in to the community and maybe meeting some of you in there.

Andrew Stotz 31:48
Fantastic. Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.