What Breaks GTM in B2B Companies with Jack Wilson

Speaker A: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Paris Talks Marketing. Today I have the pleasure of sitting with Jack Wilson. Jack is the Executive Vice President for North America at Amplify5. And in that role, he's focusing on delivering integrated customer experiences that drive measurable cost savings and operational improvements for their clients. As the EVP of North America, Jack leads initiatives that extend in house capabilities through models like offshoring as a service. He specializes in sales leadership, strategic market disruption, and cultivating client partnerships that accelerate growth in competitive B2B and B2C industries. Jack, through his career has partnered with top tier VC and PE firms globally and that has resulted in six successful exits, including one ipo and has delivered triple digit growth in every venture outside of the boardroom. Jack is an ultra endurance athlete. He's run marathons, completed numerous ultra marathons, finished top 20 at, uh, the Ironman World Championship, and most recently completed the Moab 240 Ultra Marathon, which is a 240 mile race testing endurance, resilience and strategic focus. Relentless in business and relentless in life. Jack Wilson, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, Paris. It sounds way more impressive. It's the first time I've ever heard it read. But, uh, I'm looking forward to kind of getting into the details on a couple of those with you.

Speaker A: Great. I want to start, Jack, with your experience with these exits. I think that's very unique. It seems as though you have lived through six of those exits, including one ipo. Uh, from that experience, what is a common thread or repeating pattern that you think made those successful? And also the flip side of that question is, was there one near fatal mistake that you also saw in those experiences that you would stamp out now?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, very good question, Paris. I'll tell you that when I started my career, exits IPOs, you know, I mean, it wasn't anything that, that I ever thought about. And when the first one happened, like for most people, it was really kind of blind luck. It was a young startup. I was a co founder, second mortgaged my house, sleeping on the sofa. Um, if anyone listening can remember those days 20 years ago, that's just what you did. You maxed out your credit cards. You know, I was just blind to what success looked like. And we grew that company to 8 million in revenue within 24 months and then sold that to a company that still is in existence today. And I can see some of our original code when I run across one. Uh, it was in the live chat space, so that's kind of cool. But when I look Back at my career, everyone talks about the success and it's great that, you know, I've had six exits and I've also gone through many failures getting there. And in my opinion, the failures, the businesses that close, bankruptcies getting terminated because sales aren't there. You know, I learned far more from that than I did the success. You can't ever determine when a company is going to be successful. And I wish that I could look back and I could point at these six what it was. You know, it's never one thing and it certainly is never one person. And I would never take credit for any of those exits. I was a piece of a team that it just all collided together, you know, and it happened. I'll tell you that as a 57 year old executive now, now I'm chasing it and that's what I want to do. And you just can't force it, you can't make it happen. It's going to happen on its own time. And the only thing that I can control is, is what I do every day. And I think we're going to talk about some of the other players in business, but my consistency in what I do, I'm very tuned into it. But there's so many things that happens in an organization that can affect the trajectory of an exit that's completely out of my control.

Speaker A: Would you say there are some key ingredients that were there in each case where you would say, uh, things like a great leadership team or also good timing?

Speaker B: Without a doubt, the common threads in any exit and IPO is that you've got a strong senior management team that understands swimming in their swim lanes. You know, when you run across in business, everyone at the executive table that's thinking similar, great things happen. Unfortunately, I've experienced much more egos in the boardroom. You know, we're doing it my way and whenever you have that success makes it worse, way harder. But I would say absolutely. Strong management team, but alignment on the goals and probably more importantly, everyone understands the product, the solution, the market, the go to market. You know, there are a lot of things that take place. Uh, think about a recipe. Would you go make a cake, you go buy it off the shelf, it's got all the ingredients in it and would you take the butter out or the milk out and then expect great tasting cake. You know, it doesn't happen. You've got to have a total addressable market, you've got to have a strong management team, you got to have funding, you got to have marketing. There's a Lot of ingredients that takes place for any company to be successful and then to go through an exit or an ipo. It is really rare that I've experienced six of them in a relatively short career. But I think it was timing, it was, the market conditions were different during each exit. So it's, it's really a rare thing even today.

Speaker A: And I'm curious, Jack, during those exits, did you typically stay in for a little while through some kind of earnout or were you moving along to the next thing right after?

Speaker B: I had two earn out periods. Probably the biggest one was with an e commerce company called ATG that Oracle acquired. So Oracle reloaded me, moved me to Hong Kong and I had to, um, earn out over a year, the longest year of my life. Nothing against Oracle.

Speaker A: That sounds familiar. So people that I've talked to, yeah,

Speaker B: it was just the wrong cultural fit. We grew that company to 100 million in revenue, which is relatively large. But when you're completely engulfed in a large company like Oracle that has a very set way of doing things, it took a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit out of me and I didn't like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, understood. You touched on the alignment and I want to stay with that theme for a bit because we spoke a lot about sales and marketing alignment in our first conversation and you gave me this analogy of a canoe where only one person in that canoe rowing the wrong way and it just screws everything up. Could you walk us through your playbook for diagnosing misalignment between sales and marketing and how do you go about fixing that?

Speaker B: Yeah, and let me go back to that analogy because I think it's a very visual analogy. And as I speak, I'm a little expressive. But my view has always been that the senior management team in any organization, whether it's four people, eight people, they have to be in alignment. And in my mind, I like to visualize. So I like to think of, um, everyone in a canoe, you know, and anyone listening, you know, you've been in a canoe, but when you get eight people on a canoe, it's challenging because everyone has to put their oar in the water the right way and row the right way. And that's the way I think of business. When business is going great and everyone's rowing in the right direction feels good and you can feel it. But one person in the canoe, one person in the boardroom that has a different view and they decide to do it their way really screws up the trajectory of the canoe and it screws up the Trajectory of what the business was doing. So to have alignment is critical. And I think the only way to have alignment is open and honest dialogue. Get that chip off your shoulder. It's not about you marketing. It's not about you finance. It's not about you product. It's not about you CRO. It's about what is the vision of the company. You're a public company. You know, what's the shareholder value. Typically, organizations want to grow methodically or quick, and there's a tremendous amount of pressure on sales and marketing. I've had the fortunate, uh, in my career to have worked with some of the same marketing people over and over again, and it feels good. It's like putting on a glove that it just fits. But a lot of the times in my consulting and the things that I do, I'm, um, paired with someone that has their view on marketing. And a lot of the time, sales and marketing aren't aligned. And I think that it starts typically from the top. But being a CRO for the last 10, 15 years, I like the fact that I own marketing. I'm not a marketer, but I know what drives sales, and I know what drives revenue. And having marketing and sales aligned, it's just critical. And in my opinion, some of the biggest mistakes organizations make is they're not aligned. And I don't care what you say, but to have success when sales and marketing are fighting over, you know, what is a lead. You know, I went to the trade show and we scanned 300 leads. I don't know what the complaint is, guys, they're there. That's not a lead that people that you scan the show. And chances are the marketing person probably had a KPI of just scanning leads, which, you know, there's nothing wrong with 300 scans, but that is very top of the funnel. That's not doing me as CRO. That's not giving the sales people tangible proof that people are interested to have these intelligent conversations to take it from there. You know, it's a piece of it, and it's great marketing. And thanks for giving me the 300 leads. But they're not qualified. I don't even call them leads. They're scanned people that you're not even sure was looking at solution or not.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think if we extend this to digital marketing, I think one of the great things that digital marketing has done over the last, say, 15, 20 years is it has made marketing a lot more measurable. But that's been a blessing and a curse because as it's made marketing more measurable with things like being able to measure a cost per MQL cost for SQL. It's also enabled that division between marketing and sales because marketing has their measurable KPIs that they can judge their success on. And oftentimes in my experience that is the volume of leads and the cost per lead. And that lead could be called marketing qualified or sales qualified or sales ready. But one of the interesting things that I see happening now and that this is going to be driven by AI is that slowly but surely people are migrating from a search experience to m more of an AI, a gen AI experience where they're chatting and less and less people are going to be clicking through to websites which means less real marketing signal that digital marketing used to be able to track. And uh, we're kind of coming full circle again. And I think that this presents an opportunity large scale realignment of marketing and sales because when you marketing doesn't have the same granularity and of KPIs that they used to be able to have visits and clicks and cost per click and cost per mql, I think that they will be forced to realign with sales which is that is everything we're doing contributing to sales pipeline growth and if so we're going to keep doing that and if not we're going to experiment with new things. But what do you think about that? Is AI, the move into AI giving an opportunity for a uh, realignment of marketing and sales?

Speaker B: That's a big question, right? Everyone's hearing AI. AI is everywhere. And the business that I'm running today in the very large BPO space, business process outsourcing, where we're literally in South Africa and we're taking data analyst jobs, HR jobs, back office jobs. And this is really an extension of a team that's here in the States, but in the contact center everyone. I get phone calls, I get probably 3 to 5 L's a week with someone trying to convince me that AI is going to make my data center more efficient. And it may, but there's much noise on AI today and from where I sit, don't get me wrong, I use AI in my personal life, I use AI in my business life. But AI is still very much in my view a human evolvement. It works better with a human. I'm getting pitch that AI is going to replace humans and I don't see it. But I do think that AI is helpful for marketing because it allows you to be able to get a clearer, faster message to market And I do think that AI will help sales and marketing in a realignment. It's not rocket science. At the end of the day, your sales leader, whether it's the director of sales, VP of sales, CRO, whatever you call that person, without sales, there is no company. Without sales, there's no marketing. Without sales, there's no product development. So the sales leader should really be working, whoever you are out there working hand in hand with marketing, because those two people hold the keys to the kingdom. Right? You can have the best product in the world, but if you don't have a, uh, marketer that's marketing out to your total addressable market, if you don't have a, uh, sales leader that understands what that market is, you know you're not going to go, so you got a great product, great. I believe that sales and marketing have to be aligned because your chances of success are far, far, far greater than when the two are aligned that when they're riding shotgun.

Speaker A: Yeah, couldn't agree more. I, uh, want to pivot over a bit to the just culture and international go to market. I remember that you joked in our first conversation that one of the US Founders that you worked with said something to the effect of, we're going to just go and conquer Europe as if it's a, uh, domestic road trip. And you've lived a lot in the States, Memphis and now in Maine. But you've also lived in Paris and Denmark, from what I understand. What do you think are some of these cultural blind spots of US Founders that they miss when they think about international go to market?

Speaker B: I'm going to say this as politically correct as I can because I've worked with a lot of them, um, here, and I've worked with a lot of founders in Europe and Asia too, that have similar mentalities. So what I think happens is, let's use the analogy here in the States. So you have success in the States because you found at your company here, you understand the market and you know that first 5 million, 0 to 5 is a challenge. 5 to 10 is a different challenge. 10 to 15, 15 to 20. But if you can make it to 20 million, by all accounts, you've got a real company that's ready to scale and grow and go conquer the world. But just because you've been successful here, the same mentality, mindset, marketing is not the same. It just simply doesn't translate across the pond and vice versa. Anyone coming into the States, you can have a great product solution in Europe. And a lot of times people want to Come and expand into the big United States. But the fundamental flaw that most everyone does, and I've been guilty of it, they take the US Sales team, and they say, you know, hey, Jack, go over and spend a week in Europe. Okay, so now I'm a European, but I don't know shit about, you know, the way Europeans work. I don't know the market. So that is a huge disconnect. It's a stupid thing to do. If you've got a product, a solution that you're selling, you need to understand, well, how does that translate into whatever new market I'm wanting to go into? And then you find local people that understand the local way of doing business. When I first went to Europe as a general manager for atg, running a very sizable business in Paris because I was the only guy that spoke French. So that was the qualification, you know, back then, you know, Jack, you can speak French, go over to Paris and fix it. Because we had bought a company, and. And the French guy couldn't work with the Americans. So there was already a, uh, disconnect within the first six weeks, where the French guy's like, oh, the Americans are crazy. So they send an American over to France to fix it. And I just thought, well, I know the product. I know how to sell it. I've been successful here. I'll just show up and it'll happen. Absolutely got my ass kicked. It was a hard landing. I came in with that American mentality that I'm the smartest guy in the room. Just ask me, you know, I know how to sell the product. And so it wasn't a, uh, good first six weeks. And so one of the salespeople said, hey, listen, if you're so good, why don't you go out and show us how to sell this? Because I was trying to, you know. Armchair quarterback, right? You know, hey, I'm smart. I know how to do it. Go do this, this and this. I can remember being in the boardroom with the team, and I said, you know what? That's not a bad idea. I said, I tell you what, everyone give me two accounts around the table. Two accounts. So I think I had 12 accounts, and I went out and absolutely got bloodied, ended up closing six of them. So 50% record. But that was that aha moment for me where I said, wait a minute. Now I understand the market. Now I can tell them, if you do A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, you'll probably get the deal. And on the deals that I didn't get, I Did a complete post mortem on why was it the product didn't fit, our pricing was off, whatever it was. So now I had valuable information that was factual to go out and run the sales show. But that analogy, uh, thank God I got it early on. But I've seen it in my career, the same thing. Europeans wanting to come tackle the American market. So they put a guy on an airplane from Germany that comes over here. And the German accent, it's not very flattering. So you're never going to be successful. You know, you get local people in the market as quick as possible once you know that your product or solution is a fit for wherever you're going.

Speaker A: Yeah, great advice getting local people on the ground as soon as possible. Let's move over to go to market. This has been one particular area that you focused on throughout your career is go to market strategies and playbooks. And you've been doing a lot of advisory work. So when you parachute in to a company as an advisor, what are the first three numbers, KPIs that you would want to look into and what do they tell you about the health of the business?

Speaker B: So it's really four that I use. Uh, the first one's the age of the company, how long they've been doing what they do. A year or two years. Because that's going to be a leading indicator, I'll tell you a minute, the size of revenue. So you've been in business for X amount of years, you're doing this much revenue, the size of your sales team. So how many salespeople do you have hitting that revenue? And then what is the total addressable market? You have a solution that is. It's finance only. So you're in this limited finance space. Do you have a solution that fits three verticals, eight verticals, whatever it is. Surprisingly though, I run across organizations that have been in business for a number of years that don't know what their total addressable market is. And I don't judge anyone these days because there's no guarantee in business how to be successful. But if you're a company that's been in business for five years and you're 5 million in revenue and you got three sales reps and you got a solution that hits one thing, you probably, um, not going to grow that thing. But I was working with a company advising just within the past year and they had a solid solution that addressed a specific need and a specific vertical and they just weren't growing sales. It had been in business for seven years and this is where I did use AI, by the way. Once I understood the company, what they were doing, I actually plugged into chat. GPT said, hey, how many other markets could benefit from this solution? And of course, it took me a couple of times to get the messaging just right, but I opened up eight different markets where they didn't have to revamp the product so everything would work. They just needed to go a different way. So, uh, again, it's just common sense things for me. But I believe that people get into business and they can't see the forest for the trees. Right. They come every day and they just do the same thing. But if you're doing the same thing, expecting different results, you're going to have to look at things differently. So age of company, size of revenue, size of team, and total addressable market would be the four that I start with.

Speaker A: Yeah, I want to think through that a bit because it's interesting that you mentioned the size of the sales team relative to the size of the company and of course the tam. So what would indicate to you that the sales team is either too big or too small relative to the tam, relative to the age of the company and to the company's revenue? What would tell you, this team's too small, we need to hire or we need to downsize it.

Speaker B: What typically happens, and I'm sure there's going to be some eye rolls out there when people hear this because they know it's true. In any organization, any organization, I could walk into anyone right now, knock on the door and guarantee you that, let's say It's a company, $10 million and they got five sales reps. One or two of those guys or girls are doing 90% of the revenue. And it's institutional knowledge in most cases as well. You know, why is Jack always the number one rep? Well, he's been here the longest. Okay, I want to understand why Jack's so good. Well, you're going to have to hang out with me. He's too busy, you know, he can't train you. You're going to have to just absorb this by listening to him, you know, get on a call. So what typically happens is the majority, especially in this 0 to 10 million stage, which is where companies are most volatile, is that it's typically one individual that's doing 90% of the sales. So what that means is that you've got the other five individuals that they could have been superstars somewhere else and they probably know sales, but it goes back to the total addressable market. Where this one person has been with the company longer and they've gone out and they've got kind of a, uh, pigeonholed on the market. And it's tough for new people to come in and do that. Also, most companies, a big flaw is they don't provide training, onboarding. I don't care how smart you are and how good you are across the street, when you come into my house, it's different. The way that we do things is different. Our solution. I've been in the cybersecurity space for a long time selling very similar solutions, but there are nuances. They're different. And if you don't train your team, know what happens is so many founders and CEOs, they go out and they say, hey, the revenue number this year has increased 30%. And we feel like that our quotas are where they need to be at, you know, a million five, $2 million. So go out and hire five people for 150k each, whatever the salary, um, is. So you go do that. But if you don't train these people on the solution, on the go to market, on the differences that why are people buying your solution versus the other three people that do something similar? You're just not going to be successful. But typically, in any sales organization, it's those top one, two, or three people that do 90% of the revenue. And a lot of these people are prima donnas that don't want to play with other reps. They don't want to share why they're successful, but most of it's only because they've been there longer and they figured out the shortcuts.

Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe in a way, they're boxing out some of the rising stars, and it could be a sign that they should move along in some cases.

Speaker B: Yep. Yep. I'm a big believer that in my career, I'm very transparent in the way that I communicate. And it's always unfortunate when somebody doesn't make it in sales. But in order to be successful, you can't be, you know, they're. I mean, everyone's my friend, but I would tell you, you know, hey, Paris, I'd bring you in and say, hey, listen, man, you're off on your number because you got to track it. You got to have those uncomfortable conversations and say, hey, I'm going to put you on a performance improvement plan for the next 30 days, and I'm going to work with you hand in hand. It's all. It's just a numbers metrics game to ensure that we can get you to be successful. And if you're not, another big thing that leaders just suck at is is making the hard change. If somebody's not doing it in six months, chances are they're not going to be doing it in 12 months. Cut your losses. And sales leaders, you know what I'm talking about, you know what success looks like. And if you don't have the DNA of the individual, cut your losses. And that's the way you also grow or fail is you keep people on board longer than you should.

Speaker A: Yeah. And a lot of times those, those prima donnas have gotten to a place where they're not really team players anymore. Let's say they're culturally not, not a great fit. And if you, if you remove them, you give the opportunity for the younger hungry people to fill that void and to prove their own potential and maybe allow the next stars to emerge.

Speaker B: Very well said. I couldn't agree more.

Speaker A: Yeah, I want to talk about the money side of the go to market now a little bit. Imagine you're a seed stage B2B SaaS founder and you've got just a hundred K to spend in one quarter for go to market. How would you allocate those funds and how would you think about how to go to market on a tight budget?

Speaker B: I've, uh, spent most of my career on a tight budget. So it's great that, you know, you've got all these AI tools and you've got all these solutions and I get pitched all the time. But as a young startup, as you mentioned, seed money people can't afford Salesforce as their CRM m, you know, so they use something that I've never even heard of before and God knows I've seen a lot of them. Um, and that's okay, right? Because you don't need the tools as long as you have a solution or a product that works and you've got a market that you're selling into and you know that those two things are in existence. What I would do is it's all top of the funnel activities that you have to go to market with. You've got to be able to figure out where are you going to apply that pressure and then what do you need? I'm a big believer that a BDR team, business development reps, because you can hire them at a much, much lower cost than your killers. Right. Uh, it amazes me the amount of money that we're paying the sales reps that are out of school. They don't have the experience. But let's Just say you get some $100,000 is a lot of money to pay somebody that has no real experience. But regardless, you've got a sales team. Let's say that you've done all of that, now you're going to market. I believe that when sales and marketing work together and you can get alignment with the cost of whatever budget you've been giving. But marketing has to go before sales. You have to get out in front so that people understand what is it that you're selling. Depending on how many leads are out there, BDR team that has a list. Let's just say it's even from a trade show that you got budget. You go to a trade show, do you want your hundred thousand dollar person on the phone? Hey Paris, it's Jack. I, uh, met you at the trade show, was wanting to know if you'd like to talk next Tuesday from 10 to 11. Yes or no? Or would you rather have a $40,000 BDR rep that's doing that? And the answer is, you know, obviously a lower cost to be able to do that. And when you can get people that you can, there's a lot of different ways to qualify. But even that in and of itself, if you got a BDR rep, what does a lead look like? Well, I would say do they have budget as a sales rep, you know, the BDR passes it over. Do they have budget? Yeah, talk to them. They do have budget. What's the timing on this? Oh, within the next six months. Great, I got that. So if they can give you these tidbits now, you as a sales rep, you've got information to be able to go into that. But to get that information probably took three different touches and you just got to be smart with it. Do you want to use your A player to do that or do you want to keep them in for these high level conversations? But to go back to exactly what you asked, if I had a limited budget, I would definitely sit down with my team, understand what those moves are and try to stay within budget. But you want to get the most amount of penetration for the least amount of budget.

Speaker A: So if this is a space, let's say it's a fairly established category and um, there is an awareness of the category and there's an awareness of the leading brands in that category. Would you spend it? Let's just say of that hundred K, how much would you allocate towards the top of the funnel versus let's say the bottom of the funnel, assuming that there's a lot of action at the bottom of the funnel, there's a lot of people searching and you can get in front of high intent buyers down there. But you haven't built a brand yet, you're a new brand. How would you allocate that 100k? Top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel.

Speaker B: That's a great question because I'm actually living it with Amplify 5 right now. We're not a startup, but it's a similar situation that what we've talked about. We're a UK based company where we provide all of our services in Cape Town, South Africa. That's where our four office locations are. We've got about a thousand colleagues working for us. But I'm here in the States trying to sell Amplify 5, trying to educate Amplify 5 back and it was very limited budget. Right. We actually have no brand at all because we're so far away. Right. South Africa. Most people here in the States were taught outsourcing in the Philippines, India, so they're not thinking about South Africa. So what you'll notice is I've got a lot of awareness on my LinkedIn page about what we're doing, right. I'm not trying to sell Amplify 5, I'm trying to seed the market on why is it valuable to do business processing outsourcing in Africa. So I'm giving education. You could call it top of the funnel. But I actually think, because in doing that I've had a lot of people reach out to me on LinkedIn and had conversations. So that's easy table stakes, that if you're not representing yourself, the only thing that we've got, you know, Unlike Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, it's LinkedIn that's really the social networking. There are others out there, but LinkedIn is by far the largest. So if you're not tuned up on your LinkedIn, you need to do that. But I would also say with that budget, the bottom of the funnel, it could be going to the one industry trade show that's tuned into your specific industry and you know that people that buy your solution or product are going to be there. It's not a stupid way to spend your money either, but you got to be very laser focused and not, uh, again, just be clicking people, set up meetings in advance, have these conversations. I'm going to Vegas from December 9th through the 12th on a very, very limited budget. I've already got three meetings set up because I'm working the network. Hey, I'm going to be there. You're going to be there. Why should I have to fly and see you someplace else? Let's have a conversation.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Uh, so you mentioned Vegas, and I'm going to make maybe a bit of an awkward transition here to Elvis Presley. I was looking for a bridge over to the Elvis conversation. You just gave it to me. So you grew up practically in his backyard. You rode your 10 speed bike to Elvis's funeral. What did growing up next to Graceland teach you? And even his whole life and his career, what did all that teach you about storytelling and brand that you can also share with our audience?

Speaker B: Number one, I had just an amazing childhood, you know, normal family. And we lived in Memphis, Tennessee, which is 40 years ago. But our backyard bunked up to Graceland's racquetball courts. And Graceland had a way bigger backyard than we did. So it just became the place where we were constantly playing football and would not be uncommon at all to see Elvis. I've even got some pictures of Elvis throwing the ball with us. But I was 6, 7, 8 years old. We even shared a dentist together. But I didn't know, other than him having a big backyard. I had no idea who Elvis Presley was. But right when I got into university and I just didn't even know that Elvis was the superstar because you got to just remember he was just the neighbor. But once I realized the affinity that most people have for Elvis, even kids today that have no idea he's been dead so long, Elvis is still a thing. And that gave me the ability because I was actually a little shy, surprisingly, uh, growing up. But when people hear the Elvis story, it kind of bridged the gap, right? It gave me something to talk about that people were interested in. And then it got me thinking about telling the stories and developing this personality. But I would say that Elvis was a very kind of critical piece of me learning. And the crazy thing is I can remember a couple of interactions with, with Elvis that he too was just playing with the neighborhood kids, playing ball, right? And then I see on YouTube the Elvis videos. That was his job. That wasn't what I experienced at all with the man. And that's another thing that, you know, this is my job, what I do. This is what I love to do. It's different. So many times, you know, we put people in these buckets. Jack the CRO. The CRO is what pays my mortgage and allows me to, uh, live on an island in Maine. But it's one piece of my personality. I'm way deeper than just this conversation. But I've been doing it for so long, it feels natural to me now. Just like telling the Elvis story, it's always cool for somebody to hear. But it's just a piece of who I am now. It's a piece of how I grew up.

Speaker A: Yeah. And to connect that with sales, I also think some of the best salespeople are great storytellers because often what the prospect remembers from a conversation are, uh, the tangible stories. The thing that I remembered most from our first conversation is that, that you grew up next door to Elvis. And I was going to find a way to work that into our interview here. And I do think that the best brands also are storytellers. And if you are, uh, in a go to market situation, a new company trying to establish a brand, what I see happen all the time in mature categories is, oh, well, we have this amount of people searching for these keywords and they're searching for our competitors. Let's just go after that. We can measure it. We know cost per click is $3 and we'll convert 1% and that's going to give us $300 cost per lead. But they ignore building a brand and trying to build a story and connect that story to the brand. And I think that's where I see a lot of mistakes made because people remember the brands that have a story attached to them and whether subconsciously or unconsciously when it comes time for them to buy. And if it's the brand that I know with that story versus some other guy and the features are all the same, maybe the price is about the same or maybe even the known brand is even a little bit higher still, I have a bias. I'm actually willing to pay a premium because of that brand and because the story associated with it. And I think that's a really important lesson too for salespeople. Whether you tell a story about your success with another customer that looks like the person you're talking to that they can relate to, or if it's some other story that is most likely going to be the most memorable piece of that conversation that makes you stand out.

Speaker B: I think the people that are successful in this business, you have to be a good storyteller. You know, I've, uh, met people that are full of shit and they're, they're that kind of storyteller. But, but I think when you get to a certain maturity in life, you can live off of those lessons. And a lot of the things that I talk about are the failures. We've not really talked about the failures People want to talk about the success, but the failures, man, embrace them and embrace the uh, and learn from it. You don't have to accept it. But again, like we said in the top of the hour, there's so many things out of your control. You know, you could be with a really subpar management team and you could be the best sales leader and marketer in the world. You know, these things have to come together. And on the story thing, one of the things I absolutely love about Alistair, the CEO at Amplify5, is that he started this company. He was on the other side of the desk. So literally he was the guy buying these services and he said, you know, it's just such a dirty business, why doesn't somebody redo it? So he started this business from a place of um, I'm going to do it from the way I would like to buy this type of solution. And if you go to our website, one of the first things that I advise them on was the website's not telling a story. It's just like every other's website, everybody else's website. So when you go to the Amplify5 website, the first, first thing that you see is the founder's story. And it's impactful for people that are looking at those types of services. They're like, you know, hey, I was you, I, uh, sat in the chair, I did bad business with people. So I decided to create this company and do it a different way. And he walks through that methodology. It gives credibility and it's the first thing people see at the website. And when I'm over here, that story resonates with people. You know, many times I'll go into a meeting and I'll say, hey, have you been to the website? No, we haven't. Say, before we get going, I just want to show you a quick three minute video and that sets the context. That's the hook, right? Not everyone's going to have a founder story, but if you do, and if you've created a company that you know was against all odds, actually I don't think anyone's created a company without a story. Tell your story, be proud of it, that's your baby. And chances are, if you more personable in your approach, that's the way people want to buy. And back to the AI piece, AI can't do that, right? At least I believe people are still going to buy from people. Now they may do all their research, they may use AI to find you. The marketing people are going to have to be sharp on what those triggers are. But at the end of the day, people are still going to buy by doing this. And if you've got three solutions that are basically the same solution, similar price points, what's the difference? The difference is you.

Speaker A: That's it.

Speaker B: People are going to still buy from people.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's one of the reasons why I think that sales is one of the most AI proof functions in a company. For exactly that reason, people are going to be more comfortable buying from another human being. And those salespeople are going to be able to craft a story in a way that AI, even as advanced as it may get with realistic avatars and uh, all the training in the world, I don't think that they're going to be able to detect subtle cues in the middle of a conversation. And to have that emotional intelligence, no

Speaker B: one will be able to have a conversation like that.

Speaker A: This.

Speaker B: I just don't think that uh, that AI is ever in our lifetime will be there. I use co pilot this morning to listen to a conference call that I didn't listen to last week. So it gave me all the highlights. So AI is very helpful in time savings and adding a layer of intelligence on top of what your thought process is. So AI is definitely helpful, but AI is never going to replace the authentic way that we're communicating right now.

Speaker A: Yeah. And even in that example that you gave, let's say someone on that call that you missed heard something that quite like. And they just made a slight, you know, expression. There was an expression that passed over for a second. Maybe they didn't want to even reveal that pleasure. But you could have caught that had you been even not physically in the room. And if you had been on that call, you might have detected, ah, uh, something's not quite right. I didn't like that reaction. No words were spoken. The AI notetaker is going to completely miss that. But that's the emotional intelligence piece that is true.

Speaker B: However, on that same thing, because you, you brought out a great point. I couldn't make the call. So having the note taker, it gave me the bullet points. But you're absolutely right, it could have given me a bullet point. But that bullet point could have been completely fake or false because of the way it was delivered with the eye roll, like, whatever, you're right. But you've got a limited amount of time. Is it better than nothing? Is it better than missing the call? Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm with you on that too. I actually now rely very heavily on those AI, uh, note takers. And I almost can't imagine life, uh, without those note takers now. Yeah, uh, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, almost every call I show up on, it's got the note taking device.

Speaker A: Jack, we could go on and on here. This has been a lot of fun. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you that you think could benefit our audience as we wrap?

Speaker B: I love having these conversations. People say, success. How do you measure success? And in my opinion, success is measured in how you feel about what you're doing. So you may not be selling, but if you're wicked smart on your solution, you're passionate about what you're talking about and you apply that in a positive way, success will find you, period. Uh, again, I go back to the failures and sells. Anyone out there that's in sales, you've had far more failures than you're ever going to have in success. Take those failures and learn from them. I learn every single day from the failures and I incorporate those. And again, people say, oh man, success. I've had six exits and an ipo. Okay, I worked hard for those things, but I worked just as hard for the failures and I learned far more from them. So that's what I would like to leave with is don't think in this very dynamic market where people, companies do ipo, people change jobs frequently. Follow your heart. And when you have that bad failure, there's probably some great lessons to be learned from it.

Speaker A: Great words of advice there. So, Jack, where can people find you online?

Speaker B: My LinkedIn profile, as I mentioned earlier, you can find me and would be more than willing to help anyone. If there's something in this podcast that, that you want to debate, feel free. Uh, or if you want to get deeper into having more dialogue. I love the conversation. I love what I do for a living and I love helping others become successful.

Speaker A: Well, thanks very much, Jack. And, uh, for those who may have trouble, there are a lot of Jack Wilsons and LinkedIn. You can also just do LinkedIn.com Ironman Wilson. Uh, there are several Jack Wilsons out there, but there's only one Iron man Wilson on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: And I think the background picture is me running through the salt flats, I believe.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you've got this great outfit. It looks like almost, uh, Star wars esque picture.

Speaker B: When you're running the salt flats, the reflection from the salt, there were people that actually had sunburns on the roof of their mouth. So the advisement was, wear white, the reflection will kill you. And it was a very disorienting on the salt. I think we ran like 30. 30 miles before. I mean, it was a 100 mile race, but the first 30 miles was on this just salt flat. Very disorienting. But that's. That picture is. I was trying to reflect as much of that as possible in that white get up.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's great. Well, Jack, thanks for spending the time. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker B: Paris. I enjoyed it as well. I wish you continued success and I appreciate the time that you've given me today. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you, too.