Endurance and Optimism in Sales Leadership with Justin Griffin

Speaker A: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Pillar Talk. I'm Rick Smolin. Here on this podcast we build the foundations of sales leadership success, trying to create clarity in terms of what good looks like from for current and aspiring sales leaders. We are joined today with Justin Griffin, the SVP of sales for Computer Center. Justin, thanks for joining us today on Pillar Talk. Justin, maybe you can share a little bit about computer, uh, center and what you do.

Speaker B: Hi Rick, thanks for having me on. And I have to start by saying we're both in mourning a little bit today over the demise of our beloved, uh, Philadelphia 76ers, once again just ripping our heart out and disappointing us. But I am hopeful in sales, I think you have to be positive and I'm thinking next year we have some space to go out and get another stud player and maybe we'll have a, uh, three headed monster instead of a two headed monster and better results next year.

Speaker A: I mean this is a demonstration of your positive attitude and your optimistic leadership that you continue to trust in the process.

Speaker B: So, so it's getting harder every year. Um, but to answer your question, uh, Computer center, we're probably not a household, uh, brand for a lot of people. Part of the reason is we only sell to large enterprise customers. That's our single segment. We're big B2B technology, hardware, software and services providers and we're typically selling to Fortune 500 type of customers. If you're the CIO, ah, at a Fortune 500 customer, you probably know Computer center and what we do, what we offer. And if you're outside of that type of organization or that type of role, it may not be a brand that you're familiar with.

Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that context as we go into the conversation, Justin, um, because here we're going to talk about sort of sales leadership. And the thing that I find particularly interesting about your career and what's worth exploring a bit is, you know, a lot of times today you see folks that are, you know, job hopping, they're in a role here, then they go there. And You've had a 20 year career of rising up the ranks through a single organization, now there's an acquisition within there. But, um, it's rare to see someone that has risen from an individual contributor all the way to leading a global sales organization. And I want to explore a little bit about kind of those pivotal moments of making those leaps from those various levels of leadership. And so one of the things that I think is an attribute of successful leaders is around endurance and stamina and work ethic And I remember a story that you shared with me the last time we were together around how your normal week was. You would fly to San Francisco from the east coast on like a Monday, you'd have your meetings there and then on a Thursday you'd have your meetings all day. Internal customer. You'd go out to a dinner or at a client event. And then you'd go from the client event and the dinner to the airport where you would get on a red eye, sleep in perfect position, and then land in New York the next morning and ready to go full tilt on the next day. And to me that was like, wow. To be able to do that on a regular basis was something I had a hard time wrapping my head around. And I was like, that's just someone that can work harder and has more endurance than somebody like me. So what is the magic elixir or secret that you used to be able to do that so effectively?

Speaker B: Thank you for the accolades on that. But, um, I don't want anybody to think I'm Superman because I'm human too and I get really tired. But yeah, that was my strategy. Those red eyes back from SFO to, uh, EWR, there's one at 9 o' clock and if you missed that, there's one at 11 and then there's one at uh, 12. But we would go hard in San Francisco all day with meetings and stuff. That was my strategy, was to exhaust myself so that when I got to my seat I would just collapse and try to maximize the five hour flight. If you can sleep from the second that you get onto the flight to the second that you land, hey, you might get five or six hours of sleep. Uh, so that was always the goal. But I do say, man, those red eyes, I think they all take two weeks off your life so you have to be careful on those. And now that I'm a little bit older, I try not to do as many anymore, but they're unavoidable. And one thing, it's all about getting home to the family. That's really what it's about. You can stay over in California, by the way. I live in New York. Right, but I should say New Jersey. People from New, uh, York get offended if I don't specify that. But uh, if you're in San Francisco late on a Thursday, yeah, it's easier to just crash locally and then take the um, early flight home the next day. But you're going to lose the 5 hours plus the 3 hour time zone change. So you're not getting home till 4 o' clock at the earliest. And, um, if you want to have a good balance of going hard at work and being a good leader and servicing your people, that's what you're doing. But you also have to go home and be a good leader with your family and your kids and be a great husband. And that means you got to be present. So, um, those red eyes, I think are essential for people that are trying to do both of those things really well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I just think for me, I was always in awe of the willingness to do the work, willingness to do the hard things that the normal average person wouldn't do in order to find, in your case, the balance between, uh, professional success and personal success. And so I was always just, you know, to me, the folks that tend to succeed in their careers are just doing things a little bit more, you know, a little bit more aggressively and a little bit more at a higher endurance level than others. So I was always just super impressed by that. But so, Justin, just as you think about your career in one organization for, you know, multiple decades in terms of doing this, there was a pivotal point where you go from individual contributor to the sort of leader. And I'd love to maybe reflect back on that period of transition.

Speaker B: Yeah, first I have to say that, um, that sales, individual contributor role, in my opinion, one of the, one of the great jobs that you can have. And I say that because it changed my life. I really didn't get into sales until I was what, 30 years old. I really came up through like a big five consulting company. And then I spent a lot of time doing project management and service delivery. And um, a mentor of mine really pushed me into individual contributor, sales role. And this was about 2008, and I got to say, I just had my second child. So I had a two year old and a newborn. And 2008, as we all know, financial crisis hit and that was a really difficult, um, time. It was really stressful. I had a balloon mortgage on my house. We were kind of like house poor, over our skis a little bit. And I was really, really stressed. And, um, having just started sales that same year, the timing was tough. But that's where I developed a little bit of like a callous attitude of like, you gotta persevere through this and grind through it and try to remain positive. Even though there's a lot of data that suggests, hey, no one's gonna buy anything in 2008, people are not investing in technology. But you have to, um, not, not lose faith. You have to Keep grinding and make something happen. And right at the end of 2008 into 2009, started winning some big, uh, orders. And that drove, you know, commissions. And with those commissions, I was able to pay down my house and really, like, change the financial trajectory of my family. And, um, that's the power of a sales role. And what other role can you do that in where, you know, you can double your income year over year over year, and that really quickly changes your outlook and what your family situation looks like. So to me, that role is an, uh, incredible role because you're always paid exactly what you're worth. If you're a big hitter and you're bringing in millions and millions of dollars for your employer, you're going to be rewarded for that. The opposite is also true. If you're struggling and year after year you're not selling much, right, Someone's going to be looking at you on a spreadsheet and asking a lot of questions. Um, but of course, both those things have to be true. But that individual contributor role is everything to me. It's the ultimate job security because you know that if you can pick up a bag and sell, you'll never be worried about a job again for the rest of your life. Because, you know, you can always go back to that if you need to. And for me, what that also allows you to do is having that confidence that you have job security, being able to pick up a bag and go sell something. Now, as you explore other roles, you don't have to play it safe. You can really put your opinions out there and you can take risks because you know you have this thing that you can always fall back on. So it's like having a parachute or like a soft landing. And, um, I think there's a couple of forks in the road as you, as you grow as an individual contributor in sales. You're going to end up in leadership whether you like it or not, because you're going to be a victim of your success. And at some point you're going to land so many customers and win so many deals and that you can't keep track of it all. And you're going to start looking to hire or bring on additional people onto your team because you simply can't keep up. So, uh, you're now you're in leadership because you just hired an analyst to help you, or you hired a junior sales rep. I would look at, like, real. We have a realtor in our town or the next town over, and he's one of the top realtors in the country. And he does, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of uh, residential listings every year. His name's always on the sign. But when you go to the open house, he's not there. It's his team that's there. Right, because that's how he scaled the business. He's not single handedly going to every open house and every showing and every listing, but he's the listing agent. It's still his brand. And that's what all rainmaker sellers are going to be. In that situation where you have to, that fork in the road of like, hey, I can't do this alone, I got to start adding some people. I guess that's probably the player manager role, but mostly player. Right. And then you'll have another fork in the road where uh, because you can't do that forever. Um, or maybe you can, but you'll have uh, a calling at some point whether you want to go all in on leadership or remain in that rainmaker role. And for me, the decision criteria there was, it was, I was having a lot of fun watching the newer people win. Right. The first million dollar deal you get, it's amazing. You go home, you take your, your wife to dinner and it's just, you're smiling ear to ear and it's so exciting. By the time you've won your, your 50th or 60th deal of that size, you don't get that same rush. But I tell you what, when you hire somebody new and you watch them win their first million dollar deal and you see them light up, uh, you get that same feeling again, that same satisfaction. And I think as you realize, hey, I'm getting more enjoyment and excitement and fulfillment out of watching other people win than winning myself. In my opinion. Now you're ready to consider full time sales leadership versus uh, maybe that hybrid player manager role.

Speaker A: So in your situation, you describe sort of two dynamics. One is like once you start to have success as an individual contributor and become indispensable within the organization, you have an ability to take risk. Uh, on the other hand, as you have success with an organization, you have the imperative to get resources and you know, to build out a team. Were both of those dynamics in place in your personal story?

Speaker B: Yeah, for um, the taking a risk part probably comes in you know, with like the next job that you're going after as well. But uh, yeah, like it's certainly by having a track record of success as an individual contributor either within the company you currently work at or another company. Like if you have a reputation of being like, hey, I'm a rainmaker. I can go out and hang with the big dogs. That gets you a lot of credibility in our world. You have a lot of different technology partners that you're working with and you have to. Having a great reputation in that community really helps. Uh, but even internally, I mean, you cannot do this alone. In sales, right? We talk about this all the time. You're going nowhere unless the other departments have your back. You have a service team, you have a product team, and um, they have to really rally around and support you. So yeah, having that credibility, that track record, success, definitely going to make life easier as you move into that next role.

Speaker A: And so what was that pivot point where you made the call to go full time sales leadership?

Speaker B: Yeah, for me it was uh, just a situation where our local office in New York, we had had some attrition and um, I put a lot of like blood, sweat and tears into, uh, building it. And there was, you know, a handful of us that were really passionate about it and we wanted to see this thing keep going and going and going and give other people, uh, the same opportunity that we had to change our lives. And um, in order for this thing to keep going, in order for this thing to be successful long term, like somebody had to take the reins that had the energy and the passion and the belief that this thing could be sustainable and just keep it growing. Right? Sales team has to grow. You can't be flat, you can't be on your way down. That's not, um, a formula for success and that's the opposite of sales. Sales is all about winning and growing. And those are the dynamics, those are the environment in the New York metro region where someone needed to take the reins, um, and be in control of that. Strangely, I'm in that role for a year or two, shedding some of the accounts that I owned, um, and moving into that full time leadership role. By the way, really hard to do both. It's lame to go back to your team at the end of the day and they're looking for help winning their deals and they want your guidance, they want your support. And you're telling them, hey, I'm too busy because I have my own customers and I'm consumed for the next two days getting my own customers deal across the finish line. I don't see how long term you can sustain as a leader by trying to do both of those things. So if you really want to love on your people and support them and watch them grow, you have to make that leap of faith. But for me it was really interesting because the um, about a year or two into that role, the next level up, that L2 job, uh, opened up because there was um, it just wasn't going in the right direction. Also kind of like a football team sometimes. Um, since we already talked about Philadelphia sports, like Andy Reid is a good example. I think everybody knew Andy Reid was an amazing coach even when the Eagles got rid of him. But they just needed a new voice, they needed a new change or they felt like they did right. And Andy Reid's gone on to do amazing things and, and the Eagles went on to win a Super bowl without him. So it's kind of one of those scenarios. Sometimes you just need a new voice in the locker room. And that was probably more what it was like. So for that now that L2 leadership job, now it's different because you have to reframe it. When you're the local leader in a regional model, you're still sleeping in your own bed during the week, right? Yeah. You're having some long nights, but you're not really traveling. And for me, I look at, in terms of coaching, I love to coach kids sports. In that local job, I could coach, uh, youth football. So eight year old football, tackle football. Guess what? For six weeks, July through early September, you have to practice every night. They don't let little kids play tackle football unless they've had the requisite hours of practice time in. That means every single night at six o' clock there's a practice. And if you're the coach, you have to be present for that. You can do that as an individual contributor, you can do that as a L1 leader. But when you take that L2 position and now you're going to be traveling, you're going to be on the road, guess what? You got to make that trade off. You're not going to be able to coach the football team anymore. So for me it was keep coaching, but now I got to coach the baseball team which only has to practice twice a week. So we schedule practice on Monday, we schedule practice on Friday. And you can keep doing some of these things, but I think you have to like, for that L2 role, you know that you're going to have to make more personal sacrifice and you have to have a bigger purpose. And you know, for me that purpose is just creating career opportunities for as many people as possible. Like that's what keeps me going. When I'm tired and I'm dragging, I'm thinking to Myself, when there's somebody out there that needs this sales role to change the trajectory of their lives, and I need to go out there and make that opportunity happen for that individual.

Speaker A: And so as you now, when you say L2, we're saying the second line, uh, level management, where you are now managing managers. And so as you enter that type of environment where now your own sort of schedule is now dictated by a wider geography, which means you're traveling and further away and it's a little harder to coach youth sports. For example, you're now, that motivation is now based on the success of this wider team and the empowerment of being able to make an impact on so many more people. Because now your sphere of responsibility and influence is much broader.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's really. It's about having a greater impact. Right. When you, when you're the local regional leader, you can impact that community of people. But as you get a big area or national or global, uh, job. By the way, I have not had a global job, but obviously now you're impacting hundreds, uh, thousands of people. So I tell you what, your words matter even more. Uh, your clarity of thought, your vision, all those things need to be in place. Right. And just back to now, you're thinking about those L, uh one leaders too, and what it means to be successful in that role. Because once you're L2, the whole key is you got to have a killer group of L1 leaders under you. And what are the expectations of those folks? Uh, for me, the main dilemma there is those folks have to figure out the balance between advocating for their people and advocating for their company. Because, let's face it, like, big, you know, big hitting salespeople are type A's. They're challengers. They like to negotiate everything. They're worried about their comp, right? And they're going to come to their leader if there's any, anything that's looking like it's going sideways. If the leader always advocates for their people, they will eventually fall out of favor with, for example, the CFO or the finance department. If the sales leader always advocates for the finance department, they will lose the support and followership of their people. So I think in that role, it's all about, like, finding that balance. And you need to air a little bit towards your people. So if there's 10 decisions to be made, probably seven of them, you need to think about what's in the best interest of my people. And maybe the three are kind of like, what's in the best interest of the company because those things are not always in perfect alignment and perfect harmony. And then as you go to that L2 leadership, maybe it swings to 60, 40 the other way. I don't know exactly what the math is, but I think you get my point. But those are some of the tricky things that, um, those leaders have to worry about. And then also L1 leader, it's like you're not the star anymore. This is so hard for people. It's like you got to go to the meeting. You're used to running the meeting. You're used to running the whiteboard and telling all the funny jokes and the stories and the solutions and all the questions. Right. You have your methodology and you love doing that. And it's so hard to just be the supporting actor when you're used to being the lead actor. I don't know if that resonates with you, Rick.

Speaker A: Well, I think you're hitting on. So the background behind Pillar Talk is that there are sort of the areas, uh, of behavior that impact an organization or success as a sales leader. And one of them is ownership. And ownership is really, it's twofold, but the one key area is like m finding the balance between being about your people and being about the organization. And I love your example. As a first line leader, you really do need to be about your people, but you can't only be about that. And then as a second line leader, you now need to represent the insurance of the organization in a much more broad way. And it's a little harder just to be about the people because there's more of them. Um, and so there's another overlay to this that you described, which is if you're going to have success within your career and continue to rise up in an organization, it's about having the credibility and the belief from your stakeholders around the organization. And so this all sort of comes through in are you making decisions that do find the right balance where you're fair, you're not trying to play favorites around your team, but at the same time you know when to sort of, uh, uh, lean one way or the other? Uh, now that you are in a senior leadership position and you are developing first line leaders, is there anything that you do explicitly in terms of coaching to help them find their footing in this area of ownership?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the role itself, that is a big role. Like in my organization, I'm not a fan of having too many layers of leadership and I'm not a fan of having a narrow scope of control. Uh, what I mean by that is, I want my sales leaders to have a lot of, uh, reports. I want them to have big teams that they can really sink their teeth into. That means they may not know every detail of every deal and what's going on in real time for all of their customers. Because these are big teams, they run across multiple states and there's a lot going on. But to me, that attracts the best talent into those roles. Create these roles where they're too small. You're not going to go out there and get big hitting leaders. So you want these to be like big meaty roles that an A player is going to be really excited to have. And with that comes a sense of empowerment too. Like, I'm not going to, um, uh, put these people in place, give them big roles and then micromanage them. Right? That's not the strategy. I want to empower them. Uh, we give them visibility to their own P&LS, so they really own the profit and loss for that territory. Uh, um, the other thing I learned too is like the best salespeople, they can report to anybody and be successful. So, you know, it's like they don't require a lot, they require some love once in a while. But other than that, they are set it and forget it. We had, um, and I've tested this before too, because our two top salespeople, when I took that, um, L2 job, because they were skewing the numbers, right? So they would have such a great year that the, the whole team would have a great year. So I took the top two salespeople, I said, hey, they'll report directly into me for a year as the L2 leader and let's see how the L1 leaders do without them, right? And so it forced them all of a sudden in their roll ups and their numbers, they didn't have the big rainmaker. Um, so it was more transparent. And I thought that was great. But after a couple years it was like, no, now we want to fold them back into the team, which we did. Um, but I tell you, the whole time. So some of them reported to three different people in three years. Guess what? They grew their business every year. Regardless of this. Why, I'll say our best salespeople, they could report to Mickey Mouse and they will have incredible numbers. So you want your sales leaders again, providing some love and support for the big hitters, the rainmakers, but they're going to be relatively low maintenance. Um, and then you want them really spending more time developing, ah, those people that are in the middle and Then also you want them really inspecting the people that are at the low end to figure out what's going on there. Is that somebody that has the talent and they just need the enablement, the training and some accounts and they're going to rise up or do you have a performance concern there? Those are things that I think you want your L1 leaders to be thinking about.

Speaker A: Okay, so there's a few things we can explore here because I think they're really interesting perspectives. So one, I think ratios between sort of first line leaders and individual contributors is something that, uh, you see varied, you know, strategies to deploy against. And what I heard you share is that, hey, I want to give my first line leadership a very broad, large scope of responsibility so that they can make a, uh, big impact and view it as a role that is not narrowing down their focus. And then at the same time there's like, look, the top performers just need a little bit of love, like set it and forget it so that the first line leader can focus on developing, uh, core performers and then find out what's going on, where there's underperformance. What expectation do you set on first line leadership? Like, what is your expectation of them so that you know that you've got the right team?

Speaker B: So I ask them to do three things. You need to be a business operator. In our company. This is really, really important. Um, our CEO is a tremendous business operator. He can get into a balance sheet and go head to head with, uh, anybody on that stuff. So numbers are really important. Um, having your ducks in a row, knowing where you sit, knowing your P and L owning that, being able to explain things. So if you're not a sound business operator to me, I'm uh, not going to have the patience for that. Right. And we'll develop that and try to get you better at it. And some will be great. Uh, but you have to be at least, okay, you have to be at least solid at it. So that's really, really important. Just the way we run our business. And then the second thing you have to do after you, after business operator is you have to be a people developer. So that means you have to go out and recruit and retain the right talent. And I think when developing people, it doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself. So, uh, in our model, we like to take our junior salespeople and pair them up with the rainmakers and play matchmaker a little bit there and get some mentorship going. Because who better to learn from than someone that's out There doing it every day, someone that can bring you on actual customer meetings and you can see how it's done from the master. So this, the L1 leader needs to create that environment and figure out how to connect the junior salespeople to the senior salespeople so that they grow and develop. Right. It's not all one on one coaching, but you have to develop your people and be successful at that. And then the third thing is value creator. That's the hardest one to put your finger on. Um, because that's where the creativity of sales and of leadership comes into play. You need to go out and create value for your team. What does that mean? That means you might be the one that finds a whale customer and gets that meeting teed up and gets them excited, gets your team excited. Right. Boy, that creates a lot of value. If you can bring in a customer that's going to do millions and millions of dollars of business with us. You may think of we're set up geographically with our sales structure, which means we're not set up vertically. Uh, if you're the New York sales leader, you have financial services customers. If you're the Dallas sales leader, you got a lot of oil and gas. And if you're San Francisco, you have a lot of high tech customers. So you may need to do something that is specific to your industry vertical within your territory, that's not applicable to the other territories. That's something that creates value. So whether it's a service offering or something that's industry specific, I love and I challenge the sales leaders to come up with those ideas, bring them forward and that creates value for your organization and for your team. So those are the three things. Business operator people, developer, value creator.

Speaker A: When you are building out your leadership team, are those the things that you're testing against, like how to test against someone? Being a strong business operator is very different as it relates to the creativity they're using to get in the door or to devise a campaign or program that will, uh, accelerate the number of meetings or opportunities.

Speaker B: Yeah, the first two are easier to measure. Right. Because you're going to do your QBRs, whatever your cadence is to inspect on that stuff. We just had all of our sales leaders presented to our CEO and our president, uh, two weeks ago in Atlanta. So that's, Boy, I tell you what, that forces you to have your thoughts together, your ducks in a row and you can prove in those, uh, sessions whether you are operating your business and whether you're developing people. It's very hard to measure but that third one is very easy to measure. That third one is the sizzle. That slide, when you're presenting it, is almost like a blank canvas. And that's where you are marketing yourself as like, here's my. Here's some ideas I came up with. These are things that other people aren't thinking about. And that, to me is like where you get on the radar of the CEO or of some of the more senior executives as a leader, where someone goes, hey, that person is not just doing the table stakes of that job, the operations and the people part of it. They've got bigger ideas. There's something else in there that they have to offer to the company. And all of a sudden, those are the folks that get labeled as high potential. And when the next promotion opportunity arises, they're kind of at the top of everybody's list.

Speaker A: Yeah, because you think about a normal QBR where it's like, you're going through the pipeline and you're going through like, the needs I have of the business and the things we're going to do and you're creating a bit of emphasis on like, this doesn't just happen. Our success and continued up into the right movement doesn't just happen by going through the motions. There needs to be some type of make the news happen dynamic. And so I want to create space for you as a value creator to have the space to come up with those ideas, then surface them and actually execute through them. That's one of the elements you're going to be measured against as you continue to try to grow in your career.

Speaker B: Yeah. To me, I love this talk track too, about templates. We're having a business review. Everyone always says, well, send me the template. Right. I need the template. I go, tell you what, when the CEO asked me to present, I don't say, hey, Mike, send me the template. He just says, you have to present. It might be to the board, it might be to, uh, him or whoever. But, like, there's no template. Like, that's. It's on me to produce the content and for me to share that which I think is important and relevant. And that's where you get your vision, your creativity expressed too. So I think it's okay to have a few templated slides, but I always say, like any good business review, especially L1 leader, get your blank canvas and show us what your thoughts are. Uh, rather than just filling in templated slides. Yeah.

Speaker A: Creating the space for creativity in your team so that we don't have to. There's not one Way in which to achieve success is great. Justin, just thinking a little bit as you think about your first line leadership and business operator people, developer, value creator, do you use the same lens to evaluate your own performance or is there a different set of priorities for you at a more elevated level to think about how you can impact success in the organization?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's uh, some of those concepts are true across all of leadership. You don't need to all of a sudden. I think it's funny too, as leaders sometimes we like to just come up with new things all the time. You know, we were kickoff this year and we go, uh, well, there was the five really important things that we talked about last year on stage. First, you know, we did our planning go, we got to come up with new ones because the team's already heard about those five. Then we thought about it and we were like, we're literally just coming up with new ideas for the purpose of coming up with new ideas. Those five things are still valid. Like one of them is we need to go out and find more new logo customers. Right. Is that ever going to end?

Speaker A: That's no longer. That doesn't become not important this year.

Speaker B: Right. So we just reframed it in our minds to go, let's take those five from last year and just build a couple more things. So that's what I think that next role is that L2 leader. You still need to do those three things that you had to do in the L1, but there's a couple more layers now, um, that get put on top of that. Hey, one, for example, a good one's like the commission plan. The commission plan typically is consistent across the theater, right across the country or the globe, potentially depending on what your organization looks like. When you're the L1 leader, you have to worry about the commission plan. Right? Somebody else is just deciding what that looks like. But when you have that, um, new own all sales in the US or North America or the globe, now that's your responsibility. So when the board, uh, says, hey, we need to sell more services or we need to sell less of this or more of that, you now need to think about how that ripples through and impacts your commission plan. And now, you know, how are you going to do that? The board, the cfo, the CEO, they're probably going to want you to move a lot faster than you want to move on that. So my strategy on that is always to show people like a three year roadmap. So if we want to sell more of this particular product or service, which sometimes means less of this one. My thought is like, uh, hey, you want that to happen overnight, but change doesn't happen overnight like that. And why don't we build a three year plan where we can chip away at this and flow that strategy into the commission plan. And then you're sitting there having a conversation with your sales team about what the next three years looks like, being really transparent and signaling all those things and telling people, yeah, there's a little, you'll notice a little bit of a change in year one, a little bit more in year two, a little bit more in year three. And that's the end state that we're trying to get to. Tell you what, when you do that, much better received than the wholesale all in one immediate change, that's really where you're at risk of losing followership if you drop those big changes on your team without enough warning. Also, the way you communicate is really important in my opinion. Stuff like commission plan changes, small group communications works the best. If you could do one on ones with all of your salespeople, that would be the best way to do it. Probably impractical though. So the next best thing you can do is get them together in small groups and communicate that stuff and explain the rationale behind it. And to your point, Rick, it's all about fairness, right? You're representing the company, but you're also representing your people and you're explaining to them this has got to be fair for both sides. And we're going to do this slowly and surely over time. And I'm gonna be really transparent with you. And I think when you do that, it builds that trust that you need.

Speaker A: Well, you're taking that value creator concept and applying it to something like the comp plan. You know, we can create value through the mechanisms, uh, that we run the team based on. You mentioned that like, hey, the commission plan is not the top of mind thing to work on as a first line leader, but it becomes something that's really important as you're running the business, uh, at a more senior level. What are some of the other areas that you deem are really important for you to be focused on that in your past careers were not as was not even thought of?

Speaker B: Yeah, right now we own the enablement function. Now that's typically like a nat, right? A national or a global function. So now you have to think about what does good sales enablement look like. Um, I hadn't thought much about that when I was in L2. Like if you want Your army of salespeople to get trained up on a new service or offering, like how do you go about and how do you do that? There's a lot of really ineffective sales enablement out there. There's a lot of like, check the box, go through the motions type of sales enable. And that's not. We. No one really wants that. Right. You want something that's special and powerful and meaningful. So you have to cordon off of.

Speaker A: Did you figure that out?

Speaker B: You have to figure that one out. And then I tell you what, the relationships with the other departments is so imperative. You as the sales leader are representing your entire team. And when you're meeting with the cfo, when you're meeting with the person that runs services, that runs product development, that runs legal marketing, um, hey, legal. If you don't have a good relationship with legal, I mean, they can make your life miserable as a sales team. Right? Because guess what we're doing. Hey, we just got this contract in. We need the red lines back by tomorrow morning at 9am so now the legal team at the end of their day's got to decide do they want to order pizza and stay late in the office, uh, to do you a favor, or they can just say no and go home. And you can't really be mad at them for that. But if you're going to call in favors and do these things ultimately because of your customer, like you're the megaphone for your customer. But you really have to have great relationships with the other departments. So, so you have to carve out time to do that. Right. I always tell like, uh, sometimes you get a customer, maybe they're upset, right. If I'm meeting with them, guess what I can do? I can put more salespeople on the problem. You know, so as a customer that's, that's having maybe a service issue. Do you want more salespeople? No, they don't want more salespeople. They want more services people. They want more engineers, they want project managers. Um, and the only way for me to make some of that stuff happen is to have good relationships. So that's a huge part of it. I think when you're running sales is you're not going anywhere without the support of the other departments. So you got to really invest in those relationships and, um, love on them.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so Justin, before we close out here, you have gotten to wear all the hats as an individual contributor, as a first line manager, as a second line manager, as a business manager across a large geography. Uh, for those aspiring Leaders that want to follow that same path. Any sort of closing advice to folks, uh, to help them get there, Go

Speaker B: out there and get it. Be an amazing individual contributor within sales. Take that success and use that as your security blanket. That way, when you get in a meeting and the CEO says something that you disagree with, you have the guts to stand up and say, I think you're wrong on that, and here's why. Because the CEO is probably used to people that agree with them all the time, and they're probably just yearning for someone to challenge them and to make them think differently. And you can be that person, and you can afford to take that risk. And the more. If you were successful in sales as an individual contributor, that means you're credible, you're smart, you work your tail off. And those are the same fundamental attributes that will make you successful as a leader. So if you were successful in that IC role, you're probably going to be successful in that leadership role as long as you're bold and courageous. And, hey, worst case scenario, Rick, you can always pick up a bag one day and do that again. You've done it in the past, and we've done it in the past, and, you know, you can do it again in the future if we have to.

Speaker A: I love that. Know your business well enough that you are confident and fine to challenge the CEO if that became necessary to do so, and use that as a lens to say, hey, you know, what else can I be doing so that I have that level of confidence in myself that I'm doing the right things for the business? Uh, what a great way to frame this out. Justin, want to thank you very much for joining us today. I can see just through your passion and energy, how you think about the different layers of success and the items that you're focused on. Um, really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker B: Hey, thank you, Rick. And thanks for doing what you're doing right now. This is really terrific. There's not enough out there in sales leadership. It's kind of a lonely world. And the content you're putting out is phenomenal. I've listened to the past episodes, and I got to say, I learned two or three things from each and every one of them. Your guests have been phenomenal. So, uh, kudos to you and keep it going.

Speaker A: Reflecting on the conversation we just heard had with Justin Griffin. He truly is one of the strongest leaders that I've encountered. That combination of positive, uh, energy, which you can just hear on the episode, the work ethic that I referenced in the beginning, just his general Smarts. It's a powerful concoction. And his company, Computer center, while you may not have heard of them, they're working on some of the most transformative tech deals that are happening on the planet right now. So there was just so much good info shared by Justin in this episode. The first thing that stood out for me was this reminder to all of us the power of a career in sales, the power of this role to change people's lives. I think it's easy to forget when we're in the general grind of the current quarter or the current sales cycle or just the grind of the obstacles that we're facing. This is a difficult career, but one that can be so rewarding. And I think Justin did a great job of sharing that powerful reminder of how fortunate we are to be in a career that can make such a big personal impact on our families and on ourselves. I uh, love how Justin framed the pillar of ownership and that balance between being about advocating for your team versus making decisions with the business in mind and how a first line manager generally tilts towards the people on their team and that a more senior leader might tilt a bit more towards the business. That really to me reflects my own experience. I love how a first line leader, if they don't start balancing towards the business over time, then they might not build the credibility necessary with cross functional stakeholders that they're going to depend on that'll be so key towards their continued growth. There's almost this paradigm or need to find that balance as you evolve as a leader in an organization in order to continue down the path. Finally, I love how Justin described his own evaluation of leadership in his organization. That framework of business operator and having just the entrepreneurial business acumen of understanding top line, bottom line and other elements and having good instincts around that. Even though he said we'll help you along the way, but you need to be in that direction. Of course, people developer, we spend a lot of time on pillar talk, talking about hiring and talking about motivation and engagement of the team. And finally that value creator element within Justin's framework. I thought that value creator element was of particular interest for me. I love this idea that there are magic moments that exist inside a company and inside go to market where someone demonstrates creativity to do something different that helps the business stand out. Could be entering a new market. It could be just to differentiate and win on a particular deal. Maybe it's a transformative deal for the quarter or the year, but it's this great reminder for all of us that we have the opportunity not just to go through the motions. We have the agency to find ways to make a difference, find ways to make an impact and not only drive our career forward, but the businesses that we support forward as well. Uh, Justin just did a fantastic job. Of those were just three things that stood out. There was so much more. So, Justin, thank you for joining us on Pillar Talk. I want to also thank Wayfair Production for producing. I want to thank Ailer Young and Sons of Summer for the tunes. I want to thank you, the audience, for participating and listening to another episode of, uh, Pillar Talk. And we will see you next time. Have a great one, y'.

Speaker B: All.