Cross-selling drives top & bottom lines - The Revenue Hustle #42 - Bradley Hardy

Speaker A: Hitting revenue targets is hard and requires constant hustle. Last quarter's success is already forgotten. Learn the mindset and tactics of today's most successful revenue producers in B2B marketing and sales. We call this the Revenue Hustle. I'm your host, Tom Hessen, navigating you on this journey. Today's show is sponsored by Nine Lenses, an interactive assessment platform that enables you to add instant value to your buyers and allows your sales team to tailor business conversations focused on the pain points each and every time. Check them out@9lenses.com hi, this is your

Speaker B: host, Tom Hessen, back with another exciting episode of the Revenue Hustle. And today I have the distinct pleasure of, uh, um, talking with Brad Hardy. Brad, welcome to the Revenue Hustle.

Speaker C: Thanks, Tom. It's, it's fun to be here. I'm looking forward to, uh, chatting a little bit, uh, further.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, Brad, you are a distinct guest. You are our first guest in banking. Um, so we're excited to kind of break into that industry a little bit. And so currently you are the managing director at Citizens Bank. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about your role?

Speaker C: Sure thing. Um, yeah. Interesting that you haven't covered banking yet. I, I can kind of understand that because most people associate us with, uh, making loans, which we do, but we actually view ourselves more as managing relationships with customers. And in doing so, that's where the, that's where the selling and the revenue generation kind of comes from. So I manage relationships, um, with a variety of different size clients. For the most part, they're companies with revenue, uh, sizes 50 million up to around $500 million in revenue. And, uh, they do just an incredible variety of different kinds of banking services from lending, cash management, foreign exchange, and, and a whole host of other specialty services. So that's really, the focus is really managing the full relationship as opposed to just making a loan.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I had the appreciation over the past couple of years and just understanding how much goes into banks and how they sell the products that they sell. And it's kind of an unknown thing for those outside of banking because you just associate your bank with, you know, your app. Now you don't go into the branches anymore generally. So that's why I was excited to kind of have you on and kind of just talk about what it's like selling for bank and the relationship. So, um, excited for today's conversation. So you know how we do this, Brad? We do revenue rules. So why don't you go ahead and give us your first Revenue rule.

Speaker C: Okay. My first revenue rule is that cross selling requires a strong customer relationship.

Speaker B: Okay, tell us more. Why is cross selling so important?

Speaker C: You know, well, from a, uh, profitability standpoint, that's really where we make our money in this business. Okay. We're not, we're not utilities. We do have shareholders. We do need to make money. Um, and most of that comes through cross selling of products and services. For the most part, when we start a brand new relationship, it's usually because we're providing with a loan of some sort. And for some reason, maybe their prior bank wasn't working out, or they need more money, but we're usually lending them some money. But from there, that's just the beginning of the relationship. After that, we really want to be able to leverage what we can do off of that, uh, loan to sell them other things where we earn, generate higher margins. Lending is not a huge margin business. It's important to us and the customer. But selling them foreign exchange services, or cash management services, or trust or private wealth management, those are all capabilities which all of our customers use in some form or another. And that's critical to. For a couple of reasons. One, it helps generate a good banking relationship. And when you've got a good banking relationship where you've looked after the customer for a long time, they don't leave you. So it does enable you to actually grow your business over the years. If you don't do it, you tend to sort of lose customers a little bit more easily. And that's how we grow. The bottom line of the business is by, is by cross selling. It's not, it's the selling that we do into the relationship after we've done that first loan.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I imagine, you know, you're, you're relying on that relationship, right, because you're, you're spending a lot of time, it's a critical partner of the business, you know, who they bank with. Right. Because that's where their money goes. And, and obviously as businesses grow, their needs diversify and maybe get more complex. And so you guys become a even more strategic partner. And so how do you go about like building that relationship when it may start off very, you know, transactional in nature? Hey, I needed a loan, I applied, I got my loan. Um, so how do you go about kind of starting to grow and maintain that relationship? And then how do you think about bringing in other products and services to obviously kind of hit your own numbers, help the bank hit theirs, but also help the customer.

Speaker C: So the first, the first thing that you really need to make sure you do is you need to start understanding your clients needs and goals. And, and you just, those are easy, those are not that difficult to, to sort of understand. Yeah, you just ask, right? You mean it's really important to ask the client know, uh, what are your goals and objectives for the business? And, and that's going to be a big generator of what they're going to need from you to make those goals. Once you have an understanding of what those needs and those goals are, then you can start to realize, okay, this product over here is probably not one that makes sense for them right now, but these other ones are. And then what you do is you have specialists in all of this stuff that really bring those kind of products to life. Now I need to know enough about those to pre qualify them, but I don't need to be an expert. And so inherently our positions are generalists type of, generalist type of jobs where we need to know enough about enough to bring that product partner in. And so if it's maybe you know, a capital markets type of solution where there's a lot of expertise required, you bring in those guys who spend their time doing that all day long. But getting to that point is understanding your clients needs and then being able to provide them with personalized advice to help them achieve those goals. So that's where, that's where the whole process really starts.

Speaker B: And do you have challenges of people or your customers viewing banks in that way? Like is it a, uh, you kind of have to elbow your way in to be like hey, we're actually more than just your loan servicer or your loan. Right. Like do they understand that there are like that you can provide a lot more value? Or like again you may be working with CFOs or VPs of finances and they know that. But like, I'm just curious, like what's the general perception of new customers of their, you know, their bank partner?

Speaker C: Yeah, you definitely do have um, that propensity for the client to want to put you in a bit of a box. This is what I think banks do. So I'm going to put you in this box. And you may do these things that are outside the box, but that's not the way I think of you. And, and so you do have to, you do have to try and find ways through that. If you get your product partners in front of them, that helps, uh, making sure they understand that we have goals in the relationship that we want to be that sole service provider for them when we can and, and a lot of times you're. You're fighting against sort of a perception that maybe, uh, you can't do something that you can in fact do. And a good example would be on capital markets kinds of products. Now we have the ability to advise clients, lots of our larger clients, on debt and equity issuances or mergers and acquisitions and things. But a lot of times they immediately think of, oh, I need to talk to Goldman about that, or I need to talk to Morgan Stanley about that. And so there's that perception issue that what we can do is. Isn't as good as what they can do. And so you do have to fight that. And that's where there needs to be some consistency in the relationship of continuing to educate the client. Again, you understand what their needs are. You need to get your people in front of them to talk about that. But, yeah, there is definitely an education you can need to always continue to provide to the client. Yeah.

Speaker B: And how do you think about the education? Because I suspect again, if you're starting with a loan or maybe it's just even like a cash account, savings account, checking account with a business, um, how do you get in front of them? Because there's not a natural touch point. Um, uh, you know, that there's not like they're just, hey, we need to call and talk to Brad every, every. Every so often. Right. Like you would maybe in some other businesses. So how do you kind of build that cadence up of getting in front of them to even educate them?

Speaker C: I would say that there is. There's definitely a bit of an art to that understanding when is the right time to make that next entry. And so I have like, a whiteboard that you can't see behind me that has a, uh, just a reminder of checking in on those kinds of things on a regular basis. But say you close that loan, they open up some bank accounts with you, and then you want to come back and talk to them about foreign exchange. You know that they do it, you know that they use it. You just got to try and time it so that you've got their attention when you call to talk about it, so that you're not just sort of like, you know, they're just zeroing you out because they're busy with other things, and they can't really focus on what you're there to talk to them about. But it does take some persistence and. And you do need. And you do need to be persistent. There's lots and lots of times where we have to go back to clients Two, three and four times on the same product just to see where they are with something. They say, yeah, we'll look at this. A couple of months goes by, you haven't heard, you got to go back and be persistent with them about it, but persistent in sort of like a, uh, polite but sort of professional way, if you know what I mean. So you do have to, you do have to keep on it. It is, you know, we are, we are salespeople in that regard. And any good salesperson does know that you do need to be, you do need to be firm and persistent.

Speaker B: Right, right. And, and so how, um, how are you working with your client? Is it generally like with a finance function? Right. I imagine kind of like treasury or cfo. Uh, I guess it may vary depending on the size of the organization. But where do you generally have that relationship? Or, or where does the bank generally have that relationship for a company between 50 and 500 million?

Speaker C: So what we. My primary contact for the most part is the chief financial officer because they're the person who really has the insight as to.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Actually what their product services and needs are. Now, having said that, what we do try to do because we think it makes for longer, more stable relationships, is we try to introduce, uh, more senior people in the organization to their senior people as well. So very common for us to also introduce our division manager, um, our next person up on the line, all the way up to the CEO level, depending upon the size of the company. So that we've got kind of touches all the way along. And what's really valuable about that is at some point in the relationship, they're going to need you to do something for them. There's going to be a tough ask. Maybe they want to borrow some more money, maybe performance hasn't been very good, so they need some leeway. And if you've had the opportunity to make sure that senior people at the client know some senior people here, those conversations are much easier to have and much more productive. And we often find we get a tremendous amount of support from senior management to do some things that are sort of just a little bit beyond where we would normally go for that kind of a relationship. So the larger the, the larger the customer, the more people there are on their side to talk to, in which case that's when the product people really earn their stripes. So if you've got a really large company, you know, your FX guy has an FX counterpart, your interest rate derivatives guy has a counterpart, your person who manages assets has a dedicated counterpart, and ideally if you can align each of those people with their dedicated counterpart, then it makes for a, ah, good solid relationship. Because everyone in the organization says, oh, of course, yeah, I know the guy over citizens, he's terrific. And that's kind of what we want to get in a, ah, in a relationship situation.

Speaker B: Well that, that brings up a great point because your job is the generalist, right. You connect the right experts on your side to the client. And so just one of the things that I've observed over the years is that uh, you know, sometimes people in your shoes that own the relationship, right. You've invested a lot of time, an effort building a strong relationship. You're protective of your client, right. Generally speaking. Because again, you've got a lot of people knocking on your door to say, brad, let me pitch my product to your client. Right? Because they're those product specialists are also number driven, right. I suspect that they too have quotas and they can't just call up your client on their own. They have to work through the relationship manager, you. Right. Like that's the general protocol. And so how do you balance protecting the customer relationship, right. Which we know is just so important, but then also letting the gates open of um, your product specialist into that relationship in order to do the cross sell.

Speaker C: Yeah. There. I think you need to develop good working relationships with the product partners. Um, there's a lot more of them than there are of you. So at a big organization like Citizens bank, you know, I might have a dozen product partners across the entire, the entire bank. Not, not all of them are always relevant to each customer, but there's a lot of them. What you need to do is you need to find ways to interact with those people. Uh, I engage in planning exercises with them on kind of a regular recurring basis where we'll go through my list of clients and prospects and somebody might say, yeah, I'd love to talk to that customer on your list. I think that'd be a great opportunity for me. Okay. I put that down as an opportunity. Now, sometime over the next quarter, I need to try and find a way to make that happen for him to try and find a way to get him introduced. And that, uh, means me following up on his behalf and then me teeing him up so that he can have that conversation. And if you're successful at doing that, pretty quickly, you're going to develop a group of product partners that are supportive of you and are willing to wait until you get them teed up because they know that that entry is a, is a better way to access the client, them just picking up the phone to call the guy they want to talk to. So you need to, you need to actively manage those relationships with your product partners.

Speaker B: Yeah. And do you find that the ask of your client to hey, meet with my product specialist is a big ask? Like you can only do that so often. Right. You can only get so many 30 minutes, 60 minute meetings with the CFO. So you know, how do you spend that political capital? Right. Uh, knowing that that 30 minute, 60 minute meeting is a big ask.

Speaker C: Yeah. What I try, the way I try to do it, and this is, I can't, I can't say how, how others view it. The way I try to do it is I try to think of if there's four product partners that want to meet the customer to talk about their product. But as you say, I have only kind of over the next quarter, I've only got like one chip to use up. I'm probably going to go with the product partner that I think has the biggest strategic impact on the relationship. So it positions us strongly, it makes us look like a thought leader. It's giving them high value advice, you know, and in some cases that opportunity might be a smaller possibility of happening. Like um, you're going to issue equity or debt. They might not do it very often, but it's important to them when they do it versus bringing in and not to pick on anybody like the FX advisor. FX is largely a commodity product, yet we do a fair bit of that. But that's going to be less impactful on the client relationship than if I brought in the investment banker, for example. So you try to think for each client what's going to move the needle, what's going to make them um, think of us as the best provider that we can possibly be and make them think I'm getting good support from citizens and I try to focus on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's smart. Now, now banks have different customer segments, Right. You mentioned 50 to 500 million. You've probably got something from, I don't know, 10 to 50 million and then below 10 and I'm below 2. Right. You have different customer segments.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And obviously a very small business that's doing a million dollars in revenue is a very different business than doing a hundred million dollars.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: In revenue. Right. So generally speaking, the number of customers a relationship manager like yourself have to manage varies. Right. So like at your, at your size, customer segment, how many relationships or customers do you have to manage versus, you know, a someone in your same role? But in a different customer segment, let's say. Yeah, 1 million, 2 million, 3 million dollar revenue companies, you know, they usually have a lot more customers, customers than the one you do. So I'm just curious now again, I don't know if you've been in that role earlier in your career, right. Where you've had to, you know, I have $2 million businesses where you have 100, 150 customers to manage. But I'm just kind of curious just in that part like how do you manage the relationship when you have almost no time to actually manage your relationship because you've got so many customers that you actually have to.

Speaker C: Yeah, touch. So let me talk about that a little bit. Let me start at like the Fortune 500 level because that's when I first came into um, this kind of banking. That was the strata of customers that I was focused on company Fortune 500 companies. Um, if you're a manager of those kind of client relationships, once you get to around 12 or 13 of those names, it starts to become a pretty full day there. And the reason is they, they use everything, they use every product in the world and, and every one of your product people would love to go and meet that customer and that customer has one of everybody. So every product partner introduced to a direct correspondent on that customer side. So if you've got 10, if you've got 10 or 12 product partners and you've got 12 Pro12 customers, that's 144 individual connections that you could be making. So 10 to 12 of those becomes a pretty full time job. Sometimes you can do a more, sometimes a little bit less.

Speaker B: I would be surprised. I would have thought that number would be smaller for Fortune 500. But. Okay, so you're thinking like 10 to 12. Okay.

Speaker C: As a relationship manager in the 10 to 12 range in the Fortune 500 size, that's a, that's about where it starts to get pretty full, uh, below that which would start to kind of get into my world, uh, you know, 50 to 500 million there. It's more like, I'd say 18 to 25 on the top side. If you've got, depending upon how active they are, you can manage 25 relationships. If they're, if you've got a lot of bigger ones, it starts to fall down more into sort of like 18, 19 kind of range. And that tends to be a sort of like a, a full book of customers. Now you still need to be generating revenue, so you got some prospecting you need to do, which we can talk about Later. Now, below my group would be what we would call business banking. And those are customer sizes. 50 million in revenue down to call it 15 million in revenue. And there again, you can virtually double my numbers. They're managing 50, 60 or more customer relationships. And as you say, if you go even lower to that sort of 10 million or below, maybe they're banked out of a branch, but there might only be one person that branch and they're managing 75 or more of those kind of customers. So yeah, smaller customers, they just don't have as many needs. Once you've done that initial loan and some cash accounts and maybe some credit cards, there's not a lot else that they do. So they just aren't as time consuming as, as banking. IBM.

Speaker B: Right, right. And so then that, that relationship tends to be more transactional. Right.

Speaker C: Because very much. Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. And I think that's where we see, you know, in our, my day job at Nine Lenses, where that's where there's the desire to be more consultative. But it's really hard because you have so little time to know all, you know, the businesses that you have to manage right. To that level of like that you're talking about what are your goals, what are your objectives, what are your challenges, where are you trying to go the next six months. Right. That's really hard to manage over 75 customers.

Speaker C: Yeah, you really just can't do it. Ah, I mean, what you, what needs to happen then as the customer kind of grows, it almost needs to sort of transition back up, back up that scale so that they can be put with a group that has the requisite time and expertise to continue to nurture that relationship and give that client a good experience. You know, we, we do want our clients to have good experiences with us. So it does mean they need to be sort of, um, put with a banking group that's commensurate, ah, with their needs.

Speaker B: Right, right, right, right. Okay, so great discussion. Let's transition to your second revenue rule. So why don't you go and give it to us?

Speaker C: Yeah, my second revenue rule is, uh, you need to balance your activities. And, and what I mean by that is, you know, it's, if you're out there doing a lot of, doing a lot with your existing clients, it, it can become very easy and at times almost inevitable to happen that you become so wrapped up with what you've got going on with your existing 18 to 25 customers that you don't have much time with anything else. But then the day comes where all Of a sudden those guys aren't keeping you busy because, yeah, maybe they're just not that busy. And then all of a sudden you're sort of, oh, I guess I should go and try and find some more new customers because we lose some, um, we bring bankers on, we redistribute customers, but we're always trying to bring new ones in because the bank needs to grow. But to do that, you really do need to be consistently in the market trying to talk to new prospects and potential new customers. And the only way to do that is every single week, several times during the week, you need to sort of say, okay, I've done enough with these 25 guys today. The next two hours I'm going to spend on researching and reaching out to two or three new companies and start a process of trying to find a new customer. And that just requires discipline and, and importantly, that's where the balance comes from. It's something that you just, you got to do it every single week.

Speaker B: Yeah, because, you know, it's easy to get in the boom and bust cycles where all of a sudden all your deals close, which is great, and then you look up and realize your pipeline is drained. Right. I, I've experienced that. Right? Yeah, yeah. Because it's easy to be heads down, right? Yeah, yeah, it's easy to be heads down. And then all of a sudden, yeah, you're, you're, you've got a long road to your next deal. So how do you, how do you go about being disciplined? Like, so how do you actively do that?

Speaker C: Yeah, so there's about, um, there's about three different kinds of things that I do towards generating new names. I participate in a number of kind of business networking kinds of groups. And that's pretty easy. Most of those are sort of like, you know, they're breakfast meetings, they're after work, drinks, uh, and dinner kinds of things. They get scheduled, you sign up, you show up. Those are, those are pretty easy. Right. Because they're not doing business hours. And you know, I'm probably out about, you know, I'm probably at like 5 or 6 of those in any given month, uh, those kinds of things. And so you're networking, you're talking to people, you're getting potential leads, you're giving them leads potentially. So that's one of them. Another one is, you know, I still do the old fashioned cold calling. You know, there's lots of people who think that that, uh, has gone by the wayside and certainly it's not the highest hit rate. You know, you're not. You're phoning that many people that will tell you in one phone call, oh, um, boy, thank God you called because I need to borrow $100 million. Can you help me out with that? I don't think that's ever happened to me. But what does happen is, you know, you keep on it consistently over time until you maybe get them to give you a call back and give you that opportunity to come meet with them, tell you about what your bank does, and start the process of learning about what they're focused on so that you could potentially then bring them a solution, you know, and that's really what you're trying to do. There is. You're trying to find something that they have a need for that you can come and deliver, like best in class solution or best in class advice. So that's really what the cold calling is about. Now, I do recognize that I don't want to be, I don't want to be pestered any more than the next guy. So there are limits on how much of that you're going to do. So I, what I personally do is I kind of limit myself to about 10 or 12 tries. And if the guy hasn't called, the man or woman hasn't called me back after 10 or 12 attempts to get that first meeting, I usually then send him an email, say, hey, look, doesn't appear that meeting a new bank is kind of your top priority. For now, I'll, uh, look to keep in touch by sending you information I think and hope is relevant to your business. Uh, but I'm not going to keep calling you and bugging the hell out of you. And sometimes they'll even call back and go, thank you for understanding. You know, just to let you know that, yeah, they heard it and there's understanding. But what you get out of that is a growing list of people on an email chain that twice a month I'll look to try and share something that's going on in the world, right? Something that's a banking thing. Uh, interest rates has been lots of stuff to talk about with interest rates this past year, and you can consistently show them these things. Along the way, you're developing a view of being expert in something, you're giving them advice, and then every once in a while one of them will ping you back and go, hey, I'd love to hear more. And it's someone that you might have tried to call 10 times a year ago, who's now kind of coming back to you, and that's the third thing that you kind of need to do is find ways to give them ideas and advice that we think could be helpful for their business. And so those are the things, the three things that I do when I'm trying to get out there and, you know, when I'm balancing my activities, those are the things that I'm doing. And for me, the way I try to do it is, you know, I look at my schedule every, uh, Monday morning when I come in, and I try to slot some times throughout the week when I go, okay, yeah, you know what, Monday afternoon after 3, uh, I. I'll need to spend some time there. And I'll go, oh, yeah, you know what, Wednesday morning, I've got a window there too. And then say, sometimes Thursday afternoons, Friday afternoons tend not to be the greatest anymore because you got so many work from homes. And I don't want to chase people down on their personal cell phones. And in the day, this day and age of Zoom and other databases, it's easy to get that stuff. But I just don't want to be abusive that way. I'd rather call them at their office and kind of leave it that way. So you need to find some times throughout the week where, you know, you'll be able to dedicate an hour, an hour and a half or two hours to doing that kind of work.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think. So how has that served you, like, this whole balance thing? Right. So has that meant, like, your funnel is generally not lumpy, it's. It's somewhat, you know, consistent. You've got, you know, not all this stuff at the final stage or just all this stuff at the beginning of the, you know, at the beginning of the funnel, and therefore, you've got nothing ready to close. So, like, what are the benefits of balancing your activities and keeping things somewhat, um, you know, moving along through the cycle?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it does help you balance out your pipeline over time. But I think the real benefit of finding time to reach out when you're balancing your activities and looking to talk to people that you're not talking to about it, you're looking for the guy who's going to be your customer next year.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: Because these are very long sales cycles. They take a long time between. When you first meet someone, you might first do that first piece of business. In some cases, you may never do business with that guy, but the fact that you're continuing to talk to him. Yeah, there's always that opportunity, but you really need to be thinking about, where's my customer next year going to come from. And so you start today. And so a good example of that is, you know, I'd been, I'd been, uh, cold calling a company. Never really got anywhere. Then one day I sent out this thing about how we were sponsoring the New York Marathon. And did any of my prospects want to, uh, look at running in that? Well, wouldn't you know it? But that prospect called me back, said, yeah, I'd love to run it. I got him into the New York City Marathon. I've met him a couple times. I'm now taking a CFO to a baseball game later this year. They asked me along the way about their credit facility and what I thought that they should do. And I advised them, give me what you're telling me, wait until later in 2025. I think given what you're telling me, that'll be a better place for you. So now I'm kind of waiting until the end of 2025 when they're going to refinance their credit facility with another bank and hopefully they'll choose me. But along the way, I show them some other products, I get to know them, I, uh, develop that relationship. So one of the benefits is if you can get two or three or four of those kinds of things in the hopper. Yeah, you know, you've got some stuff that's gonna, that's going to happen. So. But if you don't keep on it, you don't get it into the pipeline to start off with.

Speaker B: Now, are you generally a disciplined person? Ask a personal question here. Right, like, or this is something that you had to build that muscle just because you got into sales and recognized that this was, you know, something you needed to do.

Speaker C: I would say, I would say I'm, I'm a pretty disciplined person. But it, it, it did take somebody else in banking, um, to show me that this is the way to go about it, to sort of get to this stage. I didn't, I didn't think of these things kind of on my own. I mean, my, you put your own, uh, spin on it, depending upon what you're good at, of course. But somebody else along the way sort of pointed out that these are the kinds of things that you need to do. So, so for me, the discipline around it became pretty easy because I'm disciplined. But the thought of, know, spending your time like that throughout the week and making sure you're focused on certain kinds of things, that was something kind of shown to me by more experienced bankers. And yeah, I learned a little bit here on A course there. And, you know, you kind of learn some stuff and you attempt to extract what you think is the best out of everything that you've learned. And that's how I've kind of put it together.

Speaker B: Now that's a great example of, of, um, Because I find it's. Discipline is something obviously people can get better at, but some are more natural at it than others. Um, I think just, I don't know, human wiring in some ways. Um, very true. Yes, it's very, very helpful in sales for certain. Um, so, Brad, tell us how you got into banking and, and sales within banking.

Speaker C: Uh, so I, I, When I came out of college, I went into public accounting. So I went into what I worked with one of the big CPA firms and realized, uh, that. And then along the way, while I was there, I did my MBA in finance and started to realize I liked finance a whole lot more than I liked accounting. So I said, okay, well, okay, I'm gonna have to make a. A u turn here. Um, wound up getting a job with a bank, but in their audit department. So it wasn't where I wanted my career to go, but I thought, okay, I might be able to make something of this. And, and sure enough, I, I started getting to know some folks, uh, at a. The bank I was working at. They, they said, hey, you know what, there's this, uh, training program coming up, and we think you'd be kind of an ideal fit for it. And, you know, when I joined that organization, I let my senior management there know that. Yep, I'm happy to be here for a while. It's not my intended career path. I'd like to know that if I come here and do a good job, you'll be helpful for me moving down a different direction. And the different direction was kind of un. Undetermined. I was young enough, ignorant enough of that. I didn't know what that looked like at the time. And then, uh, this opportunity came up and it sounded better than what I was doing. Uh, I never realized it was a sales job. And, and quite honestly, I kind of resisted that initially. I kind of thought, yeah, I'm not sure I want to be in the kind of banking where I have to sell stuff to people. It just, it just didn't sound good to me. But, but the more I went and, and got more experienced at it, the, uh, more I realized, yeah, it's, it's not what I thought it was. I, you know, I had sort of a bit of a jaded view of sales.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker C: You know, People, there's a lot of people who tend to view sales with sort of a negative connotation. And um, that's, you know, there's some jobs that are like that, but there are many that are not. And I, uh, over time I just found that I, because I was relatively disciplined, uh, I was willing to get out and meet with people that I didn't know and be confident talking to them. Uh, that was a big one. That's just kind of personality wise. I was never worried about that. The combination of the two, being disciplined and being willing to talk to people that I didn't otherwise know kind of put me on this path of saying, yeah, he seems like this would be the, the right thing for him. And here I am some 35 or whatever years later, still sort of hanging around doing it.

Speaker B: Well, I guess you found your spot then.

Speaker C: Um, yeah, I'd say. I like this, this section of the market too. The, the. I, you know, I mentioned banking IBM, because I used to bank IBM. Um, that's not nearly as much fun as it sounds, by the way. I do enjoy banking this size of company because you can, you really can make a difference in the quality of those companies and, and you, you benefit from it in the relationships you have with the uh, the management team.

Speaker B: Gotcha. Yeah, no, I'm sure it's, it's easier to get access to the management team at 50 to 500 million than it is 50 billion or whatever IBM was when you worked with them.

Speaker C: That's very true. Yep.

Speaker B: No, well, that's great. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your story with us. So where can we follow you online?

Speaker C: Uh, follow me. Well, I'm on, uh, I'm. Well I don't um, we can't access a lot of the uh, a lot of the social media sites through work. That's, that's a problem. So difficult to follow that way. I mean I am on LinkedIn, but unfortunately we're not able to use any of the social media sites because of regulation. So that becomes a little bit more difficult to follow us online. I m. Am on LinkedIn and I'm um, on it, I'm on it every single day talking to people and connecting, uh, with them. But uh, unfortunately other social media sites like um, ah, Facebook or any of the others, we can't access those through work.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. All right, so LinkedIn is it. Follow Brad there. And thanks, uh, Brad, for coming on the revenue hustle. It's been great talking to you. I think, uh, you know, it's it's. It's interesting to see the sales side of banking because a lot of people don't think about that. They think about their personal consumer experience for most of us that work outside the industry. And you really kind of peeled back that onion, um, nicely. So thank you for coming on and spending some time with us.

Speaker C: Well, thanks very much. It was, uh, it was fun talking to you about the whole thing. It's, uh, it is a. It is a more dynamic industry than people kind of thinking. No one really thinks of, uh, selling stuff, but that's what I spend my days doing.

Speaker B: Yep, I'm with you. All right, well, thank you again. Let's do it again in the future.

Speaker C: Take care.

Speaker A: Thank you for tuning into the revenue hustle. This episode has been brought to you by Nine Lenses. Turn your sales team into trusted advisors. Go from having conversations to consultations. Learn more@ninelenses.com. see you next time.