Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: How do you distinguish strategy from activity?
[00:00:04] Speaker B: For me, I look at it, am I playing a finite game or am I playing an infinite game? Am I transactional or am I building the capacity to have a sustainable business? Once I have $100 million, I'm going to go execute, I'm going to go do construction, I'm going to go build power lines. But the strategy piece to that is going to enable. I can do that for many years to come. I can go from $100 million company to a billion.
So to me, if you don't have strategy, activity and execution is only going to get you so far, you're basically going to run yourself out of road.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: I'm Dennis Sorensen and this is the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. This is the podcast for sales leaders and salespeople who know they're capable of more and are looking for a system that is predictable, repeatable, scalable and forecastable for growth. It's not theories, it's not motivational speeches. It's an ambitious way to operate your business.
Mac, welcome back to the podcast, part two of our two part episode here. Thank you for joining me again. Really appreciate it.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Thanks for having me back, Dennis. Looking forward to continue the conversation.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: So at the end of our last podcast, we were talking about really the rigor that's required to growth and how we have to bring a different kind of rigor to that part of the business. The same kind of rigor that we bring to the other parts of our business, whether it be the operations or the financial side or whatever it might be. We need to bring that same kind of rigor to the growth side of the business. And so what I'd like to do is just go back to when you and I first started working together and we got introduced to each other and had the opportunity to meet and love to get your thoughts about when we first started talking together about putting more structure around the commercial side of the business. What was it that resonated with you?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: For me, I think the first thing that was resonating with me is you and the team sat down with, with my collective group and kind of, I think you met us where, where we were, right? I think for you to provide the mentorship that you provided to me and the team members is you kind of understood how we, how do we win today? How did we get to this point? Right? To understand the foundation from which we were working from, understand our challenges and the customers that were what we were, who we work with. I think one of the things that resonates with me is like with one of our utility customers. Well, how, how do they select working with your company? What makes them want to go with you? And I think that kind of goes back to what we talked on the last episode is when I brought up like, historically in this industry, we just kept doing the same thing. We kept trying to force the same processes and, and solutions, thinking that we were going to have a greater outcome. And for me, what resonated with you, you guys made us think differently with your framework and how you view sales made us have to think differently. But the way you communicated was in a manner that our sometimes stubborn blue collar worker could digest and understand. But once you understand that framework, it actually becomes really actionable. And once you listen to it and do it, it works.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: I think one of the things that helped us is that one of my partners is a pretty stubborn blue collar worker. So, you know, yeah, having him in the house. And you and I both know we're talking about John Deese, who was on a couple episodes early on and did a great job. When you think about that, was there anything about when we started and you touched a little bit on this in the first episode, but was there anything about when we started Talking about the four Ps around plan, prepare, Practice, Play that felt familiar to you in the way that you already thought about operational execution?
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, for me, the four P's really resonates what I said last episode on oceaniac. Right. So we oriented on what the business was trying to do, right. I knew we had hit just below a nine figure number and I knew I had to double the business within three to five years. You guys kind of broke it down through your processes, right? The Plan, Prepare, Practice, Play. And kind of the first thing we worked through was like in the planning, started working on the ambition pillar, right? So I remember sitting down with you and your team and kind of saying, where are we operating today? I knew your questions. I didn't know it at the time, but I know now, having known you for as long as I have, what, what we were trying to accomplish, Right. And really identifying that ambition piece and all these things resonated to me as a military veteran. I started creating my battle space, so to speak. Right. So I knew where we wanted to operate, I knew where we wanted to go win.
And through your team, you guys helped us enable laying out those steps. Okay, well, this is where you want to go win. What are your goals? Let's list those out. Right? But they weren't these big, hairy, audacious Goals. That's like, I want to win three Super Bowls back to back. Right. We know it's probably not going to happen. We had to make them. They had to be smart goals and achievable. But that's kind of where I started to see a lot of similarities. I'm like, I got a lot of backing here. I can work with Dennis and his team. It's making sense. I just have to think differently.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: You hit on ambition as kind of one of the disciplines. So, you know, and this is where we talked about in the last episode as well, the similarities that I heard in Osmiak.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Osmiak.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Osmiak. And so I'm gonna remember that. And now that you've said Battlespace, I'm gonna have to think about renaming our White Space Analysis to Battle Space. But when you think about those disciplines or those three pillars, ambition, thinking is really.
It really is a discipline. It's a way to think. And what you're trying to accomplish there is you really try to understand what the real potential of a customer or a territory is to the business, the real potential. And in the workshops, I talk about real versus realistic, because oftentimes people get caught up and say, well, I think this is realistic. And I'm saying, I'll deal with realistic and strategy. Let's just talk right now about what's real. What's the real height of that mountain? Is it 11,000ft or is it 12,502ft? What is the height of that mountain? And so, like, what you were just describing to me was, first of all, helping you guys to just sort of see what's real, what is our real potential here. And then once you. Once you see that, and I say this, it can't be unseen. It's, you know, once you see that real potential, it can't be unseen. And then. And then it's about then, okay, now we move to the discipline of strategy and say, so strategy is a whole other discipline, and then finally to the discipline of execution through what we do with Ghost. So where did you see parallels between those disciplines and things that resonated with you in what you do or what you had done?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah, for me, strategies always been kind of the main block of the business. You know, I think, you know, one thing I didn't share with the listeners here last time is in my doctoral studies, right now, I'm kind of studying strategy. And for me, there's so many actionable steps in there, but a well thought out strategy enables you to kind of see where you want to go, but then break it down to actual steps. Right. Understand what I call strategic imperatives. What things have to occur for me to achieve X. Right.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: What has to be true?
[00:07:25] Speaker B: What has to be true. And that's what you've always said. But for me, that's what's resonated academically in the Marine Corps, in my career to get today. And that's where I challenge my leaders operationally. When they come in, I'm like, hey, we got to grow the business. I'll challenge them. What has to be true for you to achieve this metric, this quantifiable endpoint for our business?
And then we back planning from there. In order to hit that, we have to do these micro steps. So for me that's kind of where I think you're talking the mountain. I kind of flipped the triangle upside down. The ambition is the total space. Now I'm narrowing it down and that's where we can narrow our focus. Because to me that's where it becomes more actionable because it's real. When you can start moving on those things and see accomplishment, it becomes a repeatable, sustainable process.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: When I've taught this process, even when I was teaching it, you know, as a first line sales leader to my own sellers, strategy was an interesting area because it was an area that people really struggled with. So I was really interested in what you said about, you know, your doctoral in studying of strategy and your in your doctoral thesis. And so I think it's really an area that if people could just better understand what you just said and it's really just about saying what has to be true to make that happen 100%.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: And as you're kind of saying that, I think more on that is how many times have we been in the business world where the CEO will come in and say we need to double the business in X amount of time but then they don't provide you the filler in there. The strategy.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: It could be beautiful plan on paper, but there's really no teeth to it. Right. It's just a bunch of words. There's no walk to the talk, so to speak. I think that's where the framework on laying out what needs to be true for us to hit these things.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: The way that we would approach that exercise is we'd essentially say, okay, the CEO says we need to go from 500 million to a billion in the next five years. So the first thing that I want to understand is let's now go out. And I'm going to go out five years. And I'm going to write $1 billion in that column. And then I'm going to look at where I'm at right now, and then I'm gonna say, so what looks different out here than right here? So that might be if I look at just. If I look at my customers and say, today, 80% of my current revenue comes from roughly 20% of my customers. One of the things I've found. I don't know if you found, but one of the things that I found is really true, is the 8020 rule.
And what I would do is I would go through my customer list until I got to 80% of my revenue, and then I would sort of project that forward and say, so is that same set of customers going to represent 80% of the billion, or are some of them going to represent, you know, what. What will they represent in that billion calculation?
So then I'm defining, well, what will have to be true because customer A today, who might be a $50 million a year customer, I need that customer to be $100 million a year customer or more in five years. And so what will have to be true for that to happen?
And so to me, the way that we get there through strategy is we're breaking it down into those pieces, and we're then building backwards from five years from now at a billion to four years from now at say 850 million to three years from now to two years from now to one year from now.
And then the key thing about ambition is then if I look at my customer A and I know that I need them to be at 100 million or more in year five, and I can do a really good ambition analysis and understand that their real potential to us is a billion. Well, by themselves, they could be more than what I need in. But so then it's about, how do I get as much in play at customer A such that I don't have to play a perfect game and I can take my winning percentage up and have it contribute to that billion number I need in the future. So I'll just summarize to say that to me, the reason ambition is so important to feed strategy is because then you're building strategy based on real potential versus not understanding what their real potential is and building strategies sort of to build strategy.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah, And I'd add one more spot on that to get to the strategy. The one thing that I've learned working with you and your team has been on the ambition piece. Right. The way I approach understanding a customer A set of customers or a target market. Right.
Sometimes not being so urgent to rush into the execution piece on the strategy, the roi, to take your time and be thoughtful and methodical in the ambition piece will make sure when you get to the strategy execution piece to hitting that billion dollars we just talked about, it becomes a lot clearer to the folks that are going to go deliver on that strategy if you spend a lot of time and ambition.
So for me right now in the infrastructure space, right, I have become very obsessive with understanding what the market's doing so that when I'm having conversations with those I know today or those I'm going to have an interaction with, I can have a better foundation from which to launch from. So that's why I think, really think the ambition piece and the learnings there, what I've learned from you is that piece has really been successful. That's where I found a lot of success.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: I think it gives you your true north. You know, you really, you know that if every, if everything went your way, this is what it would represent in terms of, you know, potential to the business. And then it also tees up a really important question. What would have to be true for them in terms of the value they're getting from us in order for them to be spending a hundred million dollars a year?
So it also tees up, it forces you as a seller to think about the value you must deliver and it must be exponentially greater than what you're going to get back from that customer. But when you start to think about it in terms of the value you must deliver in order to achieve that real potential, that that's another in my mind forcing function of going through the ambition exercise. Yeah.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: And to that point, you know, as you're saying that, I think as we talk about the growth of a company and where a leader has to let go a little bit and how they approach right. To understand for a customer to want to spend the aforementioned a hundred million dollars on us residually, maybe we have to understand that doing the same things that we're doing today isn't going to be what gets us to that a hundred million dollars and understanding our customer saying maybe, maybe we need on the construction side, maybe we need to engineer some of the plans. Maybe that's another pain point to the customer. But that's where earning the partnership and earning the conversation time you have with these individuals that you're having a sales conversation with. Right. And learning that because you'll understand through relationship and trust, they're going to give that information to you of how to get to that a hundred million dollars, then you come back and you become a problem solver, then you become a partner, then that a hundred million dollars is real.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Because as you understand, as you understand and as you're talking in my mind again about how, you know, you're right down your strategy, expertise, discipline and you're. Because that question of what would have to be true, what has to be true on our side. Right. What's going to have to be true? You know, if I'm a CRO of a company and I know I've got to be able to deliver a billion versus 500 million, well, what does my sales team need to be. Look, what has to be true in terms of my sales team to get to that plan that we talked about. And then the other thing that allows you to do is it allows you to go and explore with your customer through discovery. What would have to be true for you to be doing double the business with me that you are today.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: So how do you, when you think about strategy and this whole topic of strategy, the discipline of strategy, as I like to call it, how do you distinguish strategy from activity?
[00:15:59] Speaker B: I look at it in my world of the business, am I playing a finite game or am I playing an infinite game? Am I transactional or am I building the capacity to have a sustainable business?
So that's where I kind of look at activity on the construction infrastructure side. Right. Once I have a hundred million dollars, I'm going to go execute, I'm going to go do construction, I'm going to go build lines. But the strategy piece to that is going to enable. I can do that for many years to come. I can go from a hundred million dollar company to a billion.
So to me, if you don't have strategy, activity and execution is only going to get you so far. You're basically going to run yourself out of road.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah. You're effectively living in play.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: You're living in play.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: A lot of companies find themselves in. I've lived there myself. And it's a hard, it's a hard trap to get out of because it takes discipline to make that shift back towards the first three of planning, preparation and practice and then bringing that. And you said it, you got to spend the time in those before you really go play.
And the temptation is often to go play early or to go execute early before you're truly ready.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And inherently I think we could both agree that we can respect a leader's friction that they feel right due to the markets, what they're doing. You have shareholders, everybody has a boss or a group of bosses, board of managers, whatever, that are creating inherent pressure. But I really think a leader's capability to understand is don't rush because of those pressures, that there's brilliance in just taking the time to be thoughtful. There will be an roi. But I think we could say through case study, if those that have rushed have actually created more friction for their teams and they become more in survival mode than really in.
Not autopilot, so to speak, but they're a lot more in control of their destiny.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: One of the things I talk about in the ambition workshop is we have to eat short term to live long term. Correct.
So one of the things when we teach what we're teaching, when we teach ambition, when we teach the plan, prepare, practice plan, I'm not saying stop what you're doing. I'm not saying take what you've got in flight right now and change it. I'm saying let's introduce an additional element to the work that we're doing. Let's start as now on new pursuits, to think more strategically about those, to think more ambitiously about those, and start to bring more rigor to our execution on those while we're in the short term delivering perhaps the way that we've been delivering. But it's beginning to make this transition over time to that living long term. And so it's by starting. So you must start to plan, to prepare, to practice. You must start to think about the real potential. You must start to bring in what must be true and develop a strategy. And you must start to build that disciplined execution. It's not going to happen overnight. And I've seen in situations that I've been in, where there's a moment, maybe a year and a half into one of my last roles, where I realized, oh my gosh, it's happened, it's happening. And it's a journey. It's a journey to be able to make that transition. It's not something you're just going to do overnight.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: No.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: So how do you think about deliberately choosing where you want your organization to go? When you think about, like when I said earlier from sales management simplified, you know, point your team, how do you think about deliberately pointing the team to pursue the right opportunities for what you need to be able to do what you've got to do?
[00:19:40] Speaker B: As the coo, the first thing I always assess before I launch into something new is I understand the dynamic capabilities of what I have today. What is the Team inherently good at delivering repeatable high quality and a perceived value that can be seen by our customers today. Like where do we have success sometimes? That center of gravity term that I've always taken from the military. A center of gravity. Right. A point of strength. If I can repeat that in a new geography, that's where kind of the market assessments. Understanding a new geography. What ambitions out there. Where could I take what I have today and moderately repeat it tomorrow?
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Low hanging fruit. We could say that. But to me that's the first thing I would look at. The additional thing is I always think in terms of sales and in terms of growing an organization.
You have to always have a certain percentage of your growth mindset focused on innovation.
If you don't think about innovation, I always use, I'm kind of, I'm not old old, but I'm not young young. We all can remember Blockbuster. What did Blockbuster not do? Yeah, they didn't innovate and then look what happened to them today. So to me I always use the blockbuster analogy. A portion of your vision and strategy where you want to take a business has to be on innovation.
So for me that could be innovating a system for how we deliver and solve a problem better for our customers today. Maybe that gets us to your point. We were talking before, they're only spending $30 million a year with me. If that one thing of innovating gets me to a hundred million, well, I'm going to focus on that. But I think the innovation piece sometimes is where I would focus on. That's what's going to set my new trajectory and my new heading is where can I innovate? What is the market doing today that they're not thinking about now? Right. I think sometimes those visionary leaders like the Elon Musk's of the world, how did he think about Tesla at the time? They probably thought he was crazy. Right. But we look at all the good things that they're doing today. They're groundbreaking, they're innovational. I think leaders have to have a little bit of that and that's a little bit of the dreamer mentality. But you have to have that because that gets you out of that complacency in that box. Sometimes operating at comfort is actually a critical risk to your business.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: No, I think you're exactly right that innovation and I think about it all the time and especially in the game that we're in. It's one of the, you know, one of the, one of the slides I put up during the, the workshops Is this slide of just like probably, I don't know, 50 different books. And I say like, you gotta be constantly sharpening the sword in, in the profession that you've chosen.
And so that's true of an individual seller, that's true of a sales leader, it's true of a coo, it's true of a company, and it's that innovation you're bringing to your own game as a seller, as a sales leader, as an executive within a company, you know, as a company as a whole that it's what you bring to the market to always stay sharp. Because I always assume that there's a wolf at the door. I always assume that there's another seller out there trying to come and take my kids college funds from me today. Yep. And I'm going to do everything I can do to make sure that I compete and build and add to those college funds versus letting somebody else take them because I didn't compete in an, in enough, innovative enough way to win that opportunity. So if you, if you were sitting across from a CEO in another company in your industry and you know, you were just having a conversation and they were, they were talking to you and based on your background, experience, like what would you tell them? What would your advice be in terms of the things that they should start to think about and maybe start to think differently about in the space?
[00:23:24] Speaker B: I would say to those leaders sitting across me, view sales as part of an operation. Right. It has to be the leading edge. I've seen too much in my career where they don't view sales as kind of the feeding the coal into the train's engine, so to speak. I think sometimes the CEOs through balance sheets, income statements and whatever, that's kind of looking at the business as a whole. They're not kind of, they're forward thinkers, but they don't know how to operationalize the forward thinking. And to me, I would tell a leader, because I was one, to think about sales differently. To really truly innovate your business is to think about the things we've talked about on these, these two episodes. Think about sales differently. Because if when you do that, when you listen to those folks and empower them to do it, you will see exponential returns on just thinking a little bit differently.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: What do you think that scalable growth capability looks like? How would you describe it to them?
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Yeah, for me, I'm looking at the middle management leaders. I'm looking at leaders and I think that's, you know, going back as we talked before on my Marine Corps background. Usually assessing the leaders in their environment gives you a pretty good lens of the success you can have in the future.
Additionally, if you have the blessing and the curse, I guess is how you view it, if they could be hit with something unplanned that creates a little turbulence at the time, you really get to see what you got. Because how they deal with something that's not day to day or is not all sunshines and rainbows, but on top of that, how they react and how they lead the teams, I also look at how they develop their people.
Because as the business continues to grow, those leaders will be in a higher position.
If they've done a good job, those leaders below them should be in a higher position.
So how well they're farming the leaders and how well they show up, to me, that's what I look at. That tells me enough I need to know about the business I step into.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: So at this point in your career, what are you still trying to get good at? What do you got to get? What do you want to. What do you want to get better at?
[00:25:23] Speaker B: I think leadership's not a destination. I want to be a better leader. I think when you stand in front of folks, it's an absolute privilege and that inherently keeps you honest with what you do and don't do. But for me, I want to continue to make an impact.
As I said, I got in the Marine Corps because I wanted to serve my country. I wanted to do something bigger than myself. And now that I happen to be in the seat I am today, I want to continue to develop and build infrastructure. I want to be able to retire one day and say, hey, our people did that and we all said that over there. And I can say that I left that business having leaders that could carry the torch well beyond me. So for me, I can continue to make an impact on the communities I serve and the people I serve for then I think I've done a pretty good job.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: So that next generation of leaders that you're talking about, the ones that are coming up behind you, what do you hope that they understand earlier in their careers than you did?
[00:26:18] Speaker B: You don't have to know everything. I think humility is something inherently in the industry I work for, there's a lot of ego in there, and that creates pressure to always be yes. Saying yes or I know how to do that. I think having humility to say you don't know something or the best way to do it I think is an okay thing. I think being humble enough to know what you know and don't know is a good thing. But also having known what I know today, Dennis, I say get a sales team. Bring in a really good consultant that knows sales. Change your perspective. It'll pay dividends. I promise you it with 100% conviction it will.
And view the sales team as not just another department. That is absolutely the tip of the spear for an organization, if deployed correctly.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Oh, that was awesome. Mac, I thank you very much for part two of our conversation together and for joining me for both of these. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the time and the effort that you put into it and just the incredible human being that I think you are and the opportunity that I've had to get to know you. I really appreciate it, and thank you for this and thank you for the time.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you, Dennis. Appreciate you, my friend.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: All right, well, thank you for joining us for this episode of the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. I'm Dennis Swartz. Until next time, just win.
Thanks for listening to the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. Until next time, think bigger and just win.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: This episode is brought to you by Kastos Productions.
