Never Sit in the Lobby: Sales Insights from Glenn Poulos

Glenn Poulos has started and sold two businesses and recently acquired his third. He's an author who wrote Never Sit in the Lobby: 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career Selling. Glenn's also a podcaster who hosts the Profit Powerhouse podcast.

Three Key Takeaways from Glenn's Episode

1. Never Sit in the Lobby: Glenn emphasizes the importance of being proactive and engaged when meeting clients. His mantra, "Never Sit in the Lobby," serves as a reminder to always be prepared and present. Instead of zoning out on your phone while waiting, use that time to mentally prepare, recall past interactions, and have something valuable to offer when your client arrives. This approach not only sets a positive tone for the meeting but also demonstrates your commitment and professionalism.
2. The Power of Genuine Connections: One of the biggest misconceptions in sales is that you can rush rapport-building. Glenn highlights the importance of being genuine and taking the time to understand your clients. He warns against "implied familiarity," which can lead to misunderstandings and discomfort. Instead, focus on active listening and building authentic relationships. This not only enhances your credibility but also fosters trust, making it easier to close deals.
3. Sales vs. Marketing: Glenn clearly distinguishes between sales and marketing, which is often misunderstood. He points out that while marketing generates leads and creates awareness, sales is about closing deals and building relationships. Understanding this difference is crucial for anyone in the business world. As Glenn puts it, "The real sales guy wants to be in front of clients closing deals," and that’s where the real magic happens.

LINKS

• Follow Glenn Poulos on LinkedIn
• Glen's Book Never Sit in the Lobby
• Glenn's Profit Powerhouse Podcast on Spotify
• Glenn's Profit Powerhouse Podcast on Apple
• Follow Kyle Ariel Knowles on LinkedIn

This episode is packed with practical advice and insights that can help you elevate your sales game and build lasting relationships in your business endeavors. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned sales professional, there's something valuable for everyone.

Discover the insights from Glenn's book, "Never Sit in the Lobby: 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career Selling," where he discusses practical sales strategies, the importance of face-to-face interactions, and how to build genuine relationships in sales.

Glenn also discusses the differences between starting a business from scratch and acquiring an existing one, the role of AI in sales, and the significance of making lasting impressions. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned sales professional, this episode is packed with valuable advice to inspire and motivate you.

KEY TOPICS
-Glenn's career journey and new business ventures
-Insights from "Never Sit in the Lobby"
-The importance of face-to-face selling
-Overcoming misconceptions in sales
-The role of AI in modern business practices

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Podcast
• 0:11 Guest Introduction: Glenn Poulos
• 0:22 Career Overview
• 1:17 Transition to Retirement
• 2:35 New Business Venture
• 4:01 Setting Up a Sales Team
• 4:44 Comparing Business Models
• 6:02 Advantages of Buying a Business
• 7:55 Timeframe for Building Brand Recognition
• 10:28 Corporate Experience
• 12:07 AI Initiatives
• 13:08 AI Tools and Workflows
• 16:19 Personal Use of AI
• 18:01 Misconceptions About Sales
• 19:13 Sales vs. Marketing
• 20:50 Salesperson Misconceptions
• 23:57 Coaching and Consulting
• 25:49 Overview of the Book
• 26:23 The Significance of 57
• 27:29 Chapter Structure
• 28:21 Never Sit in the Lobby
• 30:04 Mini Tour Strategy
• 32:17 Making Impressions
• 36:02 Genuine Sales Interactions
• 38:08 Avoiding Over-Talking
• 42:46 Thoughts on CRM Systems

Transcript

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Hello there, welcome to the Maker-Manager Money podcast, a podcast about entrepreneurs, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and to inspire future entrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles and today's guest is Glenn Poulos. Glenn is a sales expert, business coach and author with over three decades of experience in the field. He is the co-founder of Gap Wireless, a leading distributor in mobile broadband infrastructure, market, and current executive vice president and general manager of NWS, which purchased Gap Wireless three years ago. Glenn is the author of Never Sit in the Lobby, 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career Selling. His book offers practical sales strategies and insights based on real world experience. Glenn is also an experienced speaker and podcaster with his podcast, Profit Powerhouse, talking sales, negotiation, and business insights. As a business coach, he enjoys sharing his knowledge, especially when it allows for flexibility and creativity. Welcome to the show, Glenn. Hey, Kyle. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Where are you dialing in from?

Glenn Poulos: I'm in Orlando, Florida right now, in the Orlando area. Yeah, and I can update you a little bit. There's been some sort of changes in my career over the last few weeks because I kind of timed out my deal when I sold the company and my three years is up and all that jazz, right? So, new country, new job, new adventure, everything's new. But I'm happy to talk about the old as well and how I got here.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, so you're no longer within NWS? Are you within? No, I retired on New Year's Eve. You had a three year engagement with them.

Glenn Poulos: yeah, sort of hand over the reins and, you know, sort of the normal way it goes with private equity, right? They, they want you to hang around and make sure that they bought the, they bought something that you said it was, prove it out and then, uh, pass over all your knowledge and then get out of the way and let them do what they want to do. Right. And, um, and so, yeah, no, I had a good three-year run with them, uh, in 15 years when it was private and, uh, Yeah, so about 18 years and now I'm, believe it or not, starting from scratch. Not from a company from scratch, but I mean, a brand new career, brand, you know, so it's my third sort of company, sold two companies, and see if I can do it one more time.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: All right, three times the term. So what are you doing with the new company? What is the new company?

Glenn Poulos: So Gap Wireless, ergo NWS, in Canada was a distributor of telecom equipment. So buy equipment from around the world, present it to customers in the Canadian landscape, and then you know, and then sell them the equipment, import it and, you know, ship it to customers. And so doing the exact same thing, but a different kind of product, uh, electrical utility testing products. So, I mean, the power generation companies that generate electricity and distribute electricity, uh, the big guys like Duke and F you know, Florida light and, you know, PG and E and all companies like that and selling them equipment to help test their, uh, transformers and, stuff like that. So I essentially bought a business in Florida, which allowed me to get a visa to work in the U.S. for five years, chunks of time, an E2 visa it's called. And so I will split my time between Canada and the U.S., U.S. in the cold months and Canada in the warm months. But I'm doing the same thing I did all along in a different country to a different customer with a different product, but the business is exactly the same. you know, representing companies from Europe and Asia, and other parts around the world, importing those products and selling them to our US customers, right?

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, so you had two Canadian companies, and now you have a US company.

Glenn Poulos: That's right. Yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So it sounds like you're working on some exciting stuff for 2025. And that's setting up a new sales team with this company.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the company, believe it or not, is 20 years old, and the owner was retiring. And I came across it when I was looking to get an E2 visa so I could spend more time in the warmer months in Florida, you know, and you know, the business was intuitive to me. And so in anticipation of my tenure finishing up with the private equity guys, I, you know, bought the business and then just, I had to wait for my, my one thing to time out. And now, so there's about five or six salespeople, a couple of admins. So it's under 10 people. It's a few million dollars in turnover, much smaller than the business I was running, but I'm hoping to grow it and, you know, and do the same things I did at Gap Wireless at the new business. Yeah. And so it's like going all the way back to 2007 when I started Gap and all the way back to 1991 when I started my other company, MM Wave. And both of those were sold at the 15 year mark, but I'm, I don't plan on doing this for another 15 years. I don't have that much life ahead of me. So I gotta, I gotta get in and get out, uh, over the next three to five years. And then, and then eventually, and then try to, you know, bone up on my pickleball skills and, and, uh, and retire.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Well, you're in a, in a good state to retire down there in Florida. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Plenty of pickleball courts down there.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So, it was MMWave, right? The first company. You started from scratch. Did you start that one? Yeah. Gap Wireless from scratch. From scratch. This one, because I've had a couple of entrepreneurs on here who have done entrepreneurship through acquisition or ETA. just like for this third company. So I know it's early days with this new company, but what are some of the differences between or from starting from scratch and buying a business?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, I mean, this is just my personal opinion, right? I'm not, you know, I didn't write this particular issue. I didn't write the book on it. I wrote the book on something else, which we can get to later. But the, you know, I realized at some point along the way that It just takes a long time to start a company from scratch. And there's plenty of really nice companies out there at every stage in their development. And honestly, I think it's just better to buy an existing business that already has, for instance, all the bank stuff set up, all the credit card stuff set up, all the tax IDs are set up, all of the real estate and the operating business licenses, and it's all done, right? And I mean, that stuff is like takes forever, right? And you're not generating revenue when you're you know, doing KYC with the bank to, you know, explain what this company does and whatever. And I mean, there's a staff, there's probably a payroll and accounting system, maybe ERP involved, there's customers, there's vendors, and you're just going in to apply your skills as you see them to this existing business. And so, I don't think I would ever really, unless I really found an amazing mousetrap or whatever, start a business from scratch, scratch again, because I just don't personally, I don't have enough life runway ahead of me to do it. But I honestly, it's not, it's not necessary, right. And so I'm really of the mind that I wanted to buy something that was had a business, a pedigree, customers knew it, you know, had brand name and stuff like that, right? And so that's why I did it a different way. That's not why I didn't just move somewhere. And the other thing was, of course, for the E2 visa, I had to buy a business that had American employees, you know, that was a growing concern in order to qualify. Otherwise, I would have to stay and do something in Canada. And the economy in the US is just a little bit more favorable for the entrepreneurial thing. And so I thought, if I'm going to do another business, I'm definitely doing it in the US. And, and having said that, if I'm going to do it in the US, I'm going to do it where it's warm in the winter. And so that's why it's in Florida.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, that makes sense. Just just a rough guesstimate. If you were starting NWS, say, January 1, you know, we come on board and NWS, you're doing it full time. And you're just starting from scratch. How long would it take you to get the level of brand recognition and customers that you have today? And I know it's 20 years old, but how long would it take you to get those customers and get a brand name out there?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, so well, in 2007, when I started Gap Wireless, I had a business partner, and he was in another province, he was in Quebec, you know, like the first and we hired a really smart engineer as well that first year, and we had a lady that was doing the front office, you know, the bookkeeping and stuff. And, you know, that first year, I think we did like a million dollars in sales. And, you know, it was fairly lean times, right. And then the next year was like 3 million. And then it kind of went to 8 million. And then it's kind of, you know, so Honestly, if you ask me, my guess would be that it would be a one to three year venture to get it to being efficient, not efficient. That's not the word, but sort of and not self-sufficient. But I mean, to the point where it was throwing off revenue, paying salaries, you know, not feeding it from your, you know, from your savings or something like that. And I always tell people, whatever time you think it is, you got to you, you know, you want to double or triple the time and you want to five X the money. Right. So If you think you can do it for $10K in three months, it's going to be six to nine months, and it's going to be five times that amount of money. It's just my rule of thumb, but everything takes two, three times as long, costs five times as much. If you are going to start it from scratch, not saying don't do it. but make sure that you've put yourself at least a year of food and grocery money on a set aside and rent money so that you don't have to worry about paying yourself and that you know you've got at least a year before you're even thinking about covering personal expenses. Or you might have a spouse that's contributing or whatever, that's part of it, but your portion, you wanna make sure you've got at least a year well clear of all your expenses, right?

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That makes a lot of sense. So and you, you spent some time before you started these other businesses, you did spend some time in corporate, right? Working for other organizations?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, it wasn't a huge company. It was a company that was a similar business to the one that I started. It was a sales company. It was fairly, you know, there was offices in five cities in Canada. Each office had four or five sales guys. So it wasn't a tiny, you know, it was a decent operation, right? 20, 25 guys, something like that. And it had been in business, you know, this was in the mid eighties that I joined them and I started my business in 91. They had been in business since the mid seventies or something. They had a very growing concern and a great business. And that's where I learned a lot of lessons and sales that I came for, came up with for the book. were working for those guys. And so I spent five, it was a five to six year sort of range that I was with them. And then that was when I, over the time I'd realized that, you know, you can do really well as a salesperson in terms of your income. which is not necessarily tied to any kind of degree or schooling, right? Like, you know, doctors make a lot of money, but they also have to go to school for 10 years, right? Like a sales guy can get a, you know, a technical diploma, two year technical diploma, then go work for a sales company. And if they're any good, they could be making 200 grand in the second year, right? And it's, it's a very unique business that way. And then I realized, well, wait a minute. If I'm making a hundred grand or 200 grand or whatever, and there's four other guys in my office, how much is the owner making? Right. And, um, and then I thought, you know what, it'd be easier if I was the owner, then every, then I get paid every time everyone sells, not just when I sell. Right. Which is why I decided to jump and, and, uh, and start a sales company.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And I, I noticed on LinkedIn, you had, uh, you've meant you mentioned AI kind of your banner.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, that's yeah, that's a new thing that I'm starting as well. That is actually from scratch. So it's funny. So I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. In addition to the business, I'm also doing trying to sort of bootstrap an initiative in AI where to take the things I had learned at the old business about automation and AI and what I'd adopted and try to share it with other businesses, small SMBs, you know, and to see if there's something there. And obviously, I'm dividing my time and gingerly because I got to take care of of my main business. I just wanted to see while this AI is on such a exponential ramp, if there's a piece that I could play and then if it really hits pay dirt, I would probably partner up with some other people that could give 120% of their time. Because I can't give 100% of my time to it because I have to spend a lot of time at my day job, right? And so that's the idea behind the AI initiative.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So is it more consulting services or actual tools?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, it would be going into businesses looking for where they have or haven't adopted AI and finding out where some of the bottlenecks are in their business, whether it's in finance and reporting, production, quality assurance, quoting, order processing, financial reporting, and adopting, developing, and training on custom AI agents, whether they're written by the company or a third party agent. you're selling them or installing for them and showing them how to use. Not the least of which would be onboarding and helping people to get the best out of things like Copilot, Gemini and stuff like that, where they may be paying for the licenses, but how do they actually get their money's worth out of it, right? And so, Yeah, so I've been loosely working on that and having modest interest from customers. And so started doing some presentations and sort of see where it goes. Right. And it's kind of a passion project. And so I'm taking it very seriously. But I also I do have a day job, too. Right. So.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Right. So what what AI tools and workflows have you adopted then?

Glenn Poulos: So the main the main ones that where there's been traction are in the area of of commercial quoting automation. So where a lot of information comes into you and you need to process it and provide custom proposals, whether it's RFQs or RFPs or things like that, and provide responses to these bids where, you know, that's the bottleneck is getting all these RFPs responded to in a timely manner. can be very draining on your on your staff and the quality can vary depending upon which person is actually writing the document sort of document processing where, you know, for instance, construction firms or other people where they're taking in a lot of drawings. and then you need to analyze the drawings and then create workflows and bill of materials and action plans out of these drawings, which normally has to be done by hand in a way, like manually. You gotta look at the drawing. Oh, I need all these things. I gotta order all this equipment. I need these many cranes. And so those are the two areas where I've promoted a few things where there's starting to be traction. But it is very early days. I'd like to try to see some things come along in the, that are more repeatable, like, you know, sort of co-pilot adaptation. So, you know, go in, assess your team, who's beginner, intermediate, and advanced in AI, and then do 12-week seminars to get each one of those groups up to their highest potential with those standard off-the-shelf tools, like ChatGPT or co-pilot or whatever, make sure all the guardrails are installed in their business so they're not sharing corporate secrets or private information and things like that. And that's something where it could be systematized and resold over and over again.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And in your personal life and the things that you're working on individually, what tools do you use day in and day out?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, so the most tool that I use, which will come as no surprise, is ChatGPT, and I literally use it for everything, right? And I have it on all my devices. I give it voice commands. I talk to it. I literally, every time I'm posed with a question that I have to ask myself or whatever, I probably going to pose it to GP chat GPT at the same time, you know, like at lunch today, I mean, I'm trying to monitor my weight and stuff. And I didn't know how much I was eating. I just took a photo of it. And I said, how many calories is this? Right. And It even said like, you know, underneath the chicken, it looks like there's some potatoes. So like it even saw that it looked like I was hiding food, you know, and it came up with like 700 and some odd calories. And it said it saw the gravy and isn't it was amazing, right? Because if I was doing it, I'm going all a little bit of potatoes and some chicken and like, oh, that's, you know, 450 calories, but I forgot to add in the gravy at 125 calories, right? I just like my brain would just sort of filter that out as being inconvenient to care about and but most documents, you know, agendas and meetings and other things. I'm always trying to make sure I'm thinking about it from all the different angles, right? And I don't have time to think them up because I would take a day, you know, whereas I can put it in. I've said, what have I thought? What have I not thought about? You know, what else do I need to think about? Or what are three other ways I can approach this? Or how would you react if I presented this? And, you know, I love, you know, I love giving it scenarios like that. Right. So, um, and you know, uh, you know, job descriptions and letters to customers and, you know, uh, all sorts of preamble and stuff like that. It's amazing for that kind of stuff.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: It's incredible. And I, uh, you know, applaud you and, uh, others of, of. of our age and generation using the tools because I think a lot of people aren't and they don't understand there's a lot of misinformation in the media and things like that about AI, but people just need to start playing with it. And I love your use case for calories. I'm tracking my calories too, and I've never used it. I've never taken a picture and asked chat GPT, but I'm going to next time. I'm always looking at, you know, boxes or on the back of things or, you know, typing things in and looking them up, but that's a great use case. And really the use case as being a thought partner is one of the best use cases, having conversations with chat GPT. And it's a, it's really getting to know you. It's really getting to know me because it's remembering our conversations. And so it'll bring up things I talked about. four weeks ago and bring those into the conversation. So thanks for sharing those AI tools and workflows. Since you're a sales expert and you've written this book and I want to get to the book, Never Sit in the Lobby, what's the most significant misconception people have about sales?

Glenn Poulos: Well, the one I always like point to right away is confusing the difference between sales and marketing and not knowing the difference between the two of them. And I really simplify it and dumb it down that when you're in front of a customer and you're doing a proposal and you're showing them those features and benefits and, you know, we're trying to close the business that's selling everything else is marketing and trying to get you in front of that client. And so figure out which department you want to work in and apply for it there. Right? In other words, a sales guy who's sitting on his comfortable chair in his home office with three monitors and all his other fancy stuff, playing around on LinkedIn, that's marketing. That's not sales, right? And if that's what they really want to do, then they should be on the lead generation side or whatever, which again, I call marketing. The real sales guy doesn't want anything to do, that's anathema to him, however they say that, he wants to be in front of clients closing deals, right? And so, make sure you pick where you wanna be, right? And sales guys can be very expensive, you don't want them, a lot of that lead generation stuff can be farmed out to much other different levels in your stack of employees. And so, you don't want your most expensive resource you know, dialing for dollars or something like that. Right. And so that's the biggest one of the biggest things about mistakes is confusing marketing with sales.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, I love that answer. So What about what's the biggest misconception of someone who's in sales?

Glenn Poulos: Okay, well, like for me, and this is this is what's the word like, not unconventional, but sort of cough. People like to argue with me about that. I've done some tongue tied for the word. But anyways, the that the what I'm going to say is like, for me, it's all about being in front of customers. I don't really believe that Any of the products that I sell can actually be sold over Zoom or Teams calls. You could do a demo, you can maybe have a technical session or whatever, but at the end of the day, the guy that's getting the order probably making a lot of calls to that customer face to face. And you can argue as much as you want, but I still, you know, the example I always give is, okay, fine, you're successful. Your business is super successful. You're making bags of money. And guess what? Now you can afford a jet. And I guess what? I sell jets. And I would like to invite you to a team's call where I'm going to virtually introduce you to the potential product that you're going to own. I'd like to virtually introduce you to the pilot that's going to fly your plane and virtually introduce you to the crew that's going to take care of you when you're in flight. I'll offer you a complimentary beverage that you can't drink because you're on teams and let's walk you up. I'll walk up the stairs to your jet while you sit in your chair at your office and not get a ride. And then we'll go on a ride on the plane. And then at the end, you're going to cut me a check for $30 million. And it's like, no, I think I want to go for a ride on that jet before I give you 30 million. It's like, exactly. I treat everything like a $30 million jet. The guy who's getting the deal is picking you up in a nice car. He's treating you nicely on the way there. He's walking you up the stairs to the plane, making sure you're comfortable, flying you, giving you the best experience. You know, and learning everything there is to know about it. So the mistake I think is people think they can do it remotely. I can do it from home. I can do it from the comfort of my chair. I'm a firm believer in face to face selling wherever and whenever possible all within the. guidelines that it's not always easy to get in front of people now, but you need to get in front of them at some point, right? And not every call needs to be face-to-face, but how are you going to know what competitors, if you may not want to share it with you, but if you're in his building and you're demonstrating your particular product, whether it's software, hardware, or whatever, How are you going to see the coffee mugs, what's written on those coffee mugs, unless you're in the building, right? And, you know, he might pick it up on the Zoom call and you'll see, hey, your biggest competitors, he's drinking out of that guy's coffee mug, right? But you got to get there so you can see what they're doing now, how they're doing it, you know, and that the product you're trying to sell them, they've got nine other products like that from a competitor. And then you're thinking, wow, maybe he's just using me to keep competitor one honest for the 10th machine, right? And so that's the guidance and governance I try to place on sales guys and gals, of course, too.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: You also do coaching, right? You do coaching and consulting. And is that mostly for entrepreneurs or is that mostly for sales?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, so most of most of the coaching that I do is more on on a collaborative basis. So I'm not, I'm not an hourly charged by the hour charged by the quarter coach. I'm actually working with entrepreneurs or senior executives at businesses or whatever, in really any department, but but I mean, you know, my role has always been general manager. So sales always reported to me, but so did marketing and finance and operations. But where, and I'm sharing information with people of a similar sort of background and level as myself, and I'm working on ways of collaborating so that it's kind of like a pay it forward. You know, what goes around comes around kind of thing in the sense that I'm not really. it's not really something that I'm charging for, but I do it a lot because first of all, when you're giving coaching advice and helping people restructure their Salesforce or realign their management team and it's free, well, you know, If they don't like the product that I've delivered, then I can refund their misery for free, right? Because it hasn't cost them anything. And so if I start charging, no matter how much it is, then it becomes a completely different, it's a whole business that I don't run. I don't run a professional, some people do. But I mean, I'm doing it because the companies and they interest me and I'm thinking down the road, I can collaborate with you, you can collaborate with me and later it will return itself in kind and that's the coaching. And you'd be surprised how many people reach out to me and they're saying, can you help me? A lot of them are asking me about sales department issues and compensation and stuff like that. And I mean, within my ability to spend time with them, I do it, you know, and I trade it for, for future opportunities to collaborate.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That makes sense. It's, it's a network working opportunity for you as well. So, okay. So let, let's, let's talk about your book. I wanted to, um, because I just finished it this morning, but the book 57, the, the subtitle, so it's never sitting in lobby 57 winning sales factors to grow a business and build a career selling. How did you settle on 57? It seems like a number that's important. I don't know if it is or not, but 57 seems like a specific number.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, the funny thing is, no, I mean the title was, I had a lot of help on that title from one of the editors because they didn't like my title. And they said, based on keyword searches, you're not going to sell any books. And so, you know, literally one of the, I can't remember if it was the copy editor, the content editor. There's so many editors that you need to use when you write a book, but. thing and you know and that's really where it came out with it's not like there's 57 chapters or you know it's and and the never sit in the lobby was the most catchy one that she liked because they all have kind of catchy names or whatever right one of the chapters is never sit in the lobby and so that became the title of the book you know and so unfortunately there's not there's some you know great story behind it but uh but there was you know good reason to take her advice and stuff right and uh you know, and so far, and so it is selling some books. So I guess she was right.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, I appreciate the explanation. And I listened to it. That way. And that was you. Yes. And so I didn't I didn't have I wasn't looking at I was just taking notes. I was I was listening. But Is, are each of those noted? Is there a one and then a two and then a three?

Glenn Poulos: No, that's what I'm saying. Like, no, there's not. Okay. And so there are chapters and the chapters don't have numbers. And then within the chapters are sub groupings that are kind of loosely connected to each other. And so you'll find a heading at the beginning of each section and then three or four or five factors inside of it. And some factors have two factors in them. So I can't guarantee, you know, that it's exactly 57. It's close. It's close enough for government work, but that's kind of the idea behind it, right? It's just kind of like a Heinz 57 of things to do because, and as you've come to learn from having listened to it or whatever, it's not just about selling, right? It's like, I say it's how to get, act and stay in front of your customers. and to be a pleasure to do business with always. Right. And what do you mean by don't be a pleasure to do business? Well, don't be a pain in the ass. That's what I mean. Right. And so it's like, why do you have like etiquette about how to eat a meal in your book? Right. And I'm like, well, because if you read the stories about some of the people I've gone to lunch with and how they've embarrassed me or whatever, what not to do, what to do, that's the reason why. Because if you're out on a lunch with a client, they're making huge assessments about you based on what you order, how you order, how you eat, how you where you sit, you know, how you behave, right? I spent a lot of time on rapport, and listening and, and all the ways to not be one of those annoying sales people that we all don't like getting bothered by.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Well, I really enjoyed it. And I thought, wow, if I was starting out in sales, And even if I, I was in sales for a long time, this book would give me ideas on how to improve. And I really appreciate it. And I'm, I'm actually already started implementing. You have some simple suggestions for email etiquette, uh, for leaving voicemails, following up these kinds of things that I I've already started implementing. one thing I wanted to talk about, and let's just talk about that title, never sit in the lobby, because sure. Going into the book, I was like, I, what, why, what does this mean? Never sitting in the lobby? Yes. I went to a lot. Never. What does it mean? So why don't you explain to the audience? Like, yeah, never sit.

Glenn Poulos: Like some people like never sit in the lobby. Does that mean never sit? Should I sit in my car? And I'm like, well, if you're early, you should sit in your car because once you get to the lobby, you should never sit down. And so the whole point is, is again, these, a lot of these are rapid fire rules, right? And they don't require a lot of explanation, but the whole idea behind never sit in the lobby is that if you go in the lobby and you introduce yourself and you're waiting for your client to come down, a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll sort of stare at the wall and look at the awards or they'll pick up company magazines or brochures, flip through them, or the worst case now, kiss of death, everyone gets on their phone, right? And they, once they get zoned out on their phone and are flipping through talking to the wife about the milk and bread that's needed, or, you know, flipping through reels on Instagram or whatever, the guy walks in, you didn't even notice the door open. You didn't need to. And all of a sudden he's like, are you Glenn? And, you know, like, and I'm like, Oh, yeah, yeah. And then I got to stumble to put my phone away. I'm sitting down. Of course, for me, the guy was always six foot four tall, and I'm only five, six. So I have to rise up from the chair. And then I'm still a foot shorter than the guy, right. And so for me, I always want to be standing at attention, waiting for them to come in my phones in my pocket. I'm not I'm not playing around with anything. you know, and I and so I'm never sitting in the lobby. But in addition to that, the next rule that goes right after that is I always have something in my hand. and something in my mind. So I have something I'm going to give the person and something I'm going to say right away. I have not lost for any words, you know, and, you know, because a lot of times you're not given a lot of time because of the, the ways and means of how you ended up in the lobby. It's because he didn't want to, you couldn't get a proper meeting, but he said he would meet you in the lobby or you could drop something off, you know, so you need to make the best use of your time. And so I always have something in my hand, like the quote, the literature, maybe it's a promo item, whatever it is to give them and something to say to them right away, something in your hand and something in your mind. And then there's a bunch of other ones that flow after it, which we can get into at your convenience.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So there's literally 55 others. There is indeed a copy editor who counted.

Glenn Poulos: That's right.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. Yeah.

Glenn Poulos: The next one is never is always asked for a mini tour. Right. And I love that people are like, what is what is a mini tour? Right? A mini tour is a tour. That's not that's many. Right? It's just doesn't take all day.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And you say many because you don't want them to think I don't have time for this. Right.

Glenn Poulos: Exactly. Yeah. You're saying, Hey, can I get a mini tour? And they're like, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, you're, you're putting this new thing in production. You're putting this new thing in the warehouse, you're putting this new thing in the office or in finance or whatever. You know, could you just take me walk through, show me the new setup, show me where the equipment's going to go, show me the situation it's going to work in. And if they hum and ha a little bit, you know, you've already said it was mini and it's, you know, it's going to be quick, whatever. If they hum and ha, I say, look, I promise I won't sell any encyclopedias. Just want to have a quick look. And they're like, okay, fine, let's go for a walk. So he takes you through that important door that blocks the office from the lobby. Now you're on the inner sanctum. That's when you get to start shining with the next group of rules. which is the call book factor and never forget a face, right? So if you're there early, you should show up early because early is on time and on time is late. And when you're in the parking lot waiting for one or two minutes before your meeting so you don't have to stand for long, you go to your phone, you call up that customer and you recall every person there that you've ever met. It might be one person, it might be 10, but you have to re-remember every person's face And so you look at Jack and you're like, what is Jack? Okay, I remember Jack. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. What you're doing is you're moving Jack's face from long-term ROM read-only memory to high seek time, random access memory at the front of your brain. Because the problem is it's in there, but you can't instantly grab it when you're walking for your mini tour. And so you've re-remembered everybody. So then when you're walking down the hall towards the new lab, and then guess who walks by? It's Bob. And say, hey, Bob, how's it going? And the guy's like, oh, right, Glenn. And see, he had that pregnant pause, which led me to believe that he didn't remember me. Eventually, he remembered me. But imagine if the tables were turned, and I didn't do the never forget a face. And I walked in, got the mini tour. Bob walks by me and says, hey, Glenn, how's it going? And I'm like, oh, hey, hey. And then he's already 20 feet away. Bob, you know what I'm screaming? I do remember you. I do remember you. He's like, no, that jerk didn't remember me. What a jerk. Meanwhile, the one when you do remember, they're like, oh, Glenn, he's such a pleasure to do business with. Right? Makes a huge difference. And you know, and so and while you're walking down the hall, you're looking on everyone's desk. What coffee mugs are they? What t shirts? Are they wearing? What mouse pads are they using? What pens do they have? Who gave the freebies? Where's your competitive equipment? What other equipment that you sell that they use that you didn't even know they buy? You know, you're taking mental note of all of that stuff on your mini tour. Right? And then you get in and you get out. And typically, when I'm on those mini tours or whatever, I'm saying, you know what? Bob, I had something I wanted to go over with Bob. It's funny. We bumped into him. Can you drop me by his desk on the way by? And then he takes me by Bob's desk. Hey, Bob, can I have two minutes? I just wanted to have a quick chat with you. He's like, sure. And then Bob says to Jack, who you're visiting, I'll walk him out. throughout that whole exchange, what I end up doing is programming and setting up a bunch of other meetings for other weeks, where I know that so that I don't have to be dialing for meetings from the office trying I'm most of my weeks are already set up, because all my meetings were set up at the meeting before the meeting.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, that makes sense. And there's a couple other things I want to talk about from the book. Go ahead. One of them is you you say quite often in the book, you only get forever to make another impression. Like I had to like, turn that over. Like, talk about what that means. I mean, I had to keep turning it over.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah. Cause so the, it goes back to what your mom taught you. Right. Which is you only, you only get one first, you only get a chance to make one first impression. Right. And I'm like, well, that's actually not true. Like it's true, mom, you do have to make a good first impression, but every impression you make after that is an impression. And so the, the point is, is even if you make a good first impression, And then later the boss walks by your desk and sees that you're on social media. Every time he walks by those impressions become the latest impressions. And they are the impressions that he remembers not that you were nice. The first day you came to work. And so my whole thing is that when you're a young person building your career, you're basically mapping out where do I want to be and who do I need to kill in order to get there, right? Because basically you start, you're in the inside sales, there's 20 guys. Then you get to outside sales, there's five of those. Then you get sales manager, there's two of those. Then you get director of sales, there's one. Then there's a chief revenue, there's only one of those jobs. And then there's the CEO. And where do you want to end up? You got to figure that out. I want to be CRO. Okay, well, that's one job. So I've got to go from inside sales, then I got to get a sales while I'm in Toronto, I can go here, then I got to do this. And so every time the guy who could get me that job in Toronto walks by, I'm going to make sure I'm giving him the best impression possible. You know, you know, I'm saying, you know, like, Hey, Rick, you know, blah, blah, blah. I want to ask you, I got this deal cooking so that when he's thinking about who to promote the next time, there's only one name that pops into his brain over and over and over again. And so always be making an amazing impression at work because you are always making an impression at work. And so that's the whole idea behind it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. I really liked that. And, and you talk about. I guess a lot of the talk is overcoming maybe a stereotype. I come from marketing, right? And so maybe a stereotype that I see with salespeople is the insincerity, right? You talk throughout the book about being genuine. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and what people can work on to make sure that they're coming across as genuine and not

Glenn Poulos: Yes. Well, one of the chapters on that is another tongue twister called, implied familiarity also breeds contempt, right? And so I'm always telling people, you know, don't like, don't infer anything until it's real. You know what I mean? Like don't infer based on someone's behavior that you've got rapport, you need to build the rapport naturally. And until you know that it's firmly established. And so what I mean by implied familiarity also breeds contempt is basically, you know, there's a saying familiarity breeds contempt, right? So the example I give is, you know, I grew up in Toronto, my parents used to go to Florida all the time. I'm in Florida now, no surprise, but we used to drive down, right? And my parents always took 3 days, 3, you know, all day drives, 3 kids in the back, parents in the front. By the time I got to Florida, I wanted to kill my brother and sister, right? Why? Because I was like, so hyper familiarized with them, basically one on each arm, you know, like we're squished in the back of the car, right? And you're like hitting each other. And, and, you know, and it's funny, or you go on a trip with, you go on a trip with someone that you're really fond of, and you decide, hey, why don't we just share a hotel room and, And by the end of it, you can't stand them because of the sounds they make when they brush their teeth and the way the noises they make. And it's hyper familiarizing them and it becomes annoying. And so what I found is that the most annoying salespeople are the ones that walk in and pretend like they know you. And so I give the example of seeing the photo behind the guy's desk where he's fishing with another guy and he's holding up the fish. And, you know, and so I say, Oh, my God, like, I love fishing, we should go fishing. Right? And he's like, What are you talking about? I said, Oh, well, you know, the fish there on the end, he looks back, he goes, Oh, my God. He says, that's my ex-father-in-law. I freaking hate that guy. I'm divorced. That guy's a nightmare. I hate fishing. I only went fishing because my wife made me go fishing. Thank God I'm divorced. Grabs the photo, throws it in the garbage. And now I've completely taken this guy to a state of absolute insanity. How do I bring him back from that, right? Whereas I should have found out through a series of conversations like, oh, are you a fisherman? What's the story behind the golf club that's hanging on the wall, right? Why do you have a golf, you know, not, oh, let's go golfing, right? Like, because, you know, the guy doesn't even know you, right? So, you know, that's one of the ways of building rapport in a genuine manner, right? And also I talk about active listening, right? So, you know, where God gave you two ears and one mouth, so you do the math kind of thing. you know, and, you know, always be trying to trying to practice active listening, which I go on ad nauseam in the book, right? And how to do it and how to learn how to do it, and how to become a good listener. Because, you know, if if you're just like, you know, if the guy starts talking, you're like, Oh, our box does that. And oh, wait a minute, we have a box that does that. And, you know, this stuff becomes so annoying, right? And it's like, how do I get rid of this guy? So those are just some comments on on rapport and genuine behavior.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Right. And I really liked the section on where you're talking about talking too much, like the sales basically already made, and then you're going to throw in a bunch of other stuff that could potentially kill the sale.

Glenn Poulos: Don't sell past the close. When you get the PO, shut up.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Right.

Glenn Poulos: And just get up and leave. So many people blow it at that point.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Right. I wish we had a lot more time because there's so many other things I want to talk about in the book. The last question I'll ask you about to talk about in the book, you have some interesting comments on CRM and I'm coming from marketing and I've rolled out CRM platforms multiple times for sales forces. And I really like what you said. You're not a hater of CRM. But there are some specific things that you have noticed over the years with CRM systems. Do you want to just share real briefly your thoughts about CRM?

Glenn Poulos: You know, I find that the, the really top producing, uh, sales reps, you know, have the most empty CRM, right. And that, you know, when you, that's where you're confusing marketing with selling, right. That's another one of those things, right. Where. you know, it's like everything's got to be in the CRM, right? Okay, well, why? Right? And, and so the, I agree that there's certain elements of things that do need to be in the CRM or what have you, but, but I don't believe that the, the high producing sales assets are also the best administrators, right? And the CRM is kind of an administrative, administrivia kind of a thing. And, you know, I find that people, You know, my dad used to say they put the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Right. And, you know, and so, you know, I I'm always at odds with what to demand. We track. But but, you know, I find that companies are best served by figuring out their optimal deal size and saying, look, everything above that's got to be in the in your and your dates need to be up to date. And you're but I don't need to know every note and what have you. And the one thing that I found, the reason why is because I felt victim to this myself having put in so many CRMs that I would go to a sales guy and I would say, Hey, you know, um, you know, how to, how to go at a T-Mobile that call. And he's like, well, it's in the CRM. Didn't you read it? And I'm like, Well, no, if I can you just tell me? He's like, No, I can't tell you. If I have to put it in the CRM, then that's where you got to read it. Why do I have to tell you twice? And I'm, you know, and so if the executives are not running their business in the CRM, why should the salespeople? you know, and so it's a real love hate relationship for me. And but I do believe that the the big deals need to be in there and you need to have the probability right where you're at the stage and the close date right and so that you can share that with your vendors and your and your your divisions or whoever needs to know about you know, the forecast and the funnel.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I just love how you, you also pointed out that, um, you know, your customer data, the people doing the ordering, placing the orders a lot of times are different than the people that you're selling to. And so there's always a disconnect between disconnect between the accounting system and the CRM. Yeah. The system, the order entry. And that through throughout my career was like, we had to go to the, the order entry system, if we wanted to contact customers to tell them, you know, delays or anything like that, we couldn't go to CRM. And, and like you said, yeah, that's a huge, you feel not correct. And, and we don't want your most expensive resource. having office days to enter a whole bunch of information into CRM. So I appreciate it.

Glenn Poulos: Literally every system I've had has been that problem where ERP accounting was disconnected from the sales opportunity side of the thing, except for one, and that they were directly tied together and could see each other. But the system was an ERP and it was so complicated, the sales guys couldn't use it. And so I've never won that particular connectivity thing. And some people spend millions of dollars gluing the accounting data to the sales. And to what end, I'm not so sure.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Well, thank you so much for sharing some of your book. We'll put links to the book in the show notes and to your podcast and things like that. I just have some personal questions to wrap up. The first one is what's the book besides yours that you recommend the most to people?

Glenn Poulos: That's funny. I mean, um, The funny thing is I don't actually read a lot. So it's not like I'm the four minute this or the 15 minute whatever. The most impactful book for me though was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, which I can explain quickly in a second. But also the book Persuasion was super impactful on me, the very first one. and The Rule of Reciprocity and all that. That's such a great book on motivating and how people are motivated, right? So Persuasion and then his follow-on books, I think I read most of them and picked up a little bit more tidbits. But, you know, The Power of Now is one which basically allows you to focus on the difference between you and your ego and to focus on the now that you're living in versus you know, and it's just been so helpful, especially with all the changes that I've always gone through buying the business, you know, starting a business, selling a business, working for this, changing that, like, and I get so caught up in my ego and, and I, you know, it allows me to sort of, preemptively deal with my demons, right? And try to focus on what's important and not worrying about things that don't matter and stuff like that. So Eckhart Tolle's got some great books and yeah, so that would be my suggestion.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, I haven't read The Power of Now, but I'm going to put it in the queue for sure. So thanks for the recommendation. Okay. This is a lightning round of questions. Your favorite candy bar.

Glenn Poulos: Oh, so, so I'm like a hard candy and like fudge. So I like, like fudge, like from England and, uh, miss miss Tilly's fudge and stuff like that. If it would be a chocolate bar. It would probably be like Heath Bar in the U.S. or like the Score Bar in Canada, which has kind of got like hard caramel inside with chocolate and stuff. I'm a candy-holic. My grandfather owned a candy store. He was a candy maker.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. And what happened to the store then?

Glenn Poulos: So he, uh, he had the store right up until he died, but he died with all the recipes in his brain, never passed them on. And so, um, yeah, so we weren't able to continue the legacy. Yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I'm a candy holic too. So, uh, yeah, I love, I'll be fascinating if someone in my family had a store. So favorite music artist.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, so favorite music artists have to be Supertramp because that was the band I loved the most when I was 17. And that's how I figured out how old people are. I asked what their favorite album is, and I take 17 years and I can figure out the year they were born. And so I love Supertramp and Pink Floyd and stuff like that. Favorite cereal? Favorite cereal was sort of Fruit Loops and Count Chocula and Lucky Charms. Mac or PC? Love Macs, but I'm PC all the way, all the way. Yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Google or Microsoft?

Glenn Poulos: Well, right now I'm Microsoft, but I used to be Google. And then the corporation changed. I had to change with it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: But for years I was Google and now I'm Microsoft. Dogs or cats? Dogs. Yeah. I have two French bulldogs. Yeah. Phantom or Les Mis?

Glenn Poulos: So I go to a lot of plays. I have season tickets in Canada to the Mirvish which is the Broadway of Canada. I'm sorry to ramble on and I love plays and those are the two plays I hate the most and so neither unfortunately. I don't like either one of those plays and I've seen them both more than once. There's a lot of plays that I love and you know What would be your top musical?

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Probably like Wicked or something like that, maybe. I'd love the answer. So just a couple more questions. One of these I stole from your book. If I invite you to karaoke night, what's your go-to song?

Glenn Poulos: Yeah. So it used to be Love on the Rocks by Neil Diamond, but now it's Sweet Caroline.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Neil Diamond. Love it. Last two questions, Glenn, and thank you for being so generous with your time. What's the worst thing about being an entrepreneur and what's the best thing about being an entrepreneur? The money for both. Yeah.

Glenn Poulos: Like, and so I love the freedom of not like having taken on a whole realm of bosses when I sold the business, man, that was really, really hard for me. And there are nice people and all that jazz. But, you know, as an entrepreneur, after you get the hang of it, or whatever, it's like, you want to make a change in marketing, you make a change, right? You want to change the colors of business, you change the colors, right? And it's like, I don't need to argue with you about it. And they're like, oh, we need a steering committee and it's got to go upstairs to the corporate and make sure it meets our, you know, responsibility matrix or whatever. And I'm like, oh my God. Right. So, but being an entrepreneur, you know, get all that freedom, but you know, you can also be super poor at times, be worried about the, you know, the guarantees for the banks and whatever, but you can also make bags of money. And, you know, so it's really, really relates to that. And there's really no way and really, there's no other way really to, um, like jack up your net worth and to have a business. It's the only way really. I mean, you know, you can have a doctor and you make 400 grand a year, but in Canada, half that goes to tax pretty much the same amount in the U S you know, it's a, you know, and you got to work huge hours and whatever, and it's only 400 grand. right? I mean, sales guys, I knew sales, I've met sales guys that made over a million dollars and they barely graduated college, right? And so on the earning side, but a business has this unlimited leverage, right? And so, you know, and you get a five time, five to 10 times multiple on your profits when you sell it, right? So, you know, you make a million dollars profit, you could likely sell it for four and a half to five and a half times your EBITDA, which, you know, put a $5 million check in your, that's pretty good retirement fund for most people, right?

Kyle Ariel Knowles: It is. Yeah, I love the answer, Glenn. And Glenn, again, thank you so much for being generous with your time. I've enjoyed the conversation. And I think the audience is going to learn so much about sales and entrepreneurship from this conversation. Thanks, Kyle.

Glenn Poulos: Yeah, great. Great being here. You're welcome.