The World of Sales during Covid with Steve Nudelberg

1Huddle Podcast Episode #10

On this Bring It In podcast episode, 1Huddle’s CEO and Founder Sam Caucci sat down with Steve Nudelberg, Founder and Principal Thinker at On The Ball Ventures. He wrote the book Confessions of a Serial Salesman and specializes in all things sales and business. 

On this episode of Bring It In season one, Steve sat down with Sam and discussed the world of sales during COVID, forming meaningful connections, and the hiring process.

Audio available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. 

TOP 3 HIGHLIGHTS

Below are some of the insights Steve shared during our chat, edited for length and clarity. You can find more Bring It In podcast episodes here.

• “The pressure to force-feed prospects business is the downfall of the old system and certainly encouraging about the new system.”
• “I want people to build pipelines. A healthy pipeline leads to tremendous revenue results.”
• “It takes time and effort and commitment to really build a relationship.”

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sam: So Steve, why don’t you tell everybody about yourself? What got you from where you started to starting On The Ball Ventures? 

Steve: So I am a career connector. It’s part of my DNA. I have always been able to put people together., and one of the common denominators being in business is if you can put people together that wouldn’t normally be together, that usually is a good sign for new business.

I love people. I love building. And so for me, the connection between athletes, which I built a real relationship network with athletes, through my cellular phone business, all of a sudden matched that to other corporations that I knew, boom, we had a business. We called it On The Ball. Not because of sports, but because most of the people that worked with me said, ‘man, thank you for being on the ball’, and I said, that would make a great name for a company. So boom, 27 years later, here we are On The Ball ventures.

Sam: A few months ago, I was able to get through your book “Confessions of a Serial Salesman”, and it was awesome. It made me wonder though, like how has sales shifted? How has sales changed? I mean, do you need to call it another version of your book after this COVID situation?

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. So, people asked me throughout my career, how do you stay so successful? How are you on the front edge of things? And it’s the small, incremental changes, make huge gains very much like football. You’re an athlete. You’ve got to do the reps. You’ve got to do the work. So the book is really my process of how I deal with the profession that delivers the most rejection of anything else. So it’s what you eat. It’s what you think. It’s what you say. All of those ingredients, done consistently over a period of time. So my book “Confessions”, this is how I remain successful. 

To your point the sales game has continued to change. People obviously know about the industrial revolution or the technology revolution. I think there’s a sales revolution that’s happening that people are no longer going to buy transactionally. They want to be doing business with people they know, like and trust, and the tools are there to do that, to maintain and create relationships at scale. And so modernizing your sales approach, modernizing your sales process is really key to developing major relationships which turn out to be phenomenal business. And it’s never been more fun. 

Sam: Do you find that there’s a specific trait or skill that maybe goes under developed by sales managers? 

Steve: The divorce rate in the country is off the charts. People are not taught how to create and manage good relationships. They focus all of the mind on themselves. And most divorces are because, ‘well, my partner did this’, you know. The reality is, if you are genuine and authentic about what you do and you talk to enough people, that are quality people, the right things will take care of themselves.

So I think the number one thing that sales leadership is going to need to get their arms around is the metrics on how they measure activity. Right now it’s cold calls and cold emails. And I think it’s quality conversations. Taking contacts, and we call it “C to C”, contacts to conversations. If you do that with a steady diet, you will absolutely grow your business. 

So it’s a mindset shift. We need to train people on patience, on being genuine, authentic. Hey, listen, not everybody’s a fit. And I use that one of the rules in my book. I only visit with people, There’s no appointments. I find out if there’s a fit and I’m right up front with them and say, ‘listen, Sam, there might not be a fit. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. We both like football. We both like wine, whatever, we can be friends. It doesn’t mean we have to do business’. The pressure to force feed prospects business is, I think, what the downfall of the old system is, and certainly encouraging about the new system.

Sam: Interesting you say that because I think also there’s so much technology now that people are using and not necessarily mastering. It feels like at times the sales process has gotten longer because there’s these manufactured steps to different tools. I gotta send you an email. You’re going to send me a DocuSign. I gotta send you a zoom link. You got to submit this. It’s all these little steps. I mean, all this technology is supposed to accelerate things. Sometimes it gets in the way, right? 

Steve: We’ve been teaching people for almost two plus years to use zoom. And the first step in the sales process is a virtual coffee. So this environment is not new to us. ‘Hey, let’s just do this because’. And here’s the overriding questions. You and I are doing some great things together, if you and I didn’t like each other, the deal is dead. Period. It’s over. And I ask people all the time, when was the last time you made a purchase from someone you didn’t like? And that answer is never. 

So when we grew up, our parents said life is not a popularity contest… bologna! It’s exactly a popularity contest because the more people that know you, the more people can consider your services, and then ultimately that consideration leads to a decision.

 And so we’ve turned the funnel upside down. It’s an awareness game. People need to know who you are, need to know what you do before you try and jam a sale down there. 

Sam: Especially right now where people are now going more remote, looking at it from a different angle, the relationship between a sales manager and their sales force is also an area that’s strained. What type of guidance are you giving to sales managers, sales leaders that are trying to keep everybody together while not being in person with each other? 

Steve: Part of it is the people that you’re hiring. If you’re hiring people that need you to babysit them, you have the wrong people. We do a good job of asking, what are the characteristics of the person we want? We want them to be self-motivated. We want them to be the CEO of their own life, make decisions based on good things for themselves. And then, we’ll help them build their own business within the business that we’re in.

So no matter what category, if you have 50 entrepreneurs running around there that feel like they’re part of the company, that are incented to build their own business, instead of getting beat up every day. I think that the results have been different. We arm people with the right tools. We aren’t people with the right education. And here’s the key, the right expectation too. I don’t expect new salespeople to jump on board and in the first week make a sale. I want people to build pipelines. A healthy pipeline leads to tremendous revenue results. And I can predict that. Most salespeople are sitting there thinking ‘Wow, if I just got that one’ or ‘this one’s going to come in this month’ and I’m like, ‘Hey Johnny, you’ve been saying that for four months.When are you going to realize it’s not coming in?’

You know, we’re not dependent on somebody pulling the trigger to buy. We are pushing and getting into relationships where people understand what we do, who we do with and what the value proposition is. And so most of it is front ended. That’s where the work is, not back ended looking for that serious close.

Sam: You know, it’s unfortunate right now, too, that a lot of companies are using COVID-19 as sort of their cover to just either pull back, not do anything and it’s become an easy out in some ways. Sometimes it’s true, but sometimes it’s not. What advice would you have for salespeople that are trying to figure out at what point we got to try to get people moving forward again, so what do you say to teams that are trying to figure out how hard to push?

Steve: At the beginning of this whole thing, my entire inbox and social media was, ‘Hey, what do we do? This is crazy. We’ve never seen it before. What do we do?’ So I posted a video that said, if you are questioning in your mind, whether you should be prospecting through this, the answer is hell yes.

You know why? Because you have unprecedented access to decision-makers who are using this time to listen, learn, engage in new dialogue. So the ones who run away are going to get run over, they’re done. They’re never, ever going to be able to recoup the ones who stayed relevant, who kept doing what they’re doing, planted seeds in their garden, and you and I were talking about this earlier. I think the fourth quarter’s going to be unbelievable. Number one is because what you believe can actually happen, and number two is there’s such a pent up demand that if you’re positioned right, you’ll be there similar to a garden. You’ve got to water it and nurture it. And then boom, all of a sudden you’ve got plants. It’s no different here. New innovation and new companies were born during every situation, whether it be 9/11 or a hurricane or whatever, recessions and depressions, companies come out of it with renewed interest, renewed vigor.

I think the sales world, the sales population got lazy. Just picking up the phone and cold calling is lazy. It takes time and effort and commitment to really build a relationship, not knowing what’s on the other side. And if you’re willing to do that, your life will have riches far beyond what the money is. New ways to teach people are part of this revolution. And you, my friend, I think are uniquely poised to take advantage of that.

Sam: Sure, thank you. And one of the things that just hit me is that your strategy, your philosophy, the way you approach things is so centered around relationships. And in all honesty, as you look around a lot leading up to today in the last few years, it’s just the world’s been full of sales books that are tricks of the trade. These shortcuts and me and you have a mutual relationship and coach Mark Guandolo who coached me. 

Steve: I love him, love him. 

Sam: You know, he always used to say, do the little things. And at the time when I was young, I didn’t really totally get it. I just understood that meant making sure my shirt was tucked in. But now more than ever, I know what that means. And they’re focused on relationships and being likable, being critical to relationships. I think that’s super timely right now for anybody. 

Steve: So, you know, the world was transactional. It’s flipped to relational and relationships never leave. I still have relationships from 40 years ago. I did the right thing the first time. And if someone didn’t buy from me at that particular time of my life, I wasn’t going to jam it down their throat because somebody, one of my partners said, Hey, we got to hit a number. I said, If we don’t do it at eight, cause we didn’t try. This is how we’re going to build this company.I want to build it one time and build it right. 

And I’ve been fortunate to have some exits and things that worked because that’s the role that we took early on that I just wanted to be one of the choices that someone had and now when it comes to sale, we’ve created real thought leadership that stuff’s coming out of the woodwork some years ago.

Hey, I haven’t spoken to you in 10 years, but I see what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. I’m open to a conversation about new stuff, new tools. It’s all new, and if you don’t know, you can’t go. That’s all, this is really an education standing on the front edge of it, staying relevant and just doing enough of it.

And, you know, man, if you were playing quarterback, you couldn’t throw the ball once and say, okay, I’m ready for the game. You were repping all week long. 

Sam: And that was a long snapper, so I was definitely repping!

Steve: Oh wow. That’s a cool spot. 

Sam: This is great, man. Any recommendations for anybody’s listing where they could follow up with you?

Steve: Yeah, so I’m pretty active on socials. The last name is Nudelberg, so you’re not going to run into a lot of them other than my son who spent 10 years in college football and is now president and really driving the company.

We do a daily huddle every morning, live across all the channels, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. So we’re visible. My son and I both answer all of our own inquiries when somebody reaches out to us, although we have a team of people and, you know, Shay who works with me, I do the responding. I’m the one that gets engaged and that’s how you build a big business, is by drinking the Kool-Aid yourself.

Sam: That’s great, Steve, thanks for spending some time together. 

Steve: You’re awesome. And I’m really excited about what you’re doing and keep on pushing forward.

Topics Discussed: Relationships, Hiring, Sales, Leadership, Coaching, Authenticity, Work