01:05

Madison Riddell:
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Moves. I'm Madison Riddell, Chief Revenue Officer of VividFront, and today I'm joined by a guest with specialized expertise in a very critical area for business growth. Dana Allender is a consultant and advisor for high growth potential companies, focusing on helping businesses solve problems and drive revenue. In addition to running his own sales consulting firm, SUN, he serves as an entrepreneur in residence to JumpStart, a Cleveland-based venture development organization and one of VividFront's favorite strategic partners.

Like many entrepreneurs, Dana has zigged and zagged throughout his career with a personal mantra to commit to the relentless pursuit of awesome. Dana, thank you so much for joining us.

01:15
Dana Allender:
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

01:17
Madison Riddell:
Awesome. We're so excited to have Dana for all the accolades that I just listed, and we'll get into all of them. I know that there's a ton of lessons that our listeners can learn from you, so I don't want to belabor too much of an intro so that we can just dig right into the meat. Let's just start with your story. Can you talk us through your personal and professional path and what got you to this current state where you are working for JumpStart as an entrepreneur in residence and also running your own consulting business, SUN?

01:44
Dana Allender:
Great. Well, thank you. Thank you again for having me. So I'm born and bred in Ohio. Northeast Ohio. Have been in the Cleveland area for a little over 20 years now. Married with family and kids and all of that, which is great professionally. B. Two B enterprise sales background. So I had been in that space for about 20 years and had the life changes going on with recently getting married, young child, new house, should we do an addition? And maybe I should quit my job and do something different. And honestly, I may have actually just gotten another job in another industry, but at that time, when HR people are looking for new talent, they were looking to check a lot of boxes. Ten years of experience in an industry, $8 million book of business. You're a super happy employee. And I didn't fit that category in another industry, so I decided I was going to start my own thing.

02:45
Dana Allender:
I didn't know exactly what that was going to mean, but I did feel as though that I could maybe help small businesses and eventually leading to startups help grow their business. So I didn't want to really do sales for them, per se. But in the enterprise work that I had done previously, I was a first salesperson, and I walked into it, and I realized there weren't a lot of tools and processes and things in place for me, and so I had to build a lot of that out. And I didn't know it at the time, but then 20 years later, that served me pretty well.

03:15
Madison Riddell:
Awesome. So backpedaling a little bit because there's a lot that you just went through. No, that's perfect. We're heading down a perfect path here. So, what was the last role that you had before you went kind of down this entrepreneurial road?

03:27
Dana Allender:
The last role? So, I was doing B, two B, enterprise sales, selling, specifically contact center services. So selling into like, an at and T or a Nike or an Omaha steaks, selling products, taking inbound phone calls, doing customer support. So I would generally work with a head of operations, maybe ahead of sales, head of customer success or something like that.

03:52
Madison Riddell:
And for our listeners who might be maybe they're in a similar situation right now. Maybe they're in a sales role and they're thinking about what's next for me. What was the turning point where you said, hey, I've learned enough from this role and I'm ready to try something new? And I think you alluded to a little bit that you kind of had some chaos going on in your life at the same time, some changes.

04:10
Dana Allender:
Yeah, I thought we might talk about this a little bit more later. But I think that salespeople that are good have an entrepreneurial spirit by themselves. They're problem solvers, and they'd like to try to figure out how to get things done. And so I think I was probably entrepreneurial before you realized entrepreneurship. Yeah, but I think that's often the case with a lot of people.

04:36
Madison Riddell:
And was there anything with this specific role or even roles prior to that prepared you for the entrepreneurial venture other than just specializing in sales? Turning point?

04:47
Dana Allender:
That's a good question. So I think a lot of times with many small businesses and startups, you have to do a lot of things. You have to roll up your sleeves and just get things done. And I think that in that role, I played a customer success role, I played project management role, I played business development, lead generation closing sales. You were doing all those pieces, parts along the way. And I think that one of the things that, looking back again, I didn't know it at the time, but looking back, having some of those things documented in some sort of organized process organized way would have been super helpful to me.

05:27
Madison Riddell:
And do you think that there's one tried and true, like, do you prescribe or subscribe to one method for that organization of sales processes?

05:36
Dana Allender:
Yeah, I read a lot of books and listen to a lot of people. I think the thing that clicked with me was sandler, sales training, a lot of those things I'd heard before. But I think what it really anchored me into is process. There's a process always happening and we're always selling something. So you're following someone else's process or you're following yours. And I think that once I realized that I had a little bit more control over that process, it made the sales role a lot more gratifying.

06:10
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I think we'll probably circle back to the process piece a little bit because I know that you help other organizations now implement their own version of processes, stepping out of the professional light a little bit to your personal life. So around what time was this entrepreneurial decision happening? I know that you mentioned renovations, recently married, new children. So cast a little bit of a picture if you can transport our listeners back in time to when you were making this decision.

06:37
Dana Allender:
Yeah, so not getting into ages and things like that necessarily, but got married a little later. So married in 2009, 1st child in 2012, 2nd child in 2013. We bought a house in 2012. I should have put that in chronological order and then I quit my job. I'm not sure everybody should hear this, I'll say it anyhow. We wanted to do an addition to the home and I realized they probably won't look great upon this new SUN consulting company that's starting out that wants to do this renovation. So the day that we closed our renovation, I quit my job of about 20 years. So it was either sink or swim. And I knew I had a couple of months to figure it out. So it brought a lot of clarity to that process.

07:32
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, I know choosing to share that or not share that can be a little bit of a tricky situation. But I think that the bank loans.

07:39
Dana Allender:
Have all been paid perfect. Yeah. So we're good. We're still living there, we're right by.

07:43
Madison Riddell:
The law, no concerns here.

07:45
Dana Allender:
We're good.

07:46
Madison Riddell:
But I do think that a lot of people in similar positions have that fear of when's the right time. And I think most entrepreneurs would tell you there's no right time. So it sounds like you were up against that similar challenge of am I going to continue in this role that's comfortable, that probably puts food on the table that I'm good at and maybe is easier getting easier because of the process or am I going to take a risk?

08:09
Dana Allender:
Right. I have a lot of quotes, a lot of things that as I'm sitting here even now talking to you or working out earlier today that I think of, but fortune favors the bold and there's no I love that one. Yeah, I'm playing small. So either you're in or you're out and that's okay. But if you're in, get in and then we pivot. Right? Small business owners and entrepreneurs certainly understand that.

08:35
Madison Riddell:
Cool. That makes perfect sense. So you left, you started your own business with SUN, and at what point did you start joining the JumpStart team? What's the timeline there?

08:46
Dana Allender:
Yeah, so I quit my job. I didn't have a client either, by the way, but I got one next week.

08:51
Madison Riddell:
Wow. There you go.

08:52
Dana Allender:
Yeah, they were me. I was super excited about that. It happened to be a company that did work in the energy space. Sun has nothing to do with energy. I think you and I talked about that when we last met. It has to do with the Beatles and Here Comes the Suns for those who know. If not, I'm guessing everyone does, but if not, go take a listen.

09:11
Madison Riddell:
You don't want to sing it for us now?

09:13
Dana Allender:
I've got other songs I would sing another time, but no. So in any case, I started I thought I was just going to work with small businesses and startups. I had family, a very young family at that time, wanted to stay local, so I was looking for local companies. So that one happened to be in Dallas, but I had known them for a while. I think the next job I had, or gig I had, was a manufacturing company. And ironically, I went out of my way to make something that had been my weakness earlier on when I was looking for another role that I didn't have industry experience. I made that a strength of mine. So I'm industry agnostic and what I used to tell people when I was talking to them and I don't know if I believe this actually at the time, or if I said it to make myself feel better.

10:00
Madison Riddell:
Spoken into existence.

10:01
Dana Allender:
Yeah, exactly. But if you can't train me on what it is you do in 30 to 45 days, you've got bigger problems than sales.

10:08
Madison Riddell:
Oh, I love that.

10:11
Dana Allender:
People seem to say, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And so I worked in several different industries. Ironically, I got called by a recruiter who I had some challenges with early on about these industry needs that their clients had, and was asked if I wanted to participate in a Bike Share program to be the general manager here in Ohio and Michigan because of somehow they had found out that I had done work with an energy company and thought there may be some synergies between sustainability and my work. So I actually took a role with them, a full time role, working with the first bike share that was here in Cleveland. This was probably back in 2015, 2016. And it was fantastic. It was my first exposure to venture backed tech companies. I just thought bikes. I didn't really understand the smart mobility tech side of it.

11:02
Dana Allender:
And I got to wear T shirts and drink cold brew and ride bicycles, and so that was all pretty cool, too. So I was working here in Cleveland and Detroit. Those were the two municipalities that I was focused on and then other parts of the state, like Ohio State, who happened to become a customer soon.

11:17
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, and they're still a customer, right?

11:19
Dana Allender:
They still are. And then I left after about a year doing that, and I thought, man, startup life is pretty cool. I don't know a lot about the venture side of it yet, but I enjoy this because they're growth minded and it's interesting. When I first started doing this work, I assumed everybody wanted to grow. I assumed every small business wanted to grow. And they would even tell you, yeah, we want to grow. But then when you ask them, are they doing or what have they done to try to do that, you find out they really don't want to because the level of effort isn't there. So in any case, this happens. So you need to reel me in because, you know, I will start no, I love this, all kinds of things. But yeah, so I wanted to stay in that space. And so I actually reached out to Fintech that a friend of mine referred me to in Ann Arbor that had raised a Series A round and worked with them for about a year.

12:11
Dana Allender:
It was great. I mean, fantastic learning experience. We're calling on all the big banks all over the globe. And I was working primarily with them in a kind of entry level business development sales role. I think I was employee, and I actually joined them as a W Two for various reasons, but I think I was employee number 19, and I was only the second person that didn't have a technical background.

12:34
Madison Riddell:
Wow.

12:35
Dana Allender:
So, yeah, I did that and it was great. And spent their Series A with them and Series B I left and then came back for their Series B raise that they had raised money with Drive Capital and Insight Partners out of New York. And that's when I really got into the kind of the go to market. So I kind of had more of a leadership role working with the various partners within the business, the marketing teams, the customer success teams, the product teams. Going back to the question, how did I get involved with JumpStart? So in my business development outreach roles, I was attending different conferences, joining accelerators to be a mentor just because I had business background. And I met some folks at Jobs Ohio, and I met Ray Leach at that accelerator in Columbus. It was Fintech 71. And he said, oh, you're mentoring here?

13:27
Dana Allender:
He says, Why aren't you mentoring in Cleveland? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know anybody in Cleveland. And so he was kind enough to introduce me to the team, and I'd mentored there. Technically, I guess I still am a mentor and have been with them for about seven years, leading to this EIR role that I joined them with I guess it would have been two years ago now.

13:46
Madison Riddell:
And for those who aren't familiar with JumpStart and aren't local to Cleveland, can you give a brief overview of what JumpStart does and what an EIR does at JumpStart?

13:53
Dana Allender:
Yeah, so it's interesting. JumpStart and I have a little bit of economic development DNA, but I won't get into all of that today. I mentioned Jobs Ohio earlier, but JumpStart is a unique organization. It's a venture development organization. So it's not strictly a venture capital organization or an economic development organization, but it's kind of a hybrid between those two, with support through the state going out and delivering services to startups and small businesses here in the region. An entrepreneur in residence. They're not one, there’s not one flavor of an entrepreneur in residence. But in my role there, I work with companies that are primarily in the tech space, who has been identified that maybe there's a there. And so what do we need to do to put the resources around them to help them go out and raise venture money early? Very early. Yeah.

14:46
Madison Riddell:
And your role is consultative with those brands, and you work with kind of a handful at a time or one or two.

14:51
Dana Allender:
Yeah. So I work through my work with JumpStart, and again, I started working with them. So I spend time working with the JumpStart clients. I also have clients outside of there that I work with still their son. But the JumpStart clients that I work with, there's probably a half a dozen at any given time that there's some sort of depth to the work that we're doing. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, though, outside of that, and one of the hardest things to do is I don't like to let go. So I've met somebody two years ago, three years ago. As an entrepreneur, we still stay in touch whether or not I'm working with them or not.

15:24
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, I think that's a huge and there's, again, so many things that I want to talk to you about. But a huge thing that you've described to me and I've experienced in knowing you for a short amount of time is your prioritization around relationships and communication. You talked about meeting Ray Leach, head of Jumpstart, at an event that you went to. And you've talked to me a lot about your dedication to events and figuring out one particular group organization to get involved with. So how does that relate to your overall?

15:52
Dana Allender:
I think, you know, first of all, it's personal. So, I mean, that's just me. I want to be involved in the know. I loved being part of the Bike Share program because I was working with the county, I was working with the councilman. I was working, you know, who leads the Metro parks. I was working with Councilman Semperman, who's now over at Global Cleveland. So it was fantastic. So I loved being part of what was going on and also trying to play a small role in making a difference there professionally, I don't think that everything this is my opinion everything is a commodity. What we're doing today is a commodity. The people that we may do business with already know more about us than we probably know about them by the time we speak. And so what's the difference? What's the differentiator is the relationships.

16:43
Dana Allender:
And I think that small businesses and certainly startups have to spend more time on relationships, and you build those relationships by being part of a community. So I want to know where the thought leaders are. I want to know where the influences are. I want to know where the innovators are so I can go out and just be among them, so I can earn the right to have those types of conversations.

17:06
Madison Riddell:
And I think you explained to me, we had lunch recently that there was one particular group in the HR space that you just decided, hey, I'm going to go to every event and I'm going to dedicate time to it. And I think that's a good approach because I shared with you Vulnerably, that I'm also a sales leader right. Of a growing organization. And over the years, I have felt the pressure of if I'm not going to enough networking events or traveling enough to visit clients, am I doing enough? And even if we're crushing our revenue goals, something inside you as a salesperson, we're competitive by nature. We want to hit milestones. Says that you need to be everywhere at once.

17:40
Dana Allender:
Right.

17:40
Madison Riddell:
And I do think that younger sales professionals struggle to decide, is this worth my time? Or if I do spend the time on it, which is both my time and the company's time, which costs money, and I come back without a client or business card, did was that time wasted? So what do you think about that?

17:57
Dana Allender:
Well, starting with the last thing you said, I mean, I try not to be transactional, so I don't need a business card at this event to say it was a good thing or a bad thing. If we have a happy hour that we sponsor next week and 50 people show up and I don't have a new client at the end of that, it wasn't not a waste of time for me, I think. Again, it's part of being part of a community and building those relationships. I don't know that we talked about this, but I played basketball, and I still like to play. And I coach a little bit, which I know you know that. When I was younger and competing in school, I guess I had my own version of my own vision board. But I know who my competitors were, and I had pictures of them on the wall.

18:37
Madison Riddell:
Oh, wow.

18:37
Dana Allender:
And every time I didn't feel like doing something with their picture on the wall, I had written, what are they doing right now?

18:46
Madison Riddell:
Wow.

18:46
Dana Allender:
So I'm like, Well, I don't feel like doing this right now, but what are they doing? So I need to go. I need to be there. I need to be present. And I guess I would say for a sales professional, it's important. You've got to carve out the time, you got to be there. I don't think there's anything you can't substitute, just that being in person, being present, being vulnerable. I love that you said that word. If we get to the point here at the end of our show and there were things were thinking, being vulnerable is one of the things I would tell people to do. But you've got to go. So the HR event that I was referencing earlier, I didn't know anything when I started my company, but I thought, I'm just going to go join some things. And I'm a habitual joiner.

19:35
Dana Allender:
I have a lot of memberships, so if you ever are thinking of joining something, call me and ask me about it because I probably am a member, but I wasn't always good about showing up, and I said, this year I'm going to do that. So once a week, once a month, I'm going to be at some event.

19:50
Madison Riddell:
Somewhere for this particular organization.

19:53
Dana Allender:
Yeah. So for that organization, it's like once a month, if there's something going on, I'm going to be there. And so they have an event. Can I say their name, promote other organizations? I'm a promoter now. So Cleveland Sherm, which is the HR group here in Cleveland, I joined it ten years ago when I quit my job because I thought, wow, who would know if companies are having struggles with sales, HR people, because they're always hiring and firing people.

20:16
Madison Riddell:
And I think I want to pause right there. I think that's such a creative, innovative approach to choosing an event, because I think kind of the easy way or maybe the first thing that comes to mind is, oh, I'll go to this sales event, right? But we've all salespeople have gone to sales events, and it's just a bunch of other sales. So if you think creatively about who the decision makers are and stakeholders that actually want to get to know, you not getting in front of your peers or learning thing about sales, and you can go to sales conferences to learn, sure. But if you're going to network, go.

20:44
Dana Allender:
Where the clients are, well, I mean, that gets into sales, right? It gets into who your targets are and your companies and the personas within those companies and trying to have a story for each of them. But in any case, I said, this year I'm going to go. And so there's an opportunity to speak a few weeks ago, so I signed up on a Friday evening. I saw the submission, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to do that. I'm going to submit. And they were kind enough to select me, and I'm like, okay, I've got to speak. And it's a really cool format if anybody's ever done it, but it's 15 slides, 20 seconds per slide, rapid fire, and you got to get there pretty quickly. But in any case, I didn't know exactly what I was going to say or how I was going to say it, and I certainly am presenting that format enough, but I was there, and I had the opportunity to stand up in front of 180 people for just not always easy for five minutes.

21:35
Madison Riddell:
And people think that salespeople by nature are outgoing and perfect presenters and all these things, and it's kind of expected. But I think that presenting one one in your probably 90% of your circumstances, where you're talking to a couple of stakeholders, presenting a concept, a proposal, an idea, is very different than a room of people.

21:55
Dana Allender:
It certainly is. I mean, even today for that event, and today, I still get anxious beforehand, but I've allowed myself to do that and say, hey, I'm anxious because I care. And I've heard other people say that because at the point in time you show up and you don't care and you're not anxious, then maybe you shouldn't be showing up anymore. Right?

22:17
Madison Riddell:
And you've been in the space for decades. So for those who are like, oh, I've been doing this for a couple of years, or I've been doing this for five years and I'm anxious, yeah, decades to go buckle in.

22:26
Dana Allender:
Decades and decades. No, I'm just joking.

22:30
Madison Riddell:
I think there was one thing you shared specifically about Shurim, I believe in one of the events you went to where you made someone feel more comfortable and they sent you a follow up note. Can you tell that story?

22:40
Dana Allender:
Yeah, I mean, I think that you mentioned it a few minutes ago. Life's about angles, right? There's always angle. And I don't mean that like in some sort of manipulative way, but we have to look for a different angle because everybody's doing the same thing, everybody's sequencing their email. And again, this is another topic for another time, but how can we do something different? This is the outtake.

23:10
Madison Riddell:
That's okay. These are outtakes. So there was a woman who messaged you, right?

23:14
Dana Allender:
Yeah. So, like, before an event, I mean, LinkedIn, I'm not promoting LinkedIn, but all the data is there.

23:21
Madison Riddell:
People need to know how to use it.

23:22
Dana Allender:
Yeah, you got to know how to use it. So I joined an organization. The organization has a membership roster. When we join events, we are able to see who's attending those events. And I sent a note, just, hey, nice LinkedIn note. Like, hey, I hope to see you on Tuesday at the event.

23:41
Madison Riddell:
That's to everyone who you saw that was going to the event.

23:43
Dana Allender:
Yeah, and there were probably 15 or 20 there. And again, I don't have anything to sell them necessarily. I'm going to show up at 07:00 in the morning with coffee. I just want to know who's there.

23:55
Madison Riddell:
And you just said, hey, I'm coming to the event. Looking forward to it.

23:57
Dana Allender:
I hope I see you. There no pitch, no ask. Yeah. For anybody doing LinkedIn, if you're talking about yourself, you're doing it wrong. But that's another conversation. I feel like there's a lot of other conversations.

24:09
Madison Riddell:
We'll do a follow up episode.

24:10
Dana Allender:
Yeah. So I got there, and there's only 20 people there. So you recognize people like, hey, how are you doing? I mean, people look like they look like on LinkedIn for the most part, and I hope I do. Anyways, I gave a wave, and we sat and we talked about De and I, which is something that I care about, other organizations care about within my day to day work. It's not a thing, but I want to support the community, the people that I'm part of. And I got a really nice note, a call afterwards, just saying that it was something that was really valuable for her to have had someone reach out ahead of time, first of all, because it's sales, and so it was just nice. And then to walk in front of a room, and especially coming out of COVID then, because a lot of people still today are still not 100% comfortable.

25:00
Madison Riddell:
Being out or out of practice.

25:02
Dana Allender:
Yeah. And out of practice. And so it was just a little nice message, and I've not forgotten that. But it was more impactful than I thought. Right?

25:11
Madison Riddell:
Yeah. And I think what I personally took away when you shared it with me was that if you're somebody who, again, is struggling to put yourself out there, or you go to networking events and you kind of stand with your buddy in the corner and you find it hard to approach people, I think that's normal even for the most experienced sales executives. I see CEOs of huge brands still struggle with this. Right. So I think that by again being vulnerable yourself, if you're nervous, reach out to somebody who is also 50% chance. Maybe that they're nervous too. Maybe it's 60 40. And by making them comfortable, you're going to make yourself more comfortable too.

25:45
Dana Allender:
Absolutely. And I think that this goes to these little mantras that I have, but I think if we offer help to people and ask for help when you need it, and so when I go to an event like that, is there something I can do to help you? And if there's not, that's okay. 99 times out of 100, there's not, but they know that it's available, and if I need help, I'll ask, and that's okay. And they may or may not be able to help me, but I think, again, it kind of comes to being authentic, being honest, being vulnerable. All those things that we talked about.

26:20
Madison Riddell:
And empathy a few weeks ago, so far, we've touched on kind of your. Entrepreneurial story and taking risks and knowing there's not a perfect time. We've talked about approaches to networking and getting to know other people. Right. And I think another thing that I'd like touch on is something you said about everything being a commodity and trying not to be transactional. And you and I talked a little bit about how in a conversation, the company that you might be pitching to or who's looking for a vendor, let's use our agency as an example. If we have somebody who's looking for a marketing firm or a web development firm and they come to us, they don't want to know the table stake stuff about how we develop websites or how we do marketing. Because every single marketing agency or web development firm they interview is likely offering that commodity service or something similar to it.

27:07
Madison Riddell:
So in those conversations, we have to prioritize trust and getting to know them so that we leave a lasting impression. Can you explain how you do that or how you advise companies on how to do that?

27:18
Dana Allender:
Yeah, I think it's a lot of those things we talked about before, right. Being authentic. When we make a mistake and we forget what the question is, just say, hey, what was the question again?

27:26
Madison Riddell:
We won't cut it off.

27:27
Dana Allender:
Yeah, that's super important. But I think it goes back to what I said at the very beginning. I told you last week I eventually get back to the beginning. Yeah, but can I solve a problem for you? I don't know enough about somebody who calls me to say what I would do for them. So I need to take the time and a lot of times, and maybe I'm not the right fit for them. And that's okay too. If I have an entrepreneur and I'll kind of use myself as an example because I'm not intimately involved with your assessment, how you kind of view things. But if I'm talking to an entrepreneur and they won't take the time to really tell me what it is they're doing, and usually it takes a few sessions, and that's okay because no two journeys are the same. And people I think one of the things that I have to do is try to meet people where they're at.

28:20
Madison Riddell:
Right.

28:20
Dana Allender:
But eventually I need you to share some things with me and then take a little bit of feedback. I ask a lot of questions. I think we talked about that too. I think that asking a lot of questions and not taking that answer at face value and asking another question, that's conversation.

28:39
Madison Riddell:
Right. If you get into a pitch and you view it as a pitch and you bring up your slide deck and you're like, I have a 30 minutes time slot, and I'm going to do my usual routine of pull up my deck and I'm going to talk about everything that my firm does, great. You're not going to win and maybe you will a handful of times. But if you want to be able to predictively win and come up with your own approach to succeeding when it comes to pitching or coming up with a new idea or whatever, I think it is all about asking questions. Like, for me, in a 30 minutes intro conversation, 20 to 25 minutes is about them.

29:12
Dana Allender:
Sure.

29:12
Madison Riddell:
I'm asking them questions about their business, doing the follow up questions, like you said, to show that I'm engaged. And even if I don't have experience in their exact industry, I'm in rapid fire trying to draw connections between other things we do have experience in and demonstrating that not by saying we have experience, but connecting it to a follow up question.

29:31
Dana Allender:
Right. No, that is awesome. You said another word earlier. Trust.

29:36
Madison Riddell:
Yeah.

29:36
Dana Allender:
And I think I talked a little bit about the no like trust equation. And there was a coach, it's an action coach that I had that talked to me about no light trust. And it wasn't like something I was intimately familiar with. I mean, I feel like I learned a lot of these things just by failing and then figuring it out. But it was kind enough, he said that I seem to get through the no like trust continuum fairly quickly. You have to give people the opportunity to get to know you, and I think they get to know you when you engage with them. As you said. I think I had mentioned a story. This was in my contact center sales days as I was learning sandler and going through sales concepts. My good friend Keith Strauss, who owns the company, I don't think I ever told him this story, but send him the will.

30:28
Dana Allender:
I will. He'll be happy to hear he'll be happy to hear that I'm still promoting him. I'm not on payroll, though, but it changed my life. It really did. So I came out of one of the sessions, and it was about asking questions, and I always felt like I did okay with it, but I had an opportunity to pitch like some big brand. It was to get an RFP. It wasn't even to win the business. It was just to get the RFP to do it.

30:55
Madison Riddell:
Those are fun.

30:55
Dana Allender:
Yeah. And so we got on a call. I knew weren't winning this, full disclosure, but I got a colleague of mine, I'm like, hey, sit on this call. I'm going to see how long I can go without answering one question about me. And so we got on the call 45 minutes in. They'd say, well, we're looking for this. Why are you looking for that? Well, because we did this. Have you done that before? I mean, it went on for 45 minutes.

31:17
Madison Riddell:
Wow.

31:17
Dana Allender:
The last thing they said was, man, this has really been a great call. I feel like I don't know a ton about you, so I'm looking forward to sending you the RFP. I didn't say anything. I said nothing about us. Because the thing is, we have to take the time to get to know people. They will eventually like us, hopefully, and then that's how we earn their trust and earn that opportunity.

31:38
Madison Riddell:
I agree with that formula. First meeting is all about them getting to know them, asking questions, and then they will have that interest in learning more about you to come back so that you can submit the proposal, which is where you pull out all the stops. Like, you show your expertise, you show examples, references, whatever. But I think that formula works. We follow that approach.

31:56
Dana Allender:
Yeah, it was fun, even though I knew I wasn't getting the business.

32:00
Madison Riddell:
Sometimes I think that when we don't think we're going to win the opportunity, we get more creative with our approach and then we start to use that with other clients because we're like, we have nothing to lose. Let's just go for it. And some of our best pitches that have informed our sales approach as an organization have been the ones where we thought we wouldn't win.

32:18
Dana Allender:
Sometimes we do win because you're being different.

32:20
Madison Riddell:
Right.

32:21
Dana Allender:
Cheaper, better is not the path.

32:23
Madison Riddell:
Agreed. So let's kind of talk about common challenges you're seeing with startups to mid market brands. The majority of our clients are in that middle market space, though we have clients from the startup spectrum all the way through Fortune 1000 brands. But let's stick to that kind of startup middle category. Relevant to your experience, what are some common challenges you're seeing or mistakes?

32:45
Dana Allender:
Yeah, I think we got to talk to customers. We have to talk to prospective customers. We have to talk to current customers. There are a lot of small businesses that I work with that I ask them after we look at sales forecasts or who some of their major clients are. I ask, when was the last time you had a quarterly business review or something? Call it whatever you want to. They're like, well, we don't do that and so manages that relationship. That's a problem because I guarantee your competitor is having a quarterly touch point with them. You can't do it with every customer. Maybe you can, depending on your business, but you've got to figure out who those customers are that you need to go and be getting feedback because it's not only important for you and the relationship, but you can also learn what else is going on in the industry from a competitive perspective.

33:40
Dana Allender:
Because a lot of times they'll say, hey, so and so is talking about this. Is this something that you guys can do from staying on the customer lane? And I think that when I talked to you before, I really try to focus on the customer discovery, engagement, acquisition, success continuum. But discovery like going out and talking to people, like, what are the problems that they have that they're trying to solve for? I think a lot of times, maybe small businesses that are early and certainly startups, sometimes we're a solution looking for a problem. Yes, and I think that there's a lot of that, and I think that you need to go talk to people to figure out is there a really problem here? I think I talked to you about this before. What is the problem that you're trying to solve for? Who said it's a problem?

34:24
Dana Allender:
Is it you? Is it the guy that lives next door? Or are you an SME? Have you quantified what that problem is? And has someone said that, hey, you know what I would pay to fix that problem?

34:36
Madison Riddell:
And I think solution the last thing that you said really stuck out to me too on if you come up with a solution and you go to your current clients or prospective clients and say, hey, would you buy this? And they say no, then don't spend any more time and energy on that solution.

34:50
Dana Allender:
Right? Yeah, well, and then what you could also do is as you're doing this discovery with new and current customers, if you have them, is be taking that feedback and then take it to a current customer and say, hey, we're hearing this is a problem, right? How are you attempting to solve for this? Is it something that we could iterate on and bake into our service offering or is it something that we should say no to? Because that's another thing too, right? We can't be all things to all people. So there's a lot of great ideas. There was an event I was at here in Cleveland a few years ago, and I think it was the guys at Cleveland Bagel that were talking about how they got started. But I remember them saying learning to say no was like one of the most important things they ever learned because there's a lot of great ideas out there, but it doesn't have to be my idea and somebody else to stay focused.

35:37
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, I think a lot of small businesses, including us, like in that SMB range, struggle with pulling the reins and saying no. I think it's an art. And you also shared with me that you have worked again with both startups and kind of middle market brands, but you've gravitated towards startups for a particular reason. I think you shared with me that businesses that have been around for 10, 15, 20 years and still have a sales challenge, probably still have a sales challenge for a reason. So what's your perspective on that?

36:04
Dana Allender:
Yeah, I think that my personal preference, and this is not meant to say that I wouldn't help or work with someone, but companies that I've worked with that have an existing sales team that have been in business for a few years, sometimes they don't have a sales problem, they have an HR problem. And that needs to get resolved where I feel that I add the most impact and the most value is that link between, hey, I'm the founder. I'm the owner. I'm doing all the activity. I'm sitting on calls. I'm sitting on calls that I probably can't afford to sit on, but I have to sit on them because we need it to prove some traction. Here to that first sales hire. If you've already hired, I talked to a lot of small business owners. They're like, hey, do you know a good sales guy or do you know somebody?

36:53
Dana Allender:
And I'm like, well, what are you doing now? And they're like, oh, we've tried three or four people, and they all suck. I'm like, all right, well, maybe they don't. I don't know. Maybe there's something you could be doing better too.

37:08
Madison Riddell:
Is that what you mean by an HR problem?

37:10
Dana Allender:
Yeah, it's an HR problem because they haven't taken that time to document the process. It's like, I can't hire someone to do the job that I haven't done, and nobody else has ever done this. So if no one in my company has ever sold before, I can't hire you the salesperson, and say, hey, go sell for me. Because here's what typically happens, is that as a business owner, I'm like, hey, I either want to step away or I want to go faster. So either or, they're like, you know what? I want to go hire the best salesperson I can find. So you go find the best salesperson from your competitor, and it's great. And they've got all kinds of customers, so they walk in day one. They're like, so what CRM do we use? Well, we don't have a CRM. The CRM is that filing cabinet that's got cobwebs over in the corner.

37:59
Madison Riddell:
True story.

38:00
Dana Allender:
True story. By the way, the cobwebs in the cabinet, sales material, pitch decks. You know what? Why don't you go do that? Here's a little bit of a budget. Go get a marketing company. If you need somebody to answer the phone and do some late lead generation, we'll give you a little bit of money to go do that. So now all of a sudden, you hired this really great salesperson who's really good at sitting across the table and doing what we're doing. They are not procurement.

38:33
Madison Riddell:
They're focusing on operations and not sales. Yeah.

38:35
Dana Allender:
So six months in, they've went out. They're doing a lot of things that they didn't really want to do. They're not making any money because they're not making commission. Owner is not happy because they're not selling anything. And she's like, you know what? This isn't working. We're going to have to let you go. And they do it over and over again. There's a space and if anybody's read founder sales, there's a space in between that founder owner doing all the activity and being able to hire that first salesperson. That's kind of where I like to live. That's where I live at.

39:09
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, as you're saying this, I can relate this to our own business where our founder was the main sales resource in the organization for many years, at least a decade. And same approach. Like we didn't have a CRM, we didn't have tried and true processes. We had some really strong proposal templates and kind of go to one liners that he would use, but we didn't have infrastructure. And my role was to become a sponge and just understand everything that he did that worked. And now as we approach a larger path forward where we're really growing our headcount, we're really growing our revenue, it's been a priority for us to build out a CRM and build out processes. And I think part of that for me was recognizing finding that middle space, like you said, of what is needed, what needs to be documented, what tools and processes do we need to have in place versus what should we leave up to the salesperson?

40:02
Madison Riddell:
Because I do think the opposite is also true. If you have no infrastructure, your salesperson can't succeed. If you have too much infrastructure and put them on too tight of a leash, you remove that entrepreneurial creative component to selling. And I think it's easy to come from a place of ego when you're in sales to say, nobody can sell like me.

40:20
Dana Allender:
Right?

40:20
Madison Riddell:
And I've gone through that, where you have to let go of the vine and trust somebody else to build a proposal and present it and know that they might not say the exact same thing you would say, or maybe they won't answer the question the way that you would answer it. But you have to let go of that vine. So I think there's stages to it. If you're a founder led organization where the founder is doing all the selling, not only do you need to build the right infrastructure to bring somebody in, but you also need to identify where they have creative freedom to just develop their own sales approach.

40:50
Dana Allender:
No, it's so funny that you're mentioning some of these things because I'm an entrepreneur also and I screwed a lot of things up. I struggle with this. How do I do repeatable scalable type things? Nobody can sell like me. I'm the secret sauce. I can say all that, but can I put enough infrastructure in place that will allow somebody to bring their own skill set? And it's part art, part science, so there's no one way to do things, but in any case yeah, we could talk about that for a while.

41:24
Madison Riddell:
Yeah. I like the art and science approach though. I think that there's certain things you have to say, right? Like if you're a sales leader and you're trying to scale a team, if you have like three to five non negotiables, this needs to be a part of your first conversation with a client, whether that's for legal reasons or you're trying To Test A New Approach or Whatever. Give them those reins. Give them the tools if they want to use it. I never use our sales deck ever. Or one pagers ever. Sometimes it's follow up materials. But somebody else might find their secret. Sauce is always pulling up the sales deck.

41:54
Dana Allender:
Right.

41:54
Madison Riddell:
So I think we're in alignment on that one. Cool. So before we move to kind of some closing topics, I do want to kind of bring us back to the premise of this podcast, which is marketing. Moose, what do you think the relationship between sales and marketing needs to look like?

42:13
Dana Allender:
Yeah, this is really probably three or four years ago. I was still figuring out for sure what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be when I grow up with SUN. And I had the opportunity to really take kind of a lead role in a go to market effort with one of the companies that I was doing work with. And one of the things that I realized is the sales and really, more importantly, the customer wasn't always in these meetings and in these strategy sessions. So we would have tech products saying, oh, the tech will do this and they'll do that. And the founders like, that's great. We're going to change the world and we're going to do all these things. And customer success. Like, yeah, we'll just figure it out when we get there. And marketing. And I know that's what the focus of this podcast is, but Marketing was like, yeah, we can create a website and we can do email campaigns.

43:15
Dana Allender:
And then I showed up, and I'm like, well, has anybody said they'd pay for all this stuff? It's really bringing the customer's voice to that.

43:27
Madison Riddell:
That's the duty of sales. It Is.

43:29
Dana Allender:
And I think it can't be an afterlife, because I think a lot of times feeling is, well, we'll just create all this stuff, and then we'll hand it to you, and then you go sell it because you told me you're really good at this. And I think that sales and marketing, the messaging I mean, there's obviously different skills and techniques and things. I mean, you guys post a lot of really cool things that I comment on sometimes on LinkedIn. But at the end of the day, the message should be the message, right? And so when there's not alignment, there that's driven by the customer solving a problem. I think that's where it's super important that sales and marketing need to be.

44:10
Madison Riddell:
And I think to kind of squeeze a recommendation out of all of that is whether you're a marketing agency coming from our experience or you're an internal marketing team, I think it's really important to bridge that relationship with sales and to set the right expectations. Because we found on the agency side that if we work with a client where we don't have that direct communication with the sales team and the expectation from the client or the sales leader is that marketing is just going to generate all these leads right for the picking. That's not going to end in a good outcome. We're not going have to a case study from that client. So I think the best approach is to have sales and marketing in the same room, speaking the same message to your point understanding we're not just building all of these creative assets and launching campaigns because they're creative and they look good or they meet best practices.

44:56
Madison Riddell:
We need to first understand why we're selling the product and who we're selling it to. And like you said, the sales team should know that best because they're talking.

45:03
Dana Allender:
To them every day, right. Being aligned. And if your goals are aligned right, I don't care how many opens or clicks or anything, that's not going to go help me raise Series A money, right? So those are means to an end. And my job as a salesperson is to give you good feedback. You create the messaging. My commitment to you is to go and actually do my job, do proper discovery, do proper follow up, and bring things to fruition.

45:35
Madison Riddell:
Totally agree. Totally agree. Okay, cool. So before we close, okay, I wanted to share a fun fact with our listeners. Many of them run on or have heard of the Entrepreneurial Operating System and EOS. We have an implementer locally here in Cleveland. It's an infrastructure. We run our business on a lot of JumpStart. Companies or startups also use this framework, and EOS recommends an assessment called the Colby Assessment. And the Colby Assessment is a test that measures the instinctive ways you take action. So unlike personality tests or IQ tests, the Colby measures your cognitive strengths. So it's a little bit of a different approach versus like an enneagram test or an IQ test. And Dana and I, we referenced a couple times this episode, we just went out to lunch and we recently discovered, by coincidence, that we have nearly identical Colby results.

46:28
Dana Allender:
Scary identical.

46:30
Madison Riddell:
Scary identical. Like down to the number, right? Which I've never seen with any other colleague. Like, there's some colleagues where you'll be similar and you'll kind of share contrast and what's similar and what's not. But ours was basically identical. And the most prominent part of our results, both of us being sales leaders and in entrepreneurial roles, our primary strength was high quick start. So if you look up the Colby Assessment, there's four different components to it. There's fact finding, follow through, quick start, and implementing. And we both have very high quick start, eight or nine out of ten, which is typical of entrepreneurs and visionaries and those who like to take risks. High quick starts have a high sense of urgency, low likelihood to practice or thoroughly prepare before things they like to. You got notes? He might not be a real quick start. They also are likely to negotiate for shortcuts or more efficient ways to do things.

47:26
Madison Riddell:
They seek to innovate, and they thrive in a competitive atmosphere. Cue your high school board with your competitors. So, Dana, how did these Quick start traits for anyone who is interested in Colby or has taken it themselves, how did those traits or tendencies translate to your success or your challenges?

47:43
Dana Allender:
I mean, I quit my job. I quit a very well paying job that I had a lot of security in, and two kids, married, a house and a big hole in the backyard brought clarity to that. But I think that it was funny. So I have a client that was going through EOS, and that's where I really got introduced to it. And then I think you and I have a shared colleague that works with EOS or shared business partner. I think for me, I think you've got to get things done. We don't have time. Entrepreneurs don't have time to overthink things. I think that one of the things I told you when we had lunch the other day is it's easier to act your way into thinking the right way than to think your way into acting the right way. I love that one, and it's something that I heard a few weeks ago.

48:42
Dana Allender:
I can't even remember where I heard it, but I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do it, and then we'll figure it out. And I think that if you are okay with being wrong and failing. And one of the things I would tell all small business owners and entrepreneurs, that if you're talking to somebody and they just want to talk about everything, they did well, and they have no failures, they're not telling you the truth because they're not doing it right. If you haven't tried and screwed it up, they're not trying. But, yeah, it was fascinating to see the scores, and I said when you showed me yours, I thought you were looking at my email.

49:16
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, I think, too, to piggyback off of what you said about kind of like harnessing the strengths of quickstart, I think that it's also cool and important to understand the setbacks and some that I rattled off. And maybe you follow this or not, but I'm a low, prep person. I don't like to rehearse before things. I don't like to have scripts. I don't like to overthink before I walk into a meeting. I'm just better when I listen and react. However, that's not the right recipe for every circumstance. So I think it's also important to recognize if those are your weaknesses as part of your Colby assessment, or just if you think this about yourself and you haven't taken the assessment and either come up with a plan to combat those things, or I think most importantly, surround yourself with people who have different Colby assessments or different strengths and weaknesses.

50:03
Madison Riddell:
And our own internal leadership team, we've all taken it. We have next level leaders that are actually going to a one one session with a colleague. We have that's mutual. Would love to introduce any listeners. If you're local to Cleveland and you want to have a coaching session on the Colby assessment, but we're all very different. Some of us have truly opposite you and I are identical. Some have truly opposite Colby assessments. So I think if you're someone who's high start, you probably need to be surrounded by somebody who has high follow through and somebody who is process oriented and is going to make sure while you're off there quick starting and doing crazy things and coming up with ideas. Someone's there to hold you down to earth and say, we can't just go and do these crazy things every single day.

50:43
Dana Allender:
No, you're spot on. And I made the joke about me having notes. I mean, I did write things down. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at them. But I think one of the things that whether it's a shared trait or it's a trait, I'm fortunate that hopefully I can take a look at things and recall it if I need.

51:00
Madison Riddell:
Yeah, in any case, and I think that's important for sales.

51:04
Dana Allender:
Yeah, for sure.

51:05
Madison Riddell:
Awesome. Okay, so rounding us out here, Dana, I think that something I find fascinating about you is your Sponge like ability to memorize quotes and people and things. So why don't you leave us with one or two of your favorite quotes or.

51:22
Dana Allender:
Know, one of the things that I've been sharing a lot with founders the last few months is I just went through VC University and thanks to my colleagues at Jumpstart for supporting me going through that. I thought it was super important for me to have at least a working knowledge since I haven't gone through the fundraising side of it myself. But one of the VCs said, and it's one thing, I've remembered a lot of things, but this is the one thing I really remember from it. We should narrow our focus to broaden our appeal. And I think a lot of startups, when they come in, they want to kind of throw up everything that they know that they can do. I did the exact same thing when I quit my job, but the person I was talking to said, hey, listen, there's a million things you can do.

52:05
Dana Allender:
Your jack of all trades, all my whoopity do. Tell me the one thing that you're going to fix for me. And I think that as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, I think that it's super important to know that. So I don't coach effort either, by the way. So do the work, be coachable. One of the things I like to ask a lot is not are you coachable? Because people will always say yes, but if you've talked to 100 customers, tell me what you've learned that you were wrong about. And if they can't. Tell me something they were wrong about. They may not have talked to enough customers, or maybe they didn't talk to any, but great.

52:39
Madison Riddell:
I love that temperature check. I might use that one.

52:41
Dana Allender:
Yeah.

52:41
Madison Riddell:
Awesome. Well, thanks, Dana, so much for joining us. Can you let our listeners know where they can find you? If they're interested in working with you and working with your consultancy? Maybe they have some growth challenges or some sales leaders that could use your help. Where do they reach you?

52:54
Dana Allender:
Yeah, well, I'm going to be working on an exciting new website called Sungrowsu.com. That's SUN as in sunshinegrowsu.com. You can reach me at Dana@sungrowsu.com and Dana Allender@jumpstartinc.org. Those are all super accessible. Or find me on LinkedIn, because I'm super accessible there as well.

53:17
Madison Riddell:
Awesome. And I just want to round out our episode shouting out our partner JumpStart. We talked a lot about them on our episode. They're a strategic partner of ours here at VividFront, so we get to work with a lot of their startup clients that have challenges, that are unique that we can help them solve. And they've been great to us here in the Cleveland community. So we just wanted to shout them out and say thank you for bringing the relationship with Dana to us. We hope to share Dana's skills with some of our clients or with our own team in the future.

53:43
Dana Allender:
Thank you.