The Journey From IT Tech to Sales Leader

[0:04] This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team, and hit more targets with Full Funnel Freedom. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, we're going to be getting ideas and insights from Devin Gillard. Devin Gillard is the CMO and managing partner at F12.net, a Canadian IT provider focused on offloading risk and complexity from small and mid-sized businesses. A tech at heart, Devin started his first computer business as a teenager in small town BC. Today, he drives F12's marketing and sales across 11 locations in three provinces. Devin, welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom podcast.

[1:00] Ah, thank you, Hamish. How are you doing today? Pretty fantastic. It's great to see you. So I've given the audience a little bit of a backstory on you. Give us 90 seconds, expand on what I've already shared.

[1:12] Yeah, for sure. So you're right. My heart was as a tech and I never saw my career going toward sales or even business leadership and just followed my passions and what I loved and, you know, found out I loved helping people solve problems and finding out how I could add value and having that more than I like tinkering with the technology itself. And so naturally throughout my career that led me, you know, toward sales and eventually marketing and figuring out how our products and services can best be positioned and how we can best make sure that the right ears hear about F12 and how to learn them. Our company, just to expand a little bit about that, is we're in the IT managed services space. It's a crowded market. There's a lot of phenomenal players in it. So it's really about how do we differentiate ourselves? How do we make something that's really complex and risky for businesses and sometimes occupies, I feel, too much of their time and attention is spent on

[2:08] what is not a core driver of their business differentiation for most of our clients. It's a function that needs to work well how do we take that and make it so it's as seamless as possible for them it's easy to consume and it doesn't get in the way of their scale and then once that's done how do we unlock some value so it's not a cost center it's actually a driver productivity innovation differentiation with their customers so that's that's the space we're in that's what we're trying to accomplish here love it very cool well and in we were talking offline line. And we described this market as muddy.

[2:41] Some people might call it red ocean, but I like the phrase muddy. And tell me more about how do you create a full funnel when the market is muddy? When an IT player is an IT player is an IT player, there's really not a lot of differentiation. And going around saying, we got this thing and we got that thing is not really going to help. How do you actually get your people to get their prospects to actually go, yeah, have a conversation with you when you're, to their minds, undifferentiated. Yeah, it's a great point. Of course, the quick and I'll say cute answer is to make sure you've got differentiation.

[3:15] But the reality is, is when you're providing a business function, that's essential. I don't care if you're the lawyer, the accountant, the janitor, you have to be trusted. Trusted so how do you credentialize yourself how do you how do you make it clear that we're going to have their interests at heart and that we're going to be trusted now this is where it gets murky in our industry there are some really good players i don't want to cast aspersions all of it but we're not a regulated professional services industry right there's no body there's no college there's no standards and yet we have access to everything to the financials to the hr to the world. And we'd like to change that. Not only that, we build these vital business functions that is the information technology that underpins so much of the business processes in today's business.

[4:03] And there's no building guidelines. There's no code. There's no standards. It's all done. So the first thing is we're really passionate about the standards that do exist. And they're not perfect, but they're out there. So the accounting industry fortunately realizes it's an area of risk. And they do on service providers, something called a SOC 2 type 2 audit where we get it. It's expensive. It's vigorous. It checks out how we manage data and privacy and security and availability. So we've got a third party. And we were proud to be one of the first 11, I think, companies in Canada to get CyberSecure Canada certified. It's a new way of saying, hey, you're meeting these minimum 13 controls. So you can look for outside credentialization. Sure. That's great. That only goes so far because the market, frankly, isn't educated about that. So You got to do the two-step dance of, Hey, there's this thing. And there's this other thing.

[4:50] So then you go to the best way, which is to work with partners and get referrals and earn the business where you can, or to have those references and say, Hey, you know, Mrs. Customer, I understand this is a new relationship, but we work with somebody that's doing exactly what you're doing or very similar. I'd love to have a conversation with them. So in that journey, But I mean, as Hamish, I learned from you, so much of credentialization comes down to how you're treating showing up and being during the sales process that you're taking charge and leading, you know, as you demonstrate competency,

[5:26] as you make commitments and fulfill them, as you go through that process, you earn that right. So that's one way. the other way is uh so i say all of that's important but i say it doesn't work unless we do the last thing which is to actually say oh yeah the way the industry is doing it is wrong, oh and have a statement and saying we believe fundamentally and this isn't made up in our case and i i think it's it's the passion that drives every entrepreneur it's not just that we want to be a great national it service company and scale up we actually want to change the way that the the industry's run. It's focusing on the wrong things. It's ingredients-based. It's not outcome based too often. We're having the wrong conversations.

[6:09] It's about the vendors and what the latest SKU is that you're going to resell and what the promo code is. And if we're going to be in solution selling, it needs to start with the customer and have a foundation. So it's changing that and saying, yeah, yeah, there's lawyers is a good example to do of they've all passed the bar. Right. But there's a vast difference to the one that's, you know, let's say chasing ambulances and to the other side of it. So, and I like to believe that people are incredibly intuitive and they pick up on the verbal and nonverbal signals you provide and they assess based upon those various items. So you can say we're award-winning. Every IT company, I don't know how the other industries are, but our industry throws out awards like everybody's got an award. You can pay for awards, right? So you can say award-winning. You can say we do all these table stakes things, 24 by 7, 24 hour. And everybody says they do it, but the quality of it's different, just as I think. And I don't think that's different from other professional services. But what we say is, here's what we think is ill or wrong about it. Our industry writ large. And here's what we're trying to do to change it.

[7:19] And it reminds me of the conversation that's been going on in medicine, specifically westernized medicine for a while, which is, are we talking about prevention or are we talking about cures?

[7:28] And, you know, the general accepted is westernized medicine is much more focused on you're sick. Now I'm going to give you a pill or a surgery or something, as opposed to we're going to try to prevent. And what I'm hearing is you're much more focused on, I'd rather not have an awkward conversation with you because everything just runs smoothly on the back end. So it's, you know, set it and forget it might be too strong of a phrase, but you're coming to your prospects and clients with a perspective of, we don't want you to think about your IT.

[7:56] We want you to leverage your IT as a benefit to your business instead of a cost center. Is that fair? Yeah, it's fair. And I would, and just to provide a little bit of context that we would say, let's talk about your, your IS and the partners you need to work with on your information systems. And don't expect You know that, but your applications, your business processes, the things that make that differentiate you from your competition and ultimately will lead to a better customer experience for our customers ought to be where the focus goes. And I.T. ought to just reflect how do we enable that to the maximum degree? And so if we're, you know, I like to say we're in our world, in our sales funnel, we're on the hunt for what I'll call enlightened either technology leaders or business leaders, the chief decision makers, who've arrived at the conclusion that information that if they were to spend their time and energy creating the best IT, world-class IT in their organization.

[8:53] It wouldn't move the needle on their differentiation to the outside, to their clients, to their services. That's not core. So their focus all day, every day, when they're getting dressed, when they're showering, you know, the whole world, when they get to work, is how do we differentiate ourselves in the core business?

[9:09] Analogy, maybe I'll go to the law too much, but if we occasionally get into trademark law, so should we hire internally and build the world's premier trademark legal practice at F2C? Sure. No, we outsource that to one of the world's best because we don't do it. But now, if our business was all about buying intellectual property, then it would be core. It would move from non-core to core. So we're finding that saying, you need this looked after. You need it smooth. And it needs to innovate. It needs to be secure. And we run all day, every day, making sure security and project management and data center and cloud. I go through all the constituents are always being innovated.

[9:52] Give that to somebody else so you can now focus on the other areas of your organization where you can truly differentiate yourself. And when we find that, then we lock and we either can agree on the strategy or we can't. And that's okay. That's just a conversation between like-minded individuals at that point.

[10:09] Absolutely. And I love how you phrased your ideal prospect is the enlightened IT leader. And I know it'd be lovely if they were all running around on the street and answered the phone every time one of our people picked up. So where are you currently struggling to create full funnel freedom in your organization when you are looking for someone who, to me, sounds like a unicorn?

[10:32] I'm sure they're not, but there's not a lot of them out there. So where are you struggling in creating full funnel freedom with your team, especially as you are a national organization? And what are you doing to reset that? Yeah, for sure. Well, I'll tell you early on, and I think this is true for most of the colleagues that I'm fortunate enough to work alongside and compete with to some extent, is we grow this business through referrals at the beginning. We like to say we've earned it. And although that might be a little, because I think customers can be very generous too. and you work with other partners who, just by dint of doing a good job, you're growing your business. And that's great. And you get all sorts of things, but you reach a point and certainly when you're striving to be national in scale, well, that's not going to cut mustard anymore. That's not going to allow you to do it. So what we've been careful to do and launch, especially in this last year, is to really think about campaigns and sales strategies for our different personas.

[11:31] So are we talking to an IT leader? Then it's really all about how do we make them look good? How do we help offload risk and complexity? Because generally we're seeing in the marketplace, their bosses want them more involved in dashboarding and innovate. Like the things, again, that differentiate the business and make it more productive, that make it more competitive. But they're still managing all these other micro decisions about information technology.

[11:55] So you have a pitch that says, you imagine the world and we equip our sales team to go out. Here's the list of this industry, of this persona. And this is how we're going to approach it. And then you measure it. But we're talking to CFOs. It's something different. So if we're talking as CEO, something different, they generally a CFO, you want to talk, obviously, about how we can streamline costs, help with cash flow management, reduce unexpected things and de-risk the organization. And with a CEO, it generally tends to be they've got a vision.

[12:28] How can you help them with that vision? What limitation, what constraint are they seeing in their organization that they're excited to have help to unlock? So you got to have different messages. And what we've learned is to run these, we call them campaigns internally, but these discussions with these individuals and measure them so you can pivot quickly. If you've talked to 40 CFOs and no one is willing to continue the conversation, that wasn't a compelling discussion you were having. So let's let's let's change the script and figure it out and so that's that's been how you know we've been able to find those leaders but it is you know it's not a unicorn but it is talk to 100 people to find the 10 that want to continue the conversation and uh you know obviously we're okay with that because the alternative is to continue to build a book of business with misaligned clients which right might build the funnel today but doesn't build the company for the future. Very true. And, and, you know, as someone who went from, you know, you were an IT expert and then you've grown over your career into a sales leader role.

[13:31] What was that journey like? Because from my experience, teaching someone or training someone who's got a technical background who used to get paid for the ideas that came out of your brain, right? Like when you were an IT expert, they call you and go, Hey, Devin, we need this fixed. And you go, okay, well, here's how I would fix that. And that was your payment. But when you shift into a sales And then when you shift into the sales leader role, you've got to be much more focused on leveraging your expertise to gather information. So what was that journey like for you? Where did you struggle? And what were some of the things that you have learned along the way that our

[14:04] audience might benefit from who are going through a similar transition? You know what? This is almost a limitless topic because I started. You can't make as many mistakes as I have. I'm convinced of that. The biggest ones, Hamish. For me along my journey was, you know, I needed to know everything about technology. I need to be the smartest person in the room and I needed to solve their problem immediately and spill the candy all over the lobby just as quickly as I could. And just through sheer enthusiasm and intelligence, win them over. And that was an artful. I mean, I got some early sales, but what did I learn? What was most valuable? So there was the skills that came along, but actually it wasn't the skills.

[14:45] I would say there's been four people who are instrumental to my development to graduate and mentor me and help me see things through. One was an individual named Kevin Sakash. He still runs a great company up in Grand Prairie, Alberta. And he saw something in me early and said, you should be in leadership. And I was like, leadership? Okay. And so he kind of planted a seed in me. And then our CEO we have here, Alex Webb, put so many hours of time into helping correct my thinking, helping to mentor me. Alongside of that, we were originally just two locations. I had a colleague named Graham Aberg and so many hours of conversations. And how does this go? And how do you talk to staff? And how do you talk to clients? And then the icing on the cake, the thing I brought together was you, Hamish. And I'm not saying that just because I'm on your podcast because the journey wasn't a skills-based journey alone. That was actually the easy part. And it wasn't a conceptual understanding thing. And it was the emotion I carried my eye, my identity and my role were one. And it was devastating to me.

[15:53] When a client didn't believe me or trust me or proceed to go forward, I was emotionally involved in every employee discussion. And it's not that I don't care still, of course, I care massively, but I couldn't function at that level with all of the stresses and the things that are going on. At times in information technology, you're taking flack for things that are completely out of your control. We don't control internet providers or what Microsoft updates does or why HP did that, but we've got to absorb it. Plus, of course, we're not perfect.

[16:26] We're learning and growing as every organization is. I wouldn't have survived without some massive addiction if I didn't have some of the skills that came from those four individuals who were kind enough to say, hey, Devin, I'm willing to give you some of my time. I'm willing to help you on this journey. And that's been that's been massive.

[16:46] Very cool. Well, thank you for sharing. And I'm glad that I can play some small part in your journey. So let's dive into that a little bit deeper because, you know, as someone who is, you know, say on the tools to use a phrase from a different industry, your identity and your role are kind of intertwined, right? Your success as a human being is sometimes measured by the success of did you fix this IT problem, which may or may not be in your control. Certainly, that's what makes you feel great that day. I did something. Something. Yeah. Yes, that's true. But what I'm hearing is, as as especially as a leader, you've got to be able to separate the fact that I am a wonderful human being from the fact that I'm getting yelled at because, to use your example, Microsoft did an update and now I can't find my bookmarks or whatever that might be. Did I hear you right? Yeah, you have to be OK with that. And maybe that's easier. The harder part was that.

[17:41] So there's two levels. The next level up was my employee or the technician or the administrator messed up and that caused my customer pain. And now they're sharing that pain with me. I'm going to stay awake at night thinking about that and worrying about that. And again, I don't think that's unique to IT or my journey. No. But the third thing was, I just didn't do it right either. I didn't handle that sale right. I didn't handle that relationship right. Sure. And with people, it's the worst. I didn't manage that individual correctly. Their failure is directly attributable to my deficiencies as a leader. And I had to go, that's okay. I'm learning too. Yeah. That's okay. I'm okay. My intentions are solid. What can I learn from that? Yeah. And how can I develop and become better next time? And if I already had those answers and I just couldn't find the capacity or time, well, how do I fix that?

[18:34] So, you know, it sounds simple, but that was a really difficult journey for me. That's for sure. Well, because you care, right? And ever since we've known each other, Devin, you have an incredible passion for IT, for supporting the individuals in your network, whether they're direct reports or peers or clients, prospects. And so it can be really emotional, as you said, where you want the best for everybody. And unfortunately, sometimes they don't necessarily want the best for themselves. And it could be a challenge. And it sounds like what you've what you learned is to control what you could control. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I won't profess that I'm, I'm some Zen perfect at it, but it's been a journey and it's, it's vastly different for me now than it was before. And it's healthy. Cause I also think, I've also seen incredibly powerful leaders go the opposite way, which is where if there's failure, it's all externalized. It's all somebody else's fault and they're never wrong. And you can see the power they have because they're never dented. But then I, I think they'll lose the opportunity sometimes to learn the wisdom of that painful lesson. If you, so there's a, there's a way to, you don't internalize it, but you actual, are you intelligize it? I don't know. I'm making up a word there, but you've got to process intellectually why, what happened as if you were a coach to yourself.

[19:57] Yeah, absolutely. And so speaking of coaching and, and, you know, I'm a big believer, as you know, about proactive activities and having the mindset, right? Having those, like you just identified, okay, so this happened, I didn't like it, but let's analyze it from an intellectual perspective,

[20:13] take the lessons out and move forward. So as you're managing a national sales organization, what are some of the proactive activities and some of the mindsets you're coaching your people to have in order to keep their funnels consistently reliably full? So, yeah, I'll answer that on the way maybe the side that's easiest, because, of course, the national account management, the team that's responsible for farming and nurturing and developing the current book of business. And I used to be responsible for both. Unfortunately, now we've just we split that off because sales is enough.

[20:48] Sales and marketing are enough. And so I'll talk about it from the sales and marketing. And it's a run book. This is what you do. This is your time that's protected capacity for you to do this many phone calls, to make this many emails, and to take away from our sales team. And I'm really fortunate to have an amazing director of sales that we're so aligned with on this. This is what your job is. How... Compelling our pricing is, our product is, our pitch is, that's for us to work on together as a team and at the executive level. Your job is to do those activities to the best of your ability and to be consistent at them so that we can then measure the roles together and pivot any of those other elements if we need to, to help make the salesperson successful. So we're just going to have a system where it's truth and there's activities and you're accountable. The other part we love to celebrate as a win every move of the funnel. So if an opportunity went from A to B in your sales funnel, that was a win for the salesperson. Even if that was a no, you got an answer. It's got a resolution.

[21:57] That's great. Let's keep going. And so that's the other part. And another thing I learned from you, Hamish, which is so important is the director of sales is right beside the salespeople participating in the conversations, hearing it every day, sometimes twice a day, there's the, let's role play. Let's talk it through. Let's, you know, what was a difficult conversation? What? And so that iterative learning has been really helpful for us in perfecting. And I use perfecting not to imply in any way that anything's perfect, but the goal of always trying to perfect what each individual in your sales team is doing. Yeah. It's like that concept of 1% better every day, right? Or every week. And as you grow, it looks like you're not doing anything. And all of a sudden you just get this exponential growth because you've been building 1%, 1%, 1%, 1%. And that's what I'm hearing.

[22:46] And that is having those iterative conversations. And I love that you've got your people focused, right? That that's going to be a challenge for salespeople is I've got so much I could pay attention to and so many shiny objects, et cetera, et cetera. And what I think I heard is you said, this is what you do and here's how we're going to support you, but I need you to just do this. and how is that.

[23:07] Been, what have you seen in terms of the motivation or the productivity from your salespeople since you moved over to a model like that? Yeah. So if there's something I could undo was the couple of years I spent trying to recreate me and my team. So I was an IT guy and I went through and I found other people that were, you know, I could see there were people, people in an IT role and love talking about business and had such loyalty and connection with their customers. And then I could put them through this process and get them interested in sales like I did. So I'll give them the same. I'll make a Petri dish. I'll give them broad responsibilities.

[23:45] They can become like business leaders, little business units. They'll manage their P&L. They'll feel all the different stresses in a microwave that a business leader would have. And therefore, they'll have relevance in talking to our business customers and will get growth from it. Instead, I frustrated them. There was lots of things in the Petri dish that weren't the same. They were distracted by too many responsibilities, you know, growth and farming and all the rest. And, you know, there's not a book that doesn't start with, just don't do that. I did it. So if anybody needs any more proof, give me a call. I can talk through it. So what it was, we defined this role and said, you know what, you're actually, this is, we need to get individuals who actually, all they want to do all day is call and talk to individuals about our solutions. And if we design a role from that, we take away as much of the administration as possible.

[24:36] Because my experience was with the sales folks I had managed was if we had a sales individual and we gave them five things to do and one of those was cold calling, everything else would get done but cold calling unless I was standing on their throat. So we get a role. This role is about cold calling. This is about talking to people for the first time. You're going to do it all day, every day. Do you love that idea? Do you love never having to deal with CRM because somebody else is going to do that for you? Do you love never having to write an RFP or a proposal document because somebody else is going to do that for you? This is your function. And then what do you know? There are people...

[25:11] That said, wow, I would absolutely love to do that. That's the dream job for me. And they're happy because they're doing what they love and not doing what they didn't love. Right. That was my lesson was don't try to gussy up the wrong individual to do the job you need. Love that there. And there are way too many sales leaders who are still, your job is everything. Yeah. And the things that they really want to do, and you said cold calling and I laughed because what a surprise that if there was five things, one of them was cold calling the other four, we're going to get prioritized. What a surprise. Cause that's me too, right?

[25:43] Like if I don't force it, it doesn't happen. So totally. And, and so to really narrow that down now, you, you may have just answered the question, but, but I'm, you know, you've also shared that you've made a few mistakes in your career as all of us have, if you could go back and, and coach your younger self. So this is before you became a leader. If you could coach yourself and say, you know what, in the future, you're going to be in this leadership role. I'd recommend you do this right now to maybe smooth over some of those bumps that you went through or, or avoid some of the stumbles that you might've gone through. What would that piece of advice be to your younger self? Yeah, it would be absolutely that just because you in your journey, Mr. Devin Gillard, happened to happen to go through this path where you could do the technology and the business leadership and the sales all at the same time. That is not a path to wisdom to scale that out.

[26:36] Because remember, this is what I say, remember, you know, when you go through this journey, you're going to notice, and I named some of the folks that supported me, they were able to give you massive amounts of time and attention to help develop you.

[26:48] You're going to have 15 or 20 people, and then they're going to have all these administrators. You're not going to be able to, as much as you want, you're not going to be able to provide the same level of coaching and mentorship to that team as you received. It ain't fair. It's just the reality. So therefore, I would advise myself to divide up the duties way earlier, to listen to the advice I had been given, to separate out the roles, to figure out exactly what kind of a sales process you want, divide it up and build that team early. Even if it doesn't feel like I had the labor budget for it, find a way even incrementally because it'll pay dividends and the learnings will be iterative

[27:27] and then the benefits will be iterative. So that would be one. But boy, I could give you a whole pile, Hamish, but that would be the one that's maybe most immediate. Because the other part, if I could give two, which is cheating, is don't underestimate the importance of systems. So I don't naturally like systems. I don't naturally like CRMs or process automation or all those sorts of things. But I've seen firsthand when we brought in Salesforce or sales process automation and other things like that, we've been able to double the productive capacity of our team. Wow. And, you know, sometimes these services seem like a big investment.

[28:04] If your team's focused and you can then double their productivity on that focused activity, that's just a no brainer. So I would have I would have started that investment earlier, too. Very cool. Well, thank you for sharing that with us, Devin. So to wrap us up, what are you right now reading, listening to, watching to further your own personal

[28:23] and professional development that our listeners might want to check out as well? So I'm a big believer in reading business books, and there's so many, and they're amazing, and they're great, but being broad, because ideas and inspiration can come from many places. Totally. So I love reading the aggregate knowledge books like Malcolm Gladwell or that kind of ilk. And there's one that I just finished reading that was really inspirational. It was recommended to me by a friend. It's called Range. And it's by David Epstein. So you'll remember that name, different Epstein. And it's great because it talks about how folks that are winning are ones who've sampled a lot of different things, have a lot of different experience. It kind of upends the Gladwell, you know, 10,000 hours early head start stuff. It sort of throws that all away. It says that doesn't lead to success.

[29:10] It was a really eye-opening book for me, and it's been making me think so much about how we engage individuals, how we promote, and the experiences I want to give my children as they develop, but also in the company. So it's not strictly speaking at all, not strictly, not even broadly speaking, a business book, but I think there's incredible business lessons in it. Absolutely. And oddly enough, I just finished Range myself. I have been recommending it to our leadership groups as well. So I love the fact that you had a similar experience with Devin. As always, I love our visits. And thank you for being a guest on the Full Funnel Freedom podcast today. It was my honor. You've been listening to the Full Funnel Freedom podcast. I've been your host, Hamish Knox. Today, we've got ideas and insights from Devin Gillard, CMO and managing partner at F12.net on how to go from a subject matter expert to a sales leader. Please like and share, rate and review. If you'd like to follow us on Instagram, we are at SandlerYYC. If you'd like to become a guest or get involved with the podcast as a sponsor or advertiser, email podcast at fullfunnelfreedom.com. Until we connect with you on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom. Thank you for listening to Full Funnel Freedom with Hamish Knox. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to fullfunnelfreedom.com.

[30:30] Music.