This episode of the Grow Fast Podcast featuring Todd Caponi, an award-winning sales leader and author of The Transparency Sale and The Transparent Sales Leader, explored the evolving principles of sales and the critical role of transparency in fostering trust and long-term success. Todd, whose expertise spans sales methodology, learning theory, and decision science, shared insights from his research on sales history, emphasizing that while technology and tools have advanced, the core principles of sales—focused on service and guiding buyers—have remained consistent over centuries. He discussed how the overwhelming availability of information has made the buying process harder for customers and how sales professionals can embrace transparency to guide them more effectively. Todd introduced the concept of "flawesome" salesmanship, where companies openly acknowledge their imperfections, fostering trust and accelerating decision-making. With a track record that includes helping a technology company achieve a successful IPO and a $3B exit, as well as winning the American Business "Stevie" Award for VP of Worldwide Sales of the Year, Todd's insights are grounded in proven success.
Another major topic was Todd's "5F Framework" for revenue leadership, which emphasizes focus, field, fundamentals, forecasting, and fun. He explained how this structure helps sales leaders plan effectively, maintain consistency, and optimize team performance. Todd also shared examples from his workshops and leadership programs, designed to equip teams with actionable tools for improving communication, qualification, and negotiation. The discussion wrapped up with a look at how technology, including AI, can enhance sales processes when used through the lens of service rather than scale, encouraging sales professionals to prioritize genuine connections over automation.
You can find the whole episode of the Grow Fast Podcast with Todd Caponi here:
TODD CAPONI
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This is the transcript for this episode:
Mark Shriner [00:00]
Todd, welcome to The Grow Fast Podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go. Hey, Todd, how are you?
Todd Caponi [00:14]
I'm good. I'm good. Good to see you.
Mark Shriner [00:18]
Likewise, hey, that's a pretty cool phone you got in the back there. I wonder if, like, our kids would even know what that is.
Todd Caponi [00:26]
Yeah, I joke that when cool people are doing cool things on the weekends, I'm ear deep in late 1800s and early 1900s books and magazines on sales and sales management, and one of the representations of that is this phone. That's a fully restored phone from 1908, it's got original wiring on the inside, the bell still rings. Everybody has a hook it up to anything.
Mark Shriner [00:52]
But who can you call me? There's got to be like.
Todd Caponi [00:56]
But that one's 1908 and then over my shoulder here is that that's a 1921 fully restored from SC electric. Again, original wiring thing is a beauty. And I collect this kind of crap.
Mark Shriner [01:09]
That's awesome. I love it. I'm actually, you know, I'm thinking I would like to go get an old pay phone, just because, I mean, kids would be like, what is that? Like to call somebody!
Todd Caponi [01:22]
Exactly! I was just telling somebody that my first sales job, I had a huge territory. I lived in Southern California, and I had a pager. And literally, one of the things that I prided myself on is I knew the location of every pay phone. Like, if my pager went off, I got to get to one of them. I knew where all of them were. And, like, no one would have a pager and a pay phone. What are you talking about?
Mark Shriner [01:46]
Exactly? Why wouldn't you just use your cell phone? But we didn't have a cell phone, exactly. You probably had a Thompson guide, to navigate your way around, or some kind of map or something, right? You know? And people, yeah, because, like, I don't know if you gave a map to any average 20-year-old, if they would even know how to operate that damn thing. All right, where am I?
Todd Caponi [02:07]
Your expertise in focus on knowing where everything is back then. Yeah, you know, because today, all you got to do is put it in your GPS and you go, and you stop paying attention to where the heck you even are, yeah, the GPS goes down. You're screwed.
Mark Shriner [02:22]
Exactly! Well, and it does happen occasionally. It's funny, I lived in maybe seven, eight different countries, and a couple of countries that I used to sell in Japan and Korea, they, you know, the roads were, were built several 100 years ago, right? And so, and then the addresses oftentimes were not like in order, 1234, it was in the order that the houses were built, so, you know. And then offices were similar in some of these older neighborhoods. And so back in the day, every time that we would go out for a customer visit, we'd have to ask them to fax us for you don't know people that don't know what a fax machine is not joking, but they would fax us a map, but it would always be like a hand rendered, but Pretty good at it. Hey, you know, you are a sales historian. You do a sales podcast. You have a couple of different books that you published on selling. I want to talk to you about all of that, but let's, let's start with the historian part first, because we start talking about the phones and things like that. Phones and things like that, you know. And a lot of times I hear sales has changed. You know, what you were doing back in the day doesn't apply to us today. And I would say, well, hey, you know, there's some age-old principles that kind of still do apply. But let me ask you, what were you talking about studying, you know, from sales leaders back in the 1800s even, what lessons can you learn from people way back then?
Todd Caponi [03:47]
Well, yeah, I think first of all the answer is that, at its core, sales has not changed at all, like zero. I recently just wrote about this, where one of the things I did so one of these books is from the 1920s and it starts with a sharing of multiple sales philosophers from the previous 20 years, from 1900 to 1925 just sharing their definition of what sales is. And I'm confident that if I shared all of those with you, you would say, Yeah, that's what sales is, without me telling you it's 100 years old.
Mark Shriner [04:21]
So, let's maybe that book before you go on any further.
Todd Caponi [04:25]
Let's see which one was it? It's one of these here. I'm going to have to get back to you.
Mark Shriner [04:30]
I'll put it, if you get back to me, I'll put it in the show notes, because that's, that's, yeah.
Todd Caponi [04:34]
I mean, I've got this whole collection behind me. It is all late 1800s early 1900s there's just a massive collection. And the book starts with that, yeah, and it's, it's pretty cool. And there's an article written on my blog at toddcaponi.com, you go to the blog, the title is, sales hasn't changed, so you can find all of those definitions there. But, you know, it's funny that when we talk about them. Dedicated territories. We talk about onboarding; we talk about the way that we interview. We talked about sales kickoffs. All of those are almost exactly the same foundationally and structurally as they were in the 1890s sales compensation, the way quotas are delivered, all the same. Now there are a couple lessons mark that, of things they did right that we do wrong today. And of course, there was some wacky stuff that they did, strange back then that we'd look back out and go, what were they thinking? Right? I'll tell you two things that they did, really smart that we get wrong today. Actually, two and a half. Let me start with one of those quotes of what sales is. So, there's a guy from his book, The Art of selling, which is one of the ones back here. His name is Arthur Sheldon. I believe he is the goat of sales philosophers. He wrote this book, The Art of selling in 1911 he defined sales like this, and I love it. It's one of my favorite sales quotes of all time. He simply says true salesmanship is the science of service. Grasp that thought firmly and never let go, right? So being a service professional. Now, let's go back to your question about this. Sales changed or not. You know, we talk so much like, hey, the biggest driver in sales evolution is this idea that, quote, buyers know more nowadays, right? Buyers know more nowadays? Yeah, sure, they do.
Mark Shriner [06:33]
Well, I mean, that's, that's, I hear that all the time. They say, like, you know, buyers are educating themselves, and then they're going to reach out to you. And so, you know, your your role is, yes, just add a little color to it.
Todd Caponi [06:43]
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. So, buyers, there's they've got more information, access to more information. It's a threat to the profession. It means that we need to change those four words, buyers, no more nowadays. Is in one of the books to my right here from 1910 Oh my gosh. Wrote a book called Salesmanship Theory and Practice, and he talks about the idea that, hey, the rise of mail order catalogs and advertising means buyers know more nowadays. They don't want to deal with you. I mean, down here, for anybody who's watching and not listening, this is a 1908 Sears Roebuck catalog. Now in it you could buy everything. This is like Amazon. I mean literally, there's a page like, there's a department of human hair, like, you could buy everything, right? The exact same challenges were being faced 110 years ago that are being talked about everywhere today. What that means, going back to Arthur Sheldon's quote, is, sales has always flourished and survived through the lens of service, meaning more information available to buyers, has never made it easier on them. It actually made it harder. And when we as salespeople see through that lens and go, hey, listen, my role is to be your guide, to help you achieve optimal outcomes, whether it's with me or with somebody else. Do that homework for you. Expose the good and the bad. That's when everybody wins. That's when customers buy, stay, buy more. Become advocates for you, take you with them to their next company. And so it's that long game thinking, which is what pervaded sales forever, and the people that think that way are the ones that will always have a strong and healthy career.
Mark Shriner [08:30]
I am 100% aligned with what you're saying, because I'm in it for the long haul, and I want to develop trusting relationships with my customers and then I've had customer relationships that have gone on for 25 years. It's amazing, you know, either they're coming back to buy or they're sending business my way. But, you know, to step into that trusted advisor role takes a little bit of work, you know, because people, people, you know what, people are a little bit on guard these days, right? And maybe not just these days, maybe even back in the day. So, let me ask you, what are some of the best practices for convincing people that you do want to serve them?
Todd Caponi [09:14]
Well, yeah, so you mentioned my books. The first book was called the transparency sale, and I'll explain the basis for why, like a lunatic, I quit my job and wrote a book would possibly suck, because what did I know about writing? So, here's what happened. I was the chief revenue officer of a company here in Chicago, where I'm based, called Power reviews. You probably guessed from the name we were in the review space, and you've interacted with the technology and probably didn't know it, we were kind of the back end for 1000 retailers and brands. So, like, buy a pair of crocs. You look at the shoes, you scroll down, there's reviews. That was us doing the collect and display for them, and Vineyard Vines. And again, 1000. The retailers. Here's what happened. We partnered with Northwestern University here just to look at buyer behavior when a website is acting as a salesperson. All right, so what do people do? So, nothing to do with B to B or human to human selling or so I thought the research comes back. There was three data points that stood out to me that changed my life, right? Like I quit my job and wrote a book. Data Point number one that didn't change my life that was no surprise, is that we all read reviews today. When we're buying something, we've never bought before. That's of medium to high consideration, meaning, it's not a pack of gum, it matters. All of us read reviews, all right? No surprise. Here's the two that changed my life. Number one is for all of you listening like, are you one of those weirdos that skips the five-star reviews and reads the negative ones first, like, reads the fours, threes, twos and one's first. That doesn't make you a weirdo, it makes you human being. Yeah, almost all of us skip the five star reviews and go to the negatives first, and then the last piece is a product. And this is across all product categories, but on average, that has an average review score in a five star scale between a four, two and a four, five that's optimal for purchase conversion, meaning a product that has negative reviews right under it will sell at a higher conversion rate than a product that has nothing but perfect five star reviews. Perfection actually turns us off product that's got nothing but perfect five star reviews we at a subconscious level, look at and go, I don't trust them, right? And so I looked at that, and I was like, All right, wait, a product that has negatives right under it that we read first that actually aids the buyer in making a more informed, confident decision when a website's acting as a salesperson, does that apply to human to human, or B to B? And so I started digging into it. I am a nerd, like I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I found a neuroscientist at DePaul University, because I'm not smart enough to understand that I was reader, and basically confirmed, like, yeah, like, we as human beings, we don't buy when we're convinced to buy, or if we are convinced, we're probably pissed about it. 20 minutes later, we buy when we can predict, like we're trying to make a prediction. And at a subconscious level, we know perfection doesn't exist, so we can't renew it.
Mark Shriner [12:35]
It's like, it's dubious, right? We're like, I don't know if I can trust this, but right?
Todd Caponi [12:39]
So, we can't trigger that prediction. And so, I started going, all right, how would that apply to B to B, or human to human selling? And how can we use this? So, we started dabbling around with it a little bit, essentially going into sales situations and just saying, hey, Mark, Listen, before we get too deep into this, here's what we're not great at right? Like, for what you're looking to do, we're not going to be the best in the world at this. Let's talk about that first, because if you're cool with that, we're pretty awesome at this. We're trying to be the best in the world at this, right? Embracing what you give up to be great at your core, leading with what they might feel isn't going to be a fit. Again, they're looking for the negative. First, we do both. We present ourselves as Pretty cool, pretty good, as Tyra Banks would call it, floss them, right? We're flawed, but still awesome. And we lead to what our greatness is, instead of leading with it. That disarms the buying brain. It triggers faster decisions. It builds trust, qualifies in faster, qualifies out the deals you're going to lose anyway, faster, and differentiates you in the way that you sell that. That's the core concept of the book, the transparency sale, the behavioral science, and then, like, how do we actually apply this to all we do? And builds trust, and there's magic behind it. We started doing it. We became Chicago's fastest growing tech company from 2014 to 2017, and I was like, I got to get these ideas out there. And off I went.
Mark Shriner [14:10]
That is an awesome story, and I'd love it. And it does resonate with my experience selling where maybe not the exact same approach. But you know, if we're not good at something, why try to force it on the customer? Why not just be on and honest and open with them, transparent with them, and say, hey, you know what? That's not our thing. And let me go back and talk with the people in the office to see if we have a solution. If not, you know, maybe I can make some recommendations for you, or something like that, right?
Todd Caponi [14:41]
And I will add one thing to that mark, yeah, please. I was saying that exact same thing during a virtual keynote I was given, this is a couple years ago. So, during COVID, I said that, and I noticed in the chat somebody wrote No. And so, I was stopped. I was like, hey, whoever wrote No? Kind of like. I talked to you for a second like, I want to hear what you're saying. No, she got on and to your point, she was like, hey, listen, economy's tough if we get a prospect, like, we got to go get them, even if we're not the best solution for them. And I was like, all right, so you get that deal done. You jam it in. What do you do when they realize later that you weren't the best solution for them? And she said, we managed through the dissatisfaction. And I was like, hey, listen, this is, you know, at the time, it was 2022, you know, the proliferation of feedback and peer connections on everything we do buy, and experience means, hey, congrats. You got that one deal, but I'm telling you, it will cost you four or five more deals that you never even knew about because of that individual's ability to share. And so, the long game plays, you know, helps us win the long game, but if you do it right, it helps you win the short game, too. And I think we all have to have that lens that it's not, hey, it's a qualified opportunity if they've got other, something other than lint in their wallet, no, it's got to be the right fit. It's got to be a good fit. We've got to play that long.
Mark Shriner [16:11]
Yeah. And that's the other important part of your approach, or the transparency approach, is you find out right away, are they a legit prospect, or is it just somebody they're looking for something completely different. And let's a lot of I guess I would say Junior salespeople sometimes are afraid to kind of address that. They kind of want to dance around that issue when it comes to qualification. And I'm like, no, let's get it out there and talk about it. And if we're not a good fit, you know what? We're not, you know, I've been in a situation recently where I was coaching somebody and they were very apologetic, because the customer was asked the question, well, can you guys do this and apologetic and then making long explanations as to why they couldn't do it, and, and, and I said, What are you doing? Just say, No, that's not our strength. Here's what our strength is. And by the way, would you be open to another way of achieving that? I mean that, you know, it was, it was a kind of a nuance, kind of a nuanced conversation, but you don't need to spend 20 minutes explaining why you can't do that one little thing. Just, just say, no, you're going to. Because what happens when you give that long explanation? It sounds like your kind of being a little dishonest. Your kind of making stuff up and just, just be honest.
Todd Caponi [17:22]
Man, exactly. You know, it's funny, the greatest B2C business, consumer businesses in the world are experts at this. And I just think it's such an opportunity for B2B. I mean, you think about things like IKEA, right? You know, IKEA is the number one furniture retailer in the world, and it's a nightmare. They give you a map, like you need a map to go shopping.
Mark Shriner [17:44]
I feel so good because I thought I was the only one that got lost in IKEA
Todd Caponi [17:48]
Yeah, that’s their purposeful design. When you find what you're looking for, there's nobody to help you. You got to write down the code or take a picture of it with your phone, of where you get to go in the warehouse, pull the boxes off of a shelf that weighs 100 pounds onto a cart that doesn't have brakes. F bomb your way through, giving the back of your car, Tetris style. Getting home, there's 150 parts on the floor, no words on the work instruction other than like, smart or and when you get done, you're like, hey, you know what? That looks Pretty good. We should go back and get the end table. It's crazy, but IKEA tells the world, listen, you're going to find it, pick it, pack it, shove it, assemble it. But we do that so we can give you modern, Scandinavian design furniture that you didn't pay much for. And you keep coming back, people that walk in there don't walk out angry, because expectations are set and met consistently. That's the goal here, that instead of having this funnel, everybody that's coming to you is qualified, or when they do come to you, you've got the opportunity to lead with, hey, listen, we're trying to be the best in the world. That this means we don't do this, this, this and this. And so, you tell me what's important that also goes with pricing, right? If you're at the higher end of the market from a pricing perspective, like one of my clients was Adobe, they were competing with some smaller startups that were less expensive, and so they started starting every conversation with prospects, saying, Hey, listen, the price your investment here is probably going to be between x. Between x and y. I know that's higher than what you might find otherwise on the market. My goal is to help show you why and why our customers sign up and are with us and stay with us. But if that's out of range, can we talk about that now versus later? They end up building trust. They disarm that conversation. It doesn't come up at the end. And they've differentiated the way they sell. And you know, again, your most valuable asset, that you have an inventory that you can convert to revenue, isn't your solutions, isn't your products, it's your time. Yeah, right. It'll never be any earlier than it is right now, if you're going to lose. Fast, and this is your opportunity to do that too, so you can spend your time cultivating and looking for opportunities where you're a better fit.
Mark Shriner [20:08]
I totally agree with you, and it's interesting, because again, when it comes back to junior or salespeople who aren't as secure, oftentimes they want to skirt around that price issue if they I guarantee you, in my experience, and I've coached, and probably nowhere near as many sales people as you have, but I've coached my fair share, the product or service is always too high priced. Okay? They're like, oh man, you know the competition is, we're I'm like, so how much? What's the magic number? And there is no magic number. It's just lower, lower, lower. And people want to skirt around that issue. And I don't, I don't mind. I, like you said, just address it up front, you know, and, but back to what you said earlier. The BDC companies got it right. I mean, can you imagine somebody going into like, well, why is this Mercedes, or why is this Cadillac so expensive? No, they don't have to justify their price. You know,
Todd Caponi [20:59]
exactly, exactly it's like, why imagine somebody going into Costco and thinking, hey, listen, I need a full selection of ranch dressings. You only have a hidden valley ranch. Like you only have one. Why do I have to buy a gallon? Why do I have to buy right? Like, it's like, why is somebody checking my room?
Mark Shriner [21:17]
Peter, I guarantee you, though the customer service people at Costco do have that one person that comes up occasionally?
Todd Caponi [21:23]
Yeah, exactly. And then you've got somebody at the door to make sure you didn't steal anything, we don't do another thought you have to pay to walk in, right? Like, their renewal rate on those subscriptions, their memberships is like 98% and I don't know who these 2% that don't are, but Costco is the number two retailer in the world, behind Walmart, and it's not cool, like, it's not a good experience, but everybody that walks in walks out happy. And that's it's all about setting expectations, embracing.
Mark Shriner [21:53]
I'm detecting the pattern here, you know, because, like, if you talk about IKEA and Costco, you know, they make it. It's not fun being in the store. I mean, I was just a Costco a couple days ago, and I'm like, I'm just like, when I get out, but then I look at all the stuff we got, and both of them sell you food at the end they, you know, you got meatballs or pizza, right?
Todd Caponi [22:13]
Right? Exactly! A dollar 50.
Mark Shriner [22:16]
Maybe that's the trick, man.
Todd Caponi [22:18]
Yeah, that could be too. That's right. That's right.
Mark Shriner [22:21]
Let me ask you. Let me ask you this. You know, you wrote another book called The Transparent Sales Leader. Okay, why is that important? And how is that, yeah, relevant?
Todd Caponi [22:31]
Yeah, it's, I'll tell you, it's. There's two things. Number one, you've brought this up twice already, that younger sales reps have trouble embracing this idea of transparency. And I believe that really, most of that fault stems from their leaders and the way that they drive what they measure. That this old school philosophy of, hey, you got to have 4x or quota and pipeline at all times. What does that cause us to do? Fill our pipeline with Forex, filled with crap and meals too long and we're measuring the wrong things, that the transparent sales leader is the wrong title for the book. First of all, my publisher is like, we should keep on that theme. Yeah, transparency leads better than pretending to be perfect, no doubt. But that would be a brochure. That wouldn't be a book. What the transparent sales leader is is based on this idea that back in 2008 I got promoted into my first leadership role. I was running field ops for a company in the valley, and then the CEO was like, hey, you do the VP of sales role. Um, my previous guy was too expensive.
Mark Shriner [23:42]
A job being transparent.
Todd Caponi [23:45]
Exactly right. That's why I think I got promoted. He threw me into this role. It was my goal. Always. I wanted to run a tech company, sales organization, right? But two days into it, I'm looking around realizing I've never been trained. I have no idea what I'm doing. And most importantly, in sales, I always have a structure or a framework or a process, right? You got processes everywhere leaders. There's no framework. It basically felt like I was a dog chasing a car down the street every day, never knowing what direction it was going. Like when I would just about catch up, it would turn and so I, being the nerd that I am, created a framework for revenue leadership. It's basically, I call it the 5f of maximizing revenue capacity, but there's five core responsibilities that a revenue leader has. I made them alliterative because I'm dumb, and that's the only way I can remember them, but they all start with the letter F, and it's basically encompasses all of your responsibilities, and once you get that nailed and internalized, you can use it to plan and strategize, use it for all your communications, up down, side to side, the consistency when the heat goes up in the kitchen, you always got that to fall back on like crazy board meetings I missing a number. Right after you take a fundraise, which I don't recommend, but it makes you sound really smart, too. And so that's the basis for the book. Is, yeah, transparency, absolutely. But having a framework that is optimized by science on a bed of transparency, that's where the magic happens, and that's really what the fundamental is about that book.
Mark Shriner [25:21]
Yeah. And at the risk of sounding like I'm agreeing with everything you say, I very much. But the it's funny, because I've seen so many times where organizations, they'll be like, mark or Nancy, you're a great salesperson. We're going to make you a sales leader. And what makes a great salesperson? The qualities of a great salesperson aren't always the same qualities that make a great sales leader. And I don't know if you've seen that, and you have any thoughts about that.
Todd Caponi [25:52]
All right, so this is the book I'm reading right now. It's sitting on my desk. It is called sales management. It's part of the practical salesmanship series from 1925 to 1927 I've got; I just bought the whole collection.
Mark Shriner [26:12]
Yeah, hey, just that. Just a quick aside. Todd, do you know there's a thing called eBooks now.
Todd Caponi [26:17]
I love the collection like it just smells like the farthest corner of your grandma's old basement when there's something about it that I just, I love, like, I love the staining on like, like, it's just this stuff is just so cool to me. But literally, the beginning of this book talks about the position of being a sales leader and how different it is from being a salesperson, and how we can't be taking sales people that happen to be the top performers and move them in, because you go from being fully independent as a salesperson to now going fully, I'm sorry, yeah, fully independent to going into this role where you're essentially fully dependent. It's a different role. It's a different responsibility. Now, what they talk about in this book, I find interesting, is they say you have to be an authoritarian and a supervisor. And I looked at that and I was like, and again, I just, I was just reading this this morning, so it's so fresh. I looked at that, and I was like, Ooh, that doesn't sound right, authoritarian and a supervisor, but the way they wrote it, authoritarian just means, hey, listen, you know, Mark, if you're in my sales rep and on my team, it's to say, Hey, listen, Mark, I'm no important and more important than you. I'm not. I'm not going to be a boss to anybody. We just have different responsibilities. We're still peers. You've got a responsibility to be our face and voice out in the field and doing good business and drums and all that. I've got another responsibility, to clear the field of obstacles, to help get you where you want to go, to be your guide to you know, to be somebody that's going to help you advance your career. But I also need some stuff from you. There's some requirements that I have from you, and that's the authoritarian side, the supervisor side is, hey, I need to be able to watch and understand what's going on at all times. For me to be able to do my job best, right? If I'm not supervising and seeing what's going on, I can't optimize again. In my book, The 5F, I if I have no idea what's going on, how do I do my job? And so that requires balance and a peer relationship between the two of us. And I was like, that's a good way to put it right. Authoritarian supervisor, sounds terrible, but when we look
Mark Shriner [28:32]
Actually, in the context of the world that we live in today, where you know anything, authoritarian is kind of whoa, you know exactly you'd have the Gen Xers or Gen Z, whatever Gen we're in right now, the millennials running, running for the exits, right, right? Yeah, but, but the way that you describe it, and I again, agree with you, a good sales leader, one of the things they will do is run interference for you, find out what resources you need. Help you, maybe even help you get access to key people in key meetings. Maybe you know to come in and come along with you on a sales call. There is some opportunities for coaching, though, in my experience, lab like you could be in a meeting and say, for example, maybe, maybe you want to have that little transparent conversation in at the front versus at the end. Something like that.
Todd Caponi [29:19]
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Hey, would it help if I rattle off the 5f for you?
Mark Shriner [29:24]
That'd be awesome. Yeah, I thought you're going to make me buy the book, but
Todd Caponi [29:31]
I write these. I wrote the books just to get the ideas out there. Like, literally, when I wrote the first book, I literally thought, hey, this book is going to suck because I've never read the book before my high school
Mark Shriner [29:41]
English great self-talk there.
Todd Caponi [29:45]
Exactly. My high school English teacher is going to be laughing that I wrote a book, but I thought the book would come out. My friends would be like, Oh, Tom good for you. You wrote a book, and then I go get a CRO job again. The fact that I'm still doing this six years later is unbelievable to me, but the whole point of writing both of these is, you could tell behind me, I love this profession. I really care about it. I hate that it drags the bottom of Gallup's annual ethical professions listing, along with politicians, every year, there's an opportunity for us to do right it. And if I can just make a few people do that, and so that the 5f essentially, are another opportunity to do that, that if we as leaders realize that one of the 5f is not fear, right? It's, you know, there's a framework, there's a structure around what your responsibility is, where we all win together. Man, like, that's the opportunity. So, what the 5F are, again, if you internalize these, you could, literally, as soon as you get done listening to this, get a whiteboard out, you could create a 3060, 90-day plan for yourself in 20 minutes. Like, you don't need to be calling your buddies like, hey, you got a business plan. So, all of your responsibilities as a revenue leader, sales, marketing, client, success. BD, like, they all fall into one of five of these, one of these five categories. The first is, you as a revenue leader, have a responsibility to establish, maintain and grow the team's focus. The focus meaning are they calling on the right companies? The right firmographics, the right demographics within them, with the right prerequisite so you got to establish and make sure there's no science projects going on. Number two is you then build the field. So, the second F is the field organization, the team that takes the field every day to support that focus, meaning the right people with the right experience in the right places, with the right tools and the right resources. The third F then is fundamentals. You got to make sure that that field team is doing the fundamentals right, the things they've got to get right, consistently, their messaging, their positioning, their qualification, discovery, presenting, demoing, proposing, negotiating, all that stuff. Your fourth f is, then, who knew you have to forecast. You've got a responsibility to predict the future. And forecasting is not just about, hey, what's coming in, but it's understanding the right KPIs and metrics and being proactive versus reactive. And then the fifth F, which is the cheesiest, but I would argue the most important, I use the word fun. And when I say fun, I'm not talking about parties and cotton candy and lollipops and all that. I mean culture. You've got a responsibility to optimize the intrinsic inspiration of your team so that they want to put in discretionary effort, they want to show up, they want to stay, they want to do their best. They want to advocate for you and your organization, to their friends. It keeps turnover low, it keeps time to recruit fast as possible. Those are the five you could literally write them down and go right. Where are we now? Where are our holes? What are the things that we could do to help optimize each one of these things? And here's the execution plan. You can do that in your back pocket anytime you're asked. And the last piece I'll say on that part is when I interviewed for my CRO role at power reviews, I was the, I believe, 13th candidate the CEO had brought in, and he had asked me, he was like, Hey, what's your philosophy on sales leadership, like, what's your structure? What do you think you're going to do? And I was like, hey, I'm glad you asked. And I went to the whiteboard. I wrote the 5F up there. He was freaking blown away. He was just like; I've never seen or heard anybody that has an actual structure or framework. And I got the offer the next day. Wow, I don't say that because I'm smarter or any better, I'm telling you have a framework. You're going to sound smarter than 98% of the world immediately. And mean, I could use all the help I could get. So, there you go.
Mark Shriner [33:52]
Well, no, that's awesome. I love the 5F and I totally agree that you should have a structure. Whether it's you're an individual producer or you're leading a team, you need to have a process of structure to it. I've written a couple books as well, and the people ask, well, why would you write a book? Nobody, nobody, nobody makes any money from books. And part of my answer is, I have all these ideas that I've used from time to time in a kind of an ad hoc fashion, and I wanted to put some structure around the ideas, because, and then, and then also, so I wouldn't forget. Because sometimes you're like, oh, why didn't I think about that? Because just putting everything down, pen to paper is really important, and it's interestingly enough, part of my first book was also about having fun on an individual basis. I said it was the how to become a top performing salesperson and enjoy every step of the way. Because if you're enjoying something, you're going to do it more often, you're going to do it more often, you're going to get better at it. And guess what happens when you get better at it? It becomes fun, right? So totally with you. But that was more on the on the individual side. When. Come to the team side. What are some things that a leader can do to create that culture of fun?
Todd Caponi [35:07]
Well, It's funny. I have a model for that too, okay, but I call it
Mark Shriner [35:12]
Models nested in models, nested in models.
Todd Caponi [35:16]
Right? And I try to make them as alliterative as possible, because, again, I'm not that smart, but I call it the praise model. But essentially, there's six things that drive us intrinsically, to show up, stay, do our best, and advocate and so praise is simply number one is predictability, right? We do our best work when we can predict, sure, when there's consistency, when we go to bed at night, we know what we're getting ourselves into the next day that's on a macro level, organizations can and should be doing a better job of helping their teams predict. But as a leader, are you consistent? Are you helping your team and the individuals within it know what's coming right? The R then is recognition. We do our best work when we're recognized for our efforts, when there's validation status feedback, where you know, we do all this work, do people see it? Right? You don't see it? Then, like that's disengages the A is then the aim of our work? Meaning, what is the aim, or the mission or the purpose of my work, is it to hit a quota, or is this actually making an impact on our customers and their customers? If you can create an environment where your team members know that what they're doing is helping customers, customers, and I can go on and on about examples of this that have taken turnover down to almost zero in organizations just by flipping the switch that your purpose in life is not hitting the quota. Your purpose is to help your customers, customers achieve optimal.
Mark Shriner [36:50]
That's just such an amazingly different conversation than most companies have, because it's all about the quota. You know, it's all about the quota, which takes you whole, the whole mindset away from serving, right? I mean, it's just going in the right wrong direction there Exactly.
Todd Caponi [37:03]
That's exactly right. The I is independence, meaning we do our best work when we're trusted, when we're given the resources and latitude to do our best work with minimal oversight, right? The opposite of that, of course, is micromanagement. And then the S is security or safety, meaning we do our best work when we're part of a pack, when we feel like we're part of a family, like we feel like there's no knife or hatchet swinging behind our head, right, creating environments where we're all in this together. We're part of a family or a pack, and then the E is equitability, meaning, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is it fair? Is there politics like politics, are the quickest way to erode engagement and intrinsic inspiration, where somebody is getting paid more or getting, you know, more of those other elements, more recognition, more of those types of things than me doing the same level of work and getting the same results right. So, the lack of politics is big. So, predictability, recognition, aim, independence, security, equitability, if you can just write those six down, have my little sticky pad on your monitor and look for ways to optimize each one of those do create a culture where you're going to love to work there too.
Mark Shriner [38:21]
That is awesome. I again, agree with all of this. I've always said, though, that salespeople are motivated by recognition, autonomy and or compensation, or a mix of those three. And I was waiting for you to say compensation something to you know, but I think it's it comes in with the last one, the equitability, because study after study shows that most people, they don't they're not concerned necessarily bottom line how much they're making. They want to be treated equity, equally, equitably others, right? And so, if you find out that, hey, you know what, I'm not making exactly what I wanted to, but we're all making roughly about the same, it's okay. But if I find out that, you know, Todd's making three times everybody else, and it doesn't seem like he's doing, then it's not fair, and then all of a sudden I'm not happy.
Todd Caponi [39:15]
Exactly. And I'll tell you the when you think about compensation, compensation comes in the form of, you know, extrinsic dollars, yeah, but the intrinsic pieces of those other five too, meaning, you know, again, if your aim matters and you freaking love what you do and the impact you're having, you don't care how much you get paid, right? So, as those other ones go higher, the need for the extrinsic goes down, and that's all part of the balance. If you're missing any of those six completely, you're going to have a tough time. So, you've got to make sure you've got all six of those. And the way you balance those again, like somebody says, hey, hey, Mark, come over to my house and we're going to grab some shovels. We're going to dig some holes in the backyard. You're going. Be like, no. Like, hey, Mark, I'm going to pay you $10,000 for every hole you build. You're going to be like, where's the show? Right, right. Like, obviously extrinsic motivation matters, but it's not sustainable. If you want to create a sticky environment where not only your team stays, but they're going to parties talking about how great it is, and, hey, we got jobs open. You should come. That's when you've got all of those things balanced and extrinsic becomes the reward for doing work you love to do, and not the reason you do it.
Mark Shriner [40:33]
I That's all that's awesome. I know that you do various sales workshops, and I'm wondering, can you explain a little bit about the format? I mean, do you do them on site? Are they virtual? Do you do follow up coaching sessions? Do you coach individual producers or individual leaders? This is your chance to
Todd Caponi [40:53]
Yeah! So, I'll tell you what I don't do is I don't really dig the one-on-one consulting like I tried it, like when I wrote the books, I was like, I'm going to try all these things. And the consulting really my jam. So, my primary business is focused on workshops. So, on the individual contributor side, I teach that foundation of decision science, right? We know how people engage, prioritize and trigger purchase decisions. Let's learn that and then apply it for good, not evil, to your messaging, your positioning, your presenting, like how you tell a story. And then the most popular program I teach is negotiating. I teach something called transparent negotiating, which might be the subject of another book coming soon. But so, I do teach workshops a lot on site. I do a lot virtually. Those are typically like the way that I've designed them. Being a former multi time CRO myself, if this takes you two days, three days, to learn it six months from now, you never going to use it. And so, I've tried to design these to be head slapping, like, course, that's how I think that's how I do it, and then immediately actionable. So, I give you things that you can go use that afternoon, the virtual or the in-person ones do the workshop, and then there is a reinforcement that happens a few weeks later that just kind of sparks those neurons again. And we do a Q and A everybody has homework, so we make it as optimized for the way we learn in action as possible. That's on the sales side, the leadership side, I do a series of leadership programs that teach the five F's, and then we optimize each one. So, I just signed a client a couple this was yesterday that we're going to do all we're going to do six virtual programs two weeks apart, where they learn the framework, get some homework, try it. Learn a piece. Get some homework, try it. And then at the end, there's a reinforcement. At the end, they get to record all of it. This will all be virtual, so they can make it an internal trading asset for themselves too. And by the way, the side note is, I do a lot of keynotes. I've already got eight kickoffs scheduled, so we're recording this beginning of December. My schedule from January 7 through the middle of February is bananas, but I love doing the speeches and the keynotes really talking about the power of transparency and turning that into your superpower.
Mark Shriner [43:20]
Awesome. Love it. Hey. Gotta ask you one more question, because, you know, you've got the 115 year old phone behind you. There you have these 100-year-old sale book, sales books. But technology is just, you know, it becomes increasingly important in terms of some of the tools that salespeople use. And I'm not talking about CRMs, I'm talking about sales enablement and prospecting and some of these other kind of tools. I mean, you got tools that will listen to, you know, your zoom calls, and then tell you, here's what you have to do. And by the way, you need to make more eye contact, all kinds of kind of creepy stuff. What tools do you use? Or are you most impressed with?
Todd Caponi [44:04]
Well, I'll tell you, the phone, part of the reason I have this 1908 phone behind me is the phone was arguably the greatest gift ever given to the sales professional. Right? Alexander Grahambell, the notorious AGB, in 1876 made the first phone call. By the 1910s you started seeing cold calling start to happen. So, I've got scripts from 1910, 1912, 1914, the first ones I've been able to find sales at the time, was trusted, was respected, it was almost admired. In 1916 they had the first big sales conference of all time. It took place in Detroit, attended by 3000 people. It's called the world sales Congress. Their keynote speaker was then sitting president. Woodrow Wilson, wow, then sitting president, speaking at a sales conference as the rest of the world is getting into World War One, because they viewed sales as being an important opportunity for us to establish ourselves as a world superpower, right where the rest of the world's fighting when we do right by our customers, sell the right solution to the right people at the right time, at the right price, we lift all boats, and we all win from that. The early 1910s sales was taught at every college, like every university. It was actually taught in high schools in the 19 Wow. And then it went away. Why? Because I believe technology ruined it, right? Like we took this great gift, and we ruined it. We needed technology built to help prevent salespeople from using it with caller ID, and you know, all of that didn't work. We needed the Do Not Call Registry, which in 2021 had 221 million phone numbers on it, like AGB would be rolling over knowing that we ruined it. We did the exact same thing with email, an incredible gift. Needed technology to help block it didn't work. We needed the canned spam act. We did the same. We started to do the same thing with video. I see us doing the same thing with AI. My point being that technology is good when used through the lens of service. How do we deploy technology to do a better job of being able to help our customers and their customers achieve optimal outcomes. Any technology through that lens is good, but again, we tend to ruin things. And again, I probably got 10 emails in my inbox right now that are AI generated that make me want to go cry myself to sleep. I think with all of these technologies, AI for me has been really, really valuable in helping me prepare for helping me understand the lens of what my customers are. Customers think when they first engage with a potential customer. It's saving me time. It's doing a lot of my homework for me so that I can become optimized, and I'm only doing it through the lens of service to my customers. And so, for anything that you're thinking of the minute the dirty word scale enters your brain, you're doing it wrong. We got to take a step back. And so, there's so many technologies out there that can help us service more customers more optimally and use our time more valuably. But that word scale, man, got to get rid of it.
Mark Shriner [47:23]
That is awesome. And, yeah, use them as agents of good, right? Just exactly, yeah, that's awesome. Well, hey, Todd, you know your knowledge and enthusiasm for sales is contagious. I'm actually written down a couple book titles, and I'm going to go and look at your blog and find, find the other ones. And yeah, I just want to say it learned a lot, and I really appreciate you coming on The Grow Fast Podcast.
Todd Caponi [47:53]
yeah. And if the sales history podcast is out there for anybody, it's just a monolog where I research a topic and then I just teach you about it for 12 to 20 minutes. No guests on that one. So if you're a nerd for the sales history stuff, scroll through that. There might be a topic podcast.
Mark Shriner [48:07]
The other thing I was going to ask you is, if people wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that?
Todd Caponi [48:12]
The website, toddcaponi.com, you can find me on LinkedIn. I share a lot of my nonsense there, but either one, I'm pretty easy to find. I think.
Mark Shriner [48:22]
I will put links in the show notes. And again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Todd Caponi [48:26]
All right. Mark, thanks for having me. Cheers.
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