Hunter Harris: Hey everybody and welcome to Build & Break Through. I'm your host, Hunter Harris of Hunter Software Consulting. With me today is James Hayden. He's a fractional CRO go-to-market strategist with over one billion in revenue generated. James, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit? James Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. Hunter, great to be here. And really exciting times in. I've from from a business perspective, amazing opportunities that are sitting right in front of us right now. It's I think incredible time. So I have worked with ⁓ over 140 different companies in my career. Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: ⁓ advising. I was an employee for a a few of the companies. it's all about revenue generation generally leading of people, but I work on a on a go-to-market approach and tools we have today, mean we certainly could talk about it if you'd like in terms of AI and just the technology is incredible, amazing. Hunter Harris: We will. James Hayden: changing all the time. a lot of the work I'm doing is adapting, taking the strategy of a company and then adapting it to what they need to do to to increase their sales, especially when they're stuck and there are a few different components to that. ⁓ But technology is a big one. If I had if I had the tools have available today when I was beginning my career, it it would have been I would not have believed it. It's it it's ⁓ absolutely incredible times. So yeah, 140 companies I've worked with. my one the big shifts I had was I had stumbled a methodology or an approach of generating revenue after years of kind of intuitively knowing how to how to generate revenue, how to work with teams and get everybody spun up to focus on revenue. And stumbled it in a big presentation to ⁓ to Hewlett-Packard. And I matched with a sales ⁓ training organization had the same It would have saved me 17 years of stumbling had I had I discovered that early on. And So the the founder of that organization, I we wrote a book called Real World Selling, the Art of the Selling Conversation, published in thirteen and then republished it in The world had changed a little bit in that ten year span in terms of calling and picking up the phone and doing like that. And some significant things occurred, like tech Hunter Harris: Yeah. James Hayden: the revenue coming through direct sales in 2013 was about 70 percent direct sales by 2023. It had shifted to 70 through sales or partners and about 30 ⁓ through direct And organizations like Microsoft have about 95 of the revenue going through channel partners, so some big changes. Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: And so a lot of the work I've done with with organizations getting them off the ground is on the partnership side. But of course, to be able to do that, you need to understand the you know the benefits of what the company is bringing to the market, the product to market fit. so you really have to know a lot more than your partners. And then there's a there's an approach to get partners, the right partners on board to actually get them onboarded and then to to monitor their progress. Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. So I guess jumping in a bit about that methodology, can you give us kind of like the ten thousand foot view of what that sales methodology looks like and how it works? James Hayden: Sure. The the original sales methodology, and I'll I'll jump into the story. So I was working with a small CRM, ⁓ coincidentally, consulting We competed against firms like PWC and Accenture and others. and Hewlett Packard was off or starting a new business. We were at the point where, you know, I'd gone through the s ⁓ process of understanding all the decision makers, what the roles were, the name of their cats, dogs, ⁓ birthdays, you know, all the ritual binding you go through. And were people people I developed a relationship with. It was a big, big opportunity for this little consulting group I was with. And we'd up till two AM in the morning. Preparing this presentation, you know, we had, thank goodness we had some detailed people who put, you know, gold looking paper clips on the leave behinds, and everything was absolutely stunning and perfect. And we came to the presentation, typical of the sales or revenue generation side of things. I opened opened the presentation, and then the was mine, and the the the middle was the CTO and the COO of our. Of our business. So it got to the point where we're about to wrap up. I had eight slides on all the reasons Hewlett Packard should choose our firm. And closed my laptop, just closed down, and I st and I said, Look, I know each one of you around the table. And this is a hero what I'd call a hero or zero project, where this could make your career successful. So it's really important you choose the right partner. I've got I I've got eight eight slides on all the reasons you should do business with us. The real important point right now is I'm I'm gonna ask you, because this doesn't matter. I could tell you all the reasons. Why would you do business with us? typical of the detail oriented people in in on my the CTO and the COO, one of them kicking, kicking me under the table, going, Yeah, you're off script, right? And 30 seconds it seemed like 30 years of silence. And was an issue that they brought up on an to throw out some tech terms. And they were concerned had any experience with it. The CTO said we did that with Toyota three months ago, and here's what happened. So the the interesting about the psychology ⁓ is it's push, push, pull, right? ⁓ Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: we seek that I I think ⁓ it was an ancient Greek philosopher said that we seek what retreats from us and we retreat what seeks us. You know, it's push push pull. So I pulled back naturally, it was just an instinct. And the the thing is that question was answered. That could have killed killed the entire presentation, the entire project had they sat on that. And then ⁓ Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: The the psychology behind that was they began just talking, talking, talking about how nimble we were and how we they knew they'd get more attention from us rather than the big firms. so it turned into a love fest. And this was on a Thursday, the next Tuesday in my email, boom, five million dollar agreement with with HP. So what what I learned ⁓ and Hunter Harris: Love it. James Hayden: My my approach is people ask me, you know, what what's the biggest sale? What's the greatest sale you've ever had? And sounds bit pedantic, but I ⁓ I tell I've never sold anything to anybody. I have a process and a system of moving moving prospective clients through ⁓ a process see if they're qualified or not qualified to buy our services. And if they're not. They move out of the pipeline. If they are, we structure agreements at each stage of of the pipeline to ensure they're qualified and to ensure we're the right fit for that company. I know that's a mouthful, but it's it's I think it's important. You know, the the I've been involved in and have been many, many. everybody's trying to figure out the silver bullet on sales people and and revenue Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: a couple a couple of the studies actually show that introverts are a bit more successful than extroverts. And everybody thinks salespeople, you know, it's the gift of the gab and all that. one the most successful sales methodologies in our country is called the sales, Sandler Sales Institute, and started by an and he ⁓ would get Hunter Harris: Course. James Hayden: nervous and shaky before presentations. So he just found a way to ask a lot of questions. And so introverts are more successful? They follow a process, they ask questions, and they know when to shut up. And I mean really that's that's important. I'm not saying an extrovert can't be successful. It's a minor, minor difference. But that's those are some of the things we've discovered in the methodology. We've Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Of course. James Hayden: I've built additional methodologies around selecting recruiting, onboarding, optimizing when they come on board too. But a lot of it's it's different emphasis and a different approach with channel ⁓ or partner Most of them they can't they can't drive revenue themselves, it's their partners. And I mean, to a certain extent that's true, but they need to understand. what buyer signals are to train those organizations. So anyway, that's that's the approach. Hunter Harris: Yeah. is very interesting because one of the recurring themes that I find when I talk to really successful salespeople is there there essentially there's like there's probably more than two camps of sales, but I see a bifurcation largely where there's people that are thinking like sales is about convincing people to do something, like ⁓ beg, threaten, blackmail, whatever you gotta do to get them to sign on the dotted line, right? And know, that's of like your classic car salesman kind of way, right? And then on the flip side, have people that are more focused on the customer. They ask questions, they learn to your point about Can this person pay for it? Does our solution move the needle for this person at all whatsoever? Like if they were to buy, they get value out of that? James Hayden: It is. Hunter Harris: To a point where they feel like they're getting a good deal too, right? Because mean, if if you manage to get someone to sign on the dotted line and then they're like, wow, this was a huge mistake, they will not want to do business with you forever. on the other hand, if you're you ⁓ negotiate sale with somebody and they're like, Holy crap, we bought this thing for five million and it delivered an easy fifty-five million dollars worth of value. James Hayden: Yeah. Hunter Harris: That's what business is all about, right? Like you're clearly winning because you're selling at a a profit, whatever you're selling. I'm sure f the five million dollars for the HP thing was a nice win for y'all, but at the same time, it was a win for them as well because of the value that you and your company had. So it's a bifurcation about like a focus on self for one camp and a focus on the customer for the other. And man, I really appreach the focus on the customer across the board. James Hayden: Absolutely. Hunter Harris: so ⁓ guess building up on top of this, you kind of alluded to this a little bit too. ⁓ one of the things that ⁓ understand that you focus on based on your website and based on our previous conversation is helping people build scalable processes. It sounds like a big part of that process is that qualification and continued qualification. But is that there is to it? James Hayden: Yes. Hunter Harris: If I I am just a guy, right? If I wanted to start building a scalable sales process, what does that look for me as I grow, as my company grows, et cetera? James Hayden: At yeah, at a high level and this sounds so easy and it's difficult. It's finding ⁓ the right person at the right time with the right message, right? That's ultimately, ultimately what it's about. what's super important in in it, it's it's targeting the right customers. And I'm I'm working with a company right now that's a Hunter Harris: Simple but not easy, right? Course. James Hayden: One of the companies is a building management software company. Amazing solution. nothing nothing like it in in the industry. And it's really ⁓ a mean a very, very small, ⁓ small company that's ramping right now. And so it Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: I you know, I'd have to say it's it's a systems it's a systems approach. There's a lot of different elements to it. I've got about a hundred and forty point checklist that I use with clients based on based on my own experience. I mean the the biggest thing is to find find the product product to market fit, right? Where where does it fit? And then what I've done over the last few years ⁓ what it Hunter Harris: ⁓ wow. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: what your life is now. So what's your life like before hunter software consulting? And then what's your life like after? So paint that picture for somebody. then I following and and this is now science too in in terms of building markets, but also just in terms of of the way humans, we are herd animals, the way we ⁓ adapt adopt Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Very much so. James Hayden: So you're not going to get your product off the ground if you don't get to early adopters and innovators first. Then you can move to ⁓ to an early mass market, late mass market, and laggards, right? If you're messaging exactly. Yep, product adoption lifecycle. And the books that backed it up and significant research has been done on it is the tipping point. Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's that whole graph of the population, right? James Hayden: And that was Malcolm Gladwell. And then the one I latched onto, which is Jeffrey Moore's book, Crossing the Chasm. it's, you know, how do you how do you figure that out? So there's a fair amount of research that's done up front. And then really cool now is I don't if you've used them, but building an ideal customer profile for for an organization. So ⁓ once you build the and I I'd suggest, I'd suggest Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: just really segmenting it by and and focusing on who those early tip typical early adopters and innovators are in whatever vertical markets you're going after. You can get to that. It takes a little bit of work and it's worth every every hour you put into it. so so going after them with a with a ICP or ideal customer profile, you you can some sales intelligence tools that are out there Hunter Harris: Absolutely. James Hayden: Than to go, here's what my ideal customer looks like company wise, could be a vertical market, or it will suggest other vertical markets. Maybe you weren't thinking of the personas within the organization, because within of the sales, I focus on B2B. It's it's there multiple personas. I mean, one easy one I wrote about, and it's in strategic selling is. Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. James Hayden: There's always an economic buyer, user buyer, technical buyer, and a coach. ⁓ of those bases need to be covered. And they're like different if you will. you can a dog whistle. ⁓ Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Can you run through those real quick? I'm familiar with the economic buyer, for example, but ⁓ in particular cluster, for example, you mentioned coach, and that's not a persona that I'm familiar with in terms of like a sales motion. So ⁓ can you give us a just a brief taxonomy there? James Hayden: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I'll I'll I'll go through this quickly. So economic buyer, that's the easy one to understand. That's the person that signs the check, ultimately, right? I don't use checks anymore. Maybe they sign the NFT, whatever it is. But the Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. They ⁓ there's ⁓ the some signature on some virtual dotted line somewhere and that's that guy. James Hayden: Right. That that person. the user buyer is person within the organization ⁓ that the greatest benefit from from that. Their their team receives ⁓ that They're going to be the ones that primarily use it. Technical buyer, in a lot of cases, you know, we work around tech a lot, would be the person that looks at the particular solution and goes, Yes, it has integrity. It does exactly what Hunter Harris: ⁓ okay. Makes sense. James Hayden: It says it's going to do. And then a coach could be one of those other personas or one of the other roles. There's a personal win in it for them to your solution. So I call them a chauffeur too. They chauffeur you around the organization. You've identified that. I'll give you a quick example. I was working with one of the the Daimler-Benz subsidiaries here in the United States, and Hunter Harris: Yeah. James Hayden: We were working on some initiatives that improved the sales or improved the market share of their company. And after a couple of years of of working with this person, he became a coach and the organization referred me on to other people. And by the way, that's the reason as you talked about earlier. the biggest source I have ⁓ of leads moving to different companies has been referral business. So it's ⁓ super, super to ⁓ Hunter Harris: Of course. James Hayden: Do your best, get that five million to fifty five million dollar return that you mentioned. Super important to to to ⁓ Hunter Harris: I mean, why deal with calling people and cold emailing when you've got a hot to warm lead already inside of an organization, right? James Hayden: And I love cold calling. I do. do. I love it. 'Cause ⁓ get to you get to learn some new things. I mean that's we're all wired a little bit differently in that regard. But ⁓ Absolutely. Hunter Harris: Of course. I mean that's how you bill your network some too, I imagine. But why not go after the warmest leads that you've already spent time developing, right? James Hayden: So this there there's an emotional reason. Everybody has a reason for buying. And you can there are variations, but people buy for love or for fear, right? Fear is I lose my job. Love is I'm gonna get a promotion. My family's gonna think I'm the greatest person ever. I'm gonna be revered and seen and I'm gonna get a million views on Instagram, whatever it is, right? So Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: Those are the two basic reasons. This this client I mentioned at Daimler Benz, it got to the point where we worked on these initiatives and I come to his house, his wife would be involved some of the time, I'd bring a dinner in, and we'd sit down and we'd we'd calculate ⁓ out these and what we were going to do. And got to point where he was comfortable enough with me where he would show me if we do this. Hunter Harris: Mm. James Hayden: This is the impact on my bonus that I'll get next year. If we do this, then a different bonus. That doesn't happen all the time. But if you can get to that point, it it's it's really, really important to understand that what I call the ERB or the emotional reason for buying, a consumer has too, or a a customer has rather. So, you know, that's that's part of the methodology. It's it's in the book and on Audible Hunter Harris: I did not. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: and all that as well. so there's there's I mean there's a lot of ground to cover if you know if if I could say one thing for people in sales, have a system and and always be working towards even if it's a one-person shop, I really recommend that the founders of the company journal. Like have kind of journaling you're doing with your keyboarding or whatever. ⁓ Like this where I am, this is where I'm stuck. Hunter Harris: Absolutely. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: My my dad was a brilliant engineer. And one of the things he did is he would let go areas where he's stuck. He'd write it down and he'd trust his mind to to work on it. And there is a magic, there is a certain magic to to that when we get stuck on things, but also journaling and writing down what you're stuck on forces a systematic approach to your business. And what I mean by that is you grow your business. One of the biggest issues I I face with companies is founder-led sales, where you know the founder's done all the experimentation, they've found a way to build a market, to hit those emotional reasons for buying. They've the right product to market fit. They've done all of that. And then they go to hire a salesperson. The salesperson is unsuccessful because they can't tell them what they do. There's no structure or process to it. So ⁓ Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: Part of of that scalable, repeatable process for a company, and and this is where I see many companies stuck, it's when they they hit that level where they're about to hire the first salesperson is give give them something to operate from. If they have to go through the same trial and error as you, yeah, it's it's likely they're gonna be gone and you're gonna be impatient with them because they're not succeeding. So that's the way to build a business. It's so, so important. And Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. James Hayden: We you know, I think we we all fight process, especially in early stage companies. it's critical to your growth to keep track of that because you can start to refine it and start to see some of the the areas of improvement as well. Hunter Harris: On that note, one thing that I always say is most of the places that are like low process, they're not actually low process. They just have a lot of different processes. So pretty typically, like you'll, you know, you'll scale up your engineering team or your sales team or your marketing team, and you're like, Yeah, we're low process. And it just turns out your process is individual to each individual. And some are successful and some are not, and there's no effort to You know, shake through that and figure out, hey, these ingredients work and these ingredients don't. Let's keep this, let's throw that out. Because to your point, exactly, like especially earlier stage companies, it feels bad to have some of that systemization. And over-systemization, emphasis on over-systemization is a problem that occurs when you're systemizing for the sake of systemization. That is a legitimate threat in terms of velocity for all these functions. But if you have zero process, you're just gonna go slow because you don't know what you're doing. did want to go back to one thing that you were talking about earlier in terms of scalable sales processes. You mentioned part of kind of the basis here is product market fit. How should founders be thinking about using sales to strive towards product market fit? Because one thing that I've noticed in a lot of cases is, first of all, You know, product market fit is an important milestone to reach on your journey, but product market fit is an ever-evolving, ever-changing target. It's not a static thing. So I see a lot of companies that hit product market fit and then slip back out of it due to complacency. The ⁓ given that sales is interacting with customers all the time, they have unique insight into that. So how can founders really tap into that, both in terms of their sales teams and their individual sales efforts? James Hayden: Hunter, you pretty much answered the question. yeah, it's it's it's super I mean this is this is a big failing I see in in companies is ⁓ like ⁓ look look how fast things are changing now like it's it takes lot of discipline to keep up on the latest advancements and pick pick your area like mine is Hunter Harris: Yeah. It's scary. James Hayden: revenue generation and the impact of AI on that and what AI can do and where's the where's the handoff between a human and or a AI and a human, right? So our products are changing so rapidly and the the listening post or the the most valid listening post to the market is going to be your salespeople. mean it could it could be customer support depending if the organization's large enough. Yeah. ⁓ but it's the the integration ⁓ different functional areas is so important. I run into a lot of organizations too that they see themselves three different They have three businesses and none are none are connected. So the Hunter Harris: I mean they should be in the mix for sure, right? James Hayden: And and I'll come back to that in a second, but product to sales is so important. And and marketing should be involved in that in terms of the messaging. and just in terms of the way things are changing in the in the marketplace, it's never been more important than it is today. one of the organizations I've worked with, I I with on cleaning up their reporting because I salespeople are notorious for Hunter Harris: Incredibly important. James Hayden: keeping up the the CRMs and and that. And I mean that's a critical it really is. That's that's a critical piece of that intelligence we need to run companies. So if Hunter Harris: Classic, right? Mm-hmm. If you don't have data, you can't act on it, right? James Hayden: Hundred percent. so operations will be over here. And it's like, hold it. We're a month out before delivery. I don't have anybody to cover this new ⁓ Or finance like, well, I've got my budget, but the expected value of my pipeline says this. How how do know that that's valid? So, you know, there's a lot of tricks, not tricks, but there's a of objective criteria that needs to be built and and the pe ⁓ all those different parts of the organization need to connect. You'll have a more successful organization. Sometimes it's a it's a force fit within organizations where we we had it's a terrible sounding name one of the organizations I worked with we brought several groups together and one of people on the team called it SMOPs which is sales marketing operations. And we would meet every week because it's significant that we're that connected. And we didn't have financial different part of the business. We did we met with them on on different occasions. But yeah, it's as an organization grows, it's really, really important that for everybody to be connected. Other otherwise you're gonna have delivery issues, you'll have financial issues across the board. Hunter Harris: Absolutely. I've seen something similar actually, taking even further, sales, marketing, operations, product and engineering all together, especially when you're the for with some of the companies I've worked with in the past, trying to land really big enterprise deals, the value of getting that whole ⁓ software value in a given room so that from end to end like marketing and have some idea of what the engineers are building. James Hayden: No. Hunter Harris: engineers have some idea of sales and marketing's needs to actually close the deal. It's incredibly important and incredibly impactful when you can get all that lined up together and in the same room. That's my opinion, that's really how you get like the real ⁓ out of organizations. Speed is one thing, but when you can get everybody marching together rapidly, it's incredible. James Hayden: Well and and having having a common vision and focal point ⁓ is incredible. One of one of the one of the organizations, a larger organization, and and I'll put it out there because we all know it, Nvidia and Jensen is he's done an incredible job of getting everybody behind the the vision of that company. I'm based in Seattle, so I and I worked at Microsoft in the past. So Hunter Harris: Exactly. Mm-hmm. James Hayden: One of the things I saw at Microsoft, and it was an incredible place to be, was and Bill Gates, and John John Shirley, who was the first president of Microsoft, painted this vision that we're changing the way the world creates ⁓ or communicates, and we're all we're all part of that. And and then what it boiled down to what what their tagline was was we're about a PC on every desktop. Now you're part of that. There's question with with what you do and what you're involved in and doing. And you know, that's ⁓ why that's I could I could leave at seven o'clock at night and I'd find somebody, you know, putting a cot under their desk. They were, you know, they were gonna sleep for a couple hours and get back at it. And it created that incredible vision that people were so motivated. Hunter Harris: Mm-hmm. In in a literal sense, living the dream, right? ⁓ Well James, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for coming on. Do you want to plug your James Hayden: Yeah. Hunter Harris: pluggables, James Hayden: My website is James as boy. Hayden A Y D E N dot com. all of my information's on there. I do happy to conversations with with organizations that are stuck on revenue generation. I do free thirty minute diagnostic regularly and there's no obligation. You know, we we can all learn from each other, but you know, there may be some insights I have from 40 years and and a lot in AI now that would benefit an organization. I've got a book, it's it's on Audible. I post pretty regularly and I'm on Instagram, LinkedIn, I'm trying TikTok. ⁓ We'll see how that goes. ⁓ and on on threads. So you can keep an eye out there. feel free to link in. Hunter Harris: Yeah, shoot me a link to ⁓ have your LinkedIn, but shoot me a link to your Instagram, ⁓ et cetera. And I'll make sure there's links to all this stuff in the show notes. But again, you very much for coming. This has been fantastic. ⁓ I talking about sales, I love talking about the customer, I love talking about helping businesses move faster, and this has been exactly that. And for everyone viewing, thank you very much for joining us. I hope that you've enjoyed this as much as I have. This has been fantastic and inspirational to me. And I hope all of you out there have a fantastic day. Peace. James Hayden: You honored to be here.