Speaker 1: 0:00

And I thought why am I just doing it myself? Dad, tax agents. I did a deal with dad all mixed work and away we go, and I realized that I hadn't done a tax work in like 10 years at this stage. But I knew this company, this GPS, and around this time I'd started a podcast I was probably podcasting for the accounting industry called From the Trenches. It was sort of accountants don't always put their opinions loud and out in the world.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. You might be a salesperson, you could lead a sales team, maybe run a business, or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win, but we'll learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode we bring you some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses. Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and press that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople and the best salespeople are always learning. So let's jump in. Welcome everyone to another show of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:40

I'm Dan Bartels. It's been a while since we've done a show so we've been a little bit remiss. So apologies to everyone out, and I've got to give a big shout out to Ben Turner, who I was on a Metro train with the other day and he gave me a prod and said mate, when's the next show coming out? I can't wait to see the next one. Ben mate, thank you so much for giving us the prod to get back on the mics. Simon, mate, it's been too long. How you been, buddy, it's been months I've been really well.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Yeah, Since we've done a podcast, I've started a new job and I'm actually now working in Chatswood, so I live about two kilometers from where my office is. So it's a bit of a change not crossing the bridge, but it's all good Loving it.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Absolutely, and we've got a great guest on today. Absolutely, mate, do you want to do an?

Speaker 2: 2:23

intro. Welcome to the show. Yeah, I'd like to welcome everybody to David Boyer, who I met probably July of last year when I joined the Access Group. David has a really interesting background and I thought he'd be a fantastic guest for us today. He's pretty much done everything from being a CFO to running a business for CFOs. He's an accountant, he's been part of a startup, he's been acquired. He's a sales guy at heart, but he understands accounting, which is probably a rare breed. So, david, welcome to the Growth Pulse podcast. Mate, lovely to have you on.

Speaker 1: 2:58

It's great to be here and I figure, if I'm the first guest after somebody stopped you in the street and said when's the next show, then I like to think I'm here by popular demand 100%, mate.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Look, we're here by a little bit of popular demand but we're excited to have you on the show, my friend, Absolutely. You know, Simon, listening to that intro, listening to a sales career sales guy intro on accounting, makes me think that accounting is going to absolutely kill me for talking about sales the last thing the accountant wants to talk about aren't?

Speaker 2: 3:28

yeah, actually I'll jump right in. Aren't accountants sales people at heart as well? Aren't we all sales people?

Speaker 1: 3:33

I really their service, but hard. If the service is right, they're more than happy to engage and have a conversation. I love it. I love it, but they're not salesled people. The sales part controllable opportunities, demand generation completely outside the mental understanding, ethical attitude and soul of an account.

Speaker 2: 3:56

Thank goodness for that.

Speaker 1: 3:57

I reckon that's a really good place for us to start, dave, because my father's a lawyer, right, and I've always, as I've been engaged in looking at his business and I've been engaged in looking at his business and I've been sitting in a dentist chair and all these service professionals you'd think, hey, they've got to run these organizations, these businesses. They're trying to grow, they're trying to suit the family, et cetera. How do you think about growing a business when you're that cop Working for software companies? We think we're service-focused, right, and we all talk about trust and we build customer success organizations, et cetera, that are all meant to be focused on the outcomes for the customer. And I think there's like there's this really hard balance for organizations to truly live that and walk that every day to hey, how do I drive a growing organization? So I reckon that's a great place for us to start, which is like flip the lid for an organization that fundamentally and almost ethically believes it's about that service piece. How do you then think about growing the revenue stream of your business?

Speaker 1: 4:52

And I lean back into a story I was told many, many years ago about a grisly old accountant that had well, it was a partner at a big practice and the junior partners would come in and talk about I've signed some new clients and I've got a whole bunch of bookings or billings to happen. And this grizzly old accountant would say, mate, I only really care about one thing, just cash out bank. And you know, because I could have done the work and I could have built it, but until the customer's paid the invoice, it doesn't matter. Well, and that explains why accountants don't care about things like pipeline and demand gen.

Speaker 1: 5:21

Because pipeline and demand gen, because pipeline and demand gen are those early lead indicators and it just doesn't matter. What they're more interested in is Simon. You know what your accountant should be talking to you about. Simon, you just got a new role. Presumably you've had a change in your financial circumstances. Maybe you've had a few months where you weren't working in between roles. How's things, How's the family? And from there a conversation ends up being about Simon's goals, his ambitions, where he wants to be in 10 years, and an accountant's approach to sales isn't thinking about sales, it's thinking about what do I need to get this guy so that he can get to where?

Speaker 1: 5:54

he wants to be and then the services come out, which is very different to a sales-led software company.

Speaker 1: 6:01

We quite literally have weekly we have two weekly sales meetings.

Speaker 1: 6:07

So, like I promise you, accountants have daily stand-ups about what we can do and I don't have daily stand-ups talking about what opportunities do we have on the pipeline.

Speaker 1: 6:16

That's not to say that accounting firms don't grow they they do and many of them want to. But they are also constrained by the fact that demand for account of us as far exceeds the number of accounting firms that we have and, unlike software or widgets or spacely sprockets, there's a limited amount of hours that can be, that can be delivered. So accountants have changed their business models to not necessarily sell by the hour, although that's that's a basis for working out how much things have cost. But they'll start to think about how do clients get out of the advice that they get and maybe start to change their revenue model according to that. It was interesting you made the comment putting accountants, dentists and lawyers in the same bucket. I think that accountants are different. Dentists aren't selling services anymore, they are selling products and we know this because, um, the medicare rebates yeah when you get your invoice from your dentist, it doesn't have a service on it.

Speaker 1: 7:12

It's line items of service that are refunded government and because of that you will see dentists advertising a lot more than you see lawyers and doctors sorry, lawyers and lawyers and accounting for lawyers to advertise, I don't know. I remember in better call saul he advertised and he was like the shame of the whole program. Yeah, but you'll see allied health advertise and spend a lot more on digital ads than you'll see lawyers and accounting.

Speaker 2: 7:35

So, david, just to get the audience on the same page, you haven't always been in software sales no very, very fairly recently, right? So tell us a little bit about your journey. Obviously, you've gone to university. You've clearly become a CFO relatively quickly in your career. Tell us a little bit about that journey and then I want to, after you go through that I want to talk to, because a lot of our audience are software sales professionals and they sell to your persona. So I'm just keen to understand where you've got to. How did you get here?

Speaker 1: 8:07

Without being too indulgent. It was a little like you know you have all these key memories in your life that for some reason are not everything else around it, which is probably equally as important that VCE results. It was 2000, so VCE results were printed in the Herald Sun. Gage and me and my friends went to 7-Eleven on Hawthorne Road in Hawfield and we all got the papers and we all found out our results together and the people who knew they weren't going to do well weren't there, but they're like a couple of hundred kids from our school trying to get their results and I got a pretty good mark somewhere in the nineties and I got a good enough mark to do whatever I wanted and I wanted to do accounting. I wanted to do accounting because my father ran a great accounting practice and I loved. He was every school thing I ever did. It was every sports game I ever played Adelaide. Despite how bad I was, he still came and I said this is a great life and I'd hear this about the clients. I thought this is going to be awesome. This is what I want to do Immediately getting the results and downing a large slurpee.

Speaker 1: 9:02

He went to cricket nets, which I played and wasn't good at. And a mate of mine who now runs a very commercial sales company said you got the gift of the gab. What are you wasting your time with? Accounting? And I remember the exchange perfectly. His name is Mark Lieber Lieber, commercial. And I said if I can talk 18, then I'll just spend my whole life talking. It's not gonna be anything special about me. A lot of people can talk. You've got a certain personality type there is and you have to practice and hone the craft.

Speaker 1: 9:35

You've got this, you've got it in you I think you've got two other people on this podcast that are sort of nodding along with a chuckle and you've probably got people in teams that you guys have led that just have that natural ability to talk and you need to turn that into some sort of process and get it outcome-oriented. And I just thought that if I can get some technical skill behind me plus that natural thing, I had you sort of end up in this rare Venn diagram, being able to communicate complex things, and that's what the best set of foes do, and they get great engagement in their organizations, claim drivers and they claim why that behavior led to financial outcome and what that outcome is, and I could just see that as something. So I did my accounting at Monash Uni. I became a chartered accountant. I was really good at talking to clients and I understood numbers really well. But I was really good at talking to clients and I understood numbers really well, but I was really poor at preparing numbers, because that's just grind work, that's sausage factory work. It's a huge detail. I was never great at it. I used to joke at more statements. I'd be a great partner, a terrible manager.

Speaker 1: 10:40

And in 2006, 2007, it's not like now where accountants are supposed to be talking to clients and having life conversations. So I was going to leave at an AFC hit and you didn't leave a good job, promising career, when the GFC hit. You're stuck in it and went to work for NAB as a business banker and that was great because I got to learn a lot about big organizations, checklists, workflows, flow, lending. That was the only yeah Simon's laughing, because now I'm in a big company and and have my ups and downs with that and I just learned a lot about cashflow and the accounts in in the business banking center in Richmond in Melbourne and lasted three years and I really do say last is I just it was just too rigid for me. I had a particular referral that came to me for a vertically integrated bedding manufacturer in post-GFC Victoria. There was just no way of blending to it Like Victorian manufacturers in like 2010,. Just really, no one was doing really well.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I looked at his balance sheet and I said look your numbers. You need to be at this level and then we'll be able to start lending to you. Your finances are a mess. I can't read this stuff new historicals and nonsense and I thought I'd done the right thing without saying no, you know, to protect my referral, come in. He comes back six months later and it's all done. Six months.

Speaker 1: 12:05

Wow, I said how did you do this? He goes, I've got a virtual CFO. The hell's a virtual CFO. Yeah, do you want to meet him? So I went and met him.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Turned out the guy was Julian Kersner. He and I went to school together. He was much older than me, played a few games of AFL as so a bit of a rock star amongst my schoolboy friends and went and worked for them in their virtual CFO division and that's where I sort of learned how to talk, how to do numbers and that sort of set up. I went out and did it by myself and realized, as a virtual CFO I'm talking for a long time here I'd worked out about 250 grand in compliance fees for mine, plus the compliance load they already had.

Speaker 1: 12:44

And I thought, like why am I just doing it myself? Out about 250 grand in compliance fees for mine, plus the compliance load they already had, and I thought, like what am I just doing myself? Dad tax agents. I did a deal with dad all max work and and away we go, and I realized that I hadn't done a tax work in like 10 years this stage. Um, but I knew this company in the gps and around this time I'd started a podcast that was, you know, it's probably podcast for the accounting industry called From the Trenches. It was sort of accountants don't always put their opinions loud and out into the world. You want to be the quiet, trusted source.

Speaker 1: 13:13

You don't seem to have that issue, david, I don't. That's why the podcast went quite well with Paul Meisner, who also does not have that issue, and through that I'd met a lot of people, and I'm sure you guys have met a lot of fantastic people on the show as well. You get these communities. It's awesome. One of them was Timothy Munro, the founder of ChangeGPS, and I'd seen him at all these events. I said, mate, here's what I'm struggling with. I've got this lead because I need leads. I don't know what to talk to them about, don't know how to price. I don't know how to. I don't know what to do. Do you have templates and tools for me? Yeah, yeah, that's what we do, you know. Just use it and if you like it, just talk about it on your show. You know, the best part about the podcast is we've got free software. Anyway, I used it and I picked up my boardroom. Let's work it out, and the rest is history from that.

Speaker 2: 14:11

Yeah, and you became the CEO at ChangeGPS. And tell me, as a person joining ChangeGPS effectively a startup, going from, I guess, the structure and rigor that you had up to that point joining a startup software company how did that hit you Well?

Speaker 1: 14:28

it was startup-ish, meaning the company was 10, and it had like a side product of Tim. He had his accounting firm that he spent most of his time on and this was sort of his passion project. So, being 10 years old, you had a reasonably mature product and I think that's what we, whilst it was a startup, it had a growth focus. It had dipped in the toe in sales reps every now and again. It never really growed. It was sort of a few firms in a few firms out every year, just slowly investing in product and development. But certainly the orgs didn't have that growth sass. It definitely didn't have that culture and I wanted that. Tim said to me they've just started off, I'm in sales, just go show that you can get money in and it's brilliant because you just learn so much when you're having hours of conversations with prospects. You find out what, what works in the product, what doesn't you get. It's just the ultimate case study for marketing. And I said to him at the time all right, we're going to sales. How many leads do you get a month? He goes, I don't know, I'll find out. He comes back. All right, well, I'll be in charge of marketing and sales then please let's do the demand. Gen um. And then covid and business.

Speaker 1: 15:40

We decided we were going to help and a lot of people forget in COVID the way small business was saved was accountants got small businesses cash flow Yep yeah. And job seeker, it was the accountants who worked 15 hours a day who would get legislation change at five o'clock on a Friday and it was the accountants. And we're going to help the accountants. And we ended up with now the first webinar. We had a thousand people and we were like this is like a world record, this is unbelievable. And we built a big community out of that and we grew through giving away a lot of free resources and help. It's a beautiful way to grow. I was doing eight sales calls a day, eight a day, plus all the follow-up late into the night. I remember Lexi, my wife, said to me you know you're really hard. Kids are going to learn about COVID and the lockdowns in high school. They're going to do essays on it and I'll say Mom and Dad what you were doing and I'll say mom and dad what you were doing.

Speaker 1: 16:33

I'll say we helped Nice and it's true, and a lot of people didn't. We were one of those fortunate businesses that did well out of COVID. A lot didn't and I you know a lot of them are still trying to recover and a lot of those lives are trying to be rebuilt still and those families are recovering. Fortunately, we all have this org chart to model yourself against. You can go online like a thousand org charts for fast growing, but every business is different and every business has different strengths in their leaders and so they need different the functions that you palm off.

Speaker 1: 17:10

I became CEO. The first thing I had to do was I had to get out of eight hours of demos. So we hired a sales guy first, and because we didn't know how to train a sales guy, we hired our head of sales at the time, the guy doing the demos, leo DeMondry. Leo worked for the ATO for 25 years and just had a big personality and we thought, oh, that's good, he'll be able to talk to a few people, we'll just teach them how to advise. Actually, over the years I've realized it's much better to take a sales career salesperson and teach them accounting than do the other way around, absolutely. So you know it was all right. Simon Like and I it was fun. It was like something you said there.

Speaker 2: 17:48

I was just going to say there's some real lessons there. I think, first and foremost, we always talk about it. I always rabble on about it, I'd always rabble on about it. But as a salesperson, you've got to get out of bed in the morning and love what you do and it really sounded like you had a passion for it. So it meant the late nights became something you're prepared to do because you could see the outcome. And I think the other big one and this is one of Dan's big messages for salespeople is understand and empathize with your customer or your client. What are they going through? How do you help them? And with your customer or your client what are they going through, how do you help them? And I think you targeted your business and your sales pitch on what is it that my customer is going through, what are the pains they've got, what are the business outcomes they're looking to achieve? And you really honed your message on that and it clearly resonated.

Speaker 1: 18:27

One of the big frustrations is when sales reps say I used to be in, I got out and honestly, it used to be in, I got out and honestly, it's the most disrespectful, because you're basically saying I'm better than this. The accountant thinks you failed, you couldn't tough it out, you didn't have the attention, you didn't have the grit. You've gone to this thing and the accounts generally respectfully look down or be suspicious about why. Because you come up with these fanciful pipelines and we can see all the bullshit. Yep, they see it all.

Speaker 2: 19:05

So for all the you know, I'll tell you a story.

Speaker 1: 19:08

We did a turnaround job on a solar company. You know the government. As soon as the government funds something, there's always these Come in and they. He picked up one of these things and the guy was in a tough situation. He'd borrowed money from his in-laws. He'd been geared to the hill. I remember he was in our office one day. He had to call all these creditors to try to do a deal with the creditors. He had a photo of his family on his desk as a reminder of why he was really humiliating himself trying to get these deals. He had to get rid of this huge ego that he had and had to get rid of it.

Speaker 1: 19:43

And I came in as the CFO after the turnaround job Get the systems in, get it reporting really well and get some governance and controls in. The biggest problem they had was the sales reps would flat out lie at the jobs gap and it was like flat out lying, wow. And fortunately we put in software called Unleashed, which Access Group now owns some, and Unleashed let me see the stock levels in like five different warehouses live. And the sales rep would come at me and say, oh, we can't sell it because the customer wanted it. We have $100,000 for a product. I'll do it because we don't have a stock Mate. I can see the stock level online.

Speaker 2: 20:21

Wow.

Speaker 1: 20:24

And I enjoyed that integration, but that's some of the. So the attitude that the finance professional has to the salesperson is if you don't understand me and don't show me credibility, I'm going to assume you're like the liars and I'm sure these are the bad actors. Right, this isn't all. So Accountant who is literally trained in professional skepticism? It's a unit in the chart of accounting. That's the attitude they take and I think, in general, like I think about cold emails that I get on linkedin or anyone has gone to an effort to understand where I might be going through that isn't to even know. And you know, when we started this, dan, you said to me this is just like a couple of guys having a chat in a bar, like australians buy off people that they feel like they can just have a conversation. Absolutely, I think in that the thing you, the thing you just drilled into, which I'm fervent about, I think there's some detail behind here that I kind of want to drill into. There's two pieces I want to discuss really quickly. So one is I don't think most salespeople fundamentally understand what a forecast is, and the term forecast is used in a couple of different lenses. So when you're a sales leader or you're a sales person and you're talking to your leader whether that's your CEO, your CRO, your regional leader, your sales manager or it could be, in a small business, that the person who owns the purse strings is actually the finance manager or the CFO. Right, you've got a sales forecast and unfortunately lots of salespeople have. They typically have one of these two lenses and it's hard, sorry. One of these two personas, they either have what I call happy years.

Speaker 1: 22:07

I've talked to a guy, or he replied on LinkedIn. I'm putting him in my commit. That's probably an exaggeration, but get that piece right, which is I've got this. I've talked on LinkedIn. I'm putting him in my commit. That's probably an exaggeration, but get that piece right, which is I've got this. I've talked to someone about a product. I think it's a great fit for them. I haven't uncovered anything that might actually solve an issue for them.

Speaker 1: 22:24

I haven't understood their scenario. Is it in their level of priority? I don't have any idea of that, but I've got a number now. Or they're at the other side of the equation, which is, until a customer has fundamentally said I'm going to buy it, I've already fallen on a pen and signed the piece of paper. God forbid, can't tell the CFO or my boss that it's going to sign, because no way it's not going to happen.

Speaker 1: 22:47

That's the sales forecast side. But then a business has got another side of the operating motion which is like your finance or your cashflow forecast you need to operate under and there's a whole bunch of different measures. So I see, if I was going to look at this and say and again, like, tell me if I'm wrong here, right, cause you're the accountant, I'm not. I did study finance at university, but that was back in the plasticine age. But there's, I'm going to take this ongoing conversation that I'm having through my sales team to my customers and I'm going to look at the size of the forecast and try and put some filters on it, try and get an understanding of what's likely to happen in the future and it's always future predicting. I'm trying to see what's going to be. Again, I'm looking at my cashflow forecast and I'm going to use some historical measures and understand what might happen.

Speaker 1: 23:33

So can I pay people?

Speaker 1: 23:34

Can I buy more stock? What are the things going to happen in my business? But when, as a salesperson, when you aren't presenting the reality of what's happening in your CRM, track it in a spreadsheet for all I care, right, but put it in something that is trackable, comparable and so that all of the engagements and conversations you're having, you actually have an understanding of how they vary, because that's what an accountant is looking for. How much do they vary from what I know most of our customers have done in the past? That end up at a dollar.

Speaker 1: 24:14

Okay, now I've got a percentage and I can work out how I'm going to give that a 50 cents. The other one I'll give 20 cents, and now I've got some sort of stability under what my future cashflow forecasts are. But if you're not being truthful, then that becomes problematic. And I've seen Simon and I have worked together for a long time and I've said this to my sales guys many, many times I prefer to know the number zero it's genuinely zero than you lie. Oh, simon, with zero in the committee meeting we've got this afternoon, let me know how it goes, but if the number says it's zero.

Speaker 1: 24:49

Okay, if I fundamentally know, in this time period, this day, this day, this week, this month, this quarter, the number's actually zero. Okay, it's not great, it's a problem, but I know what the problem is and I can manage around that and I can give you more resources, I can train you more. I don't go and hire more people. I might can that marketing program that we were going to. I might push it back a quarter. Whatever it is, that's way better than all of my deals are definitely coming in and then none of them come in. I think that piece is critically important. Yeah, look, I've got a long answer, Please Sorry everyone.

Speaker 1: 25:30

That's all we're here for. Let's talk about it. Everything you just spoke about. You spoke about it as if they're different motions, but it is one motion, it's actually one workflow and it starts with a customer out in the world has no idea they have a need and doesn't there's a solution, and it ends with tax paid on the cash in the bank Yep, not cash in the bank. Tax paid, because the cash in the banks might be nice, but 30% of it's the tax officers. So don't go spend it on your jet ski and your Bali holiday and your kitchen reno and your fancy Gucci handbag or whatever it is you want to spend your money on or your fancy podcast equipment.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Or your fancy podcast equipment. You know what? You spend money on your fancy podcast when you've got an audience and people are paying you fish.

Speaker 1: 26:16

Otherwise honestly, your mobile phone's got the best mic you're probably going to get access to. So it's one motion. What happens in small business? You can see the one motion. And in big business, because you need functions and you need managers, it gets siphoned off into sections and so the person in their section can only really appreciate the drivers and outcomes of their section. And I had a company where I was Mr Everything before Everything. I was in my Xero file twice a day and I was in my HubSpot CRM for the other five hours and I was in my HubSpot CRM for the other five hours. So the one motion working from the end can start with marketing. Sales is probably that next quadrant. So marketing would be the first quadrant, sales the next quadrant, delivery and operations the third, and finance and tax paid the fourth. So let's start at the fourth Tax paid.

Speaker 1: 27:19

Most accountants are experts and you'll have an external accountant. Very, very few businesses in Australia, internal tax teams it's really only the biggest one and corporate sometimes, but they'll still have external advisors. Well, did you know? Australiaia, I think, is the fourth or fifth biggest market for consultants in the world? Wow, 29 million people.

Speaker 1: 27:40

So you start a finance and then finance says all right, I need to work out, I need to plan for the tax I need to pay. So I need to work out what my profits. Well, how am I going to work out what my profits can be? Well, you think about what a pnl looks like. It's always revenue at the top cost of goods. Goods sold gives you net profit, overheads. Then you get net profit before tax, interest, ebit tax, and net profit after tax. That's the system.

Speaker 1: 28:07

So the accountant says I need to come up with a revenue forecast. Hey, sales, give me a revenue. And then they go back up through those quadrants. Hey, sale, going to come up with a revenue forecast? We're going to look at this. And sales guy, if it's big, we'll say well, marketing, how many leads you're going to get me? And then you've got sales versus marketing stout, that it can happen. Um, and the cfo is going to look at it from. They're going to do two things what's called a top down and a bottom up. And the top down is, well, the last five. We've grown at 8% a year. So my default position is we're going to do 8%. Unless sales operate, something new and big is going to happen or something bad, and then you get events.

Speaker 2: 28:44

You get a.

Speaker 1: 28:44

COVID, I'm GFC. You get the Southeast Asian collapse that happened in the early 2000s. That's outside this. So they'll keep going back up through the quadrants to get information, to try to validate what's happened in the past, and the sales team, marketing, might give me this many leads which I close at 25 plus. I can hunt around this stuff and and that might be the annual, but then you've got the monthly budget where they'll literally look and say on my list I've got 15 deals and five are going to close. Now that's my number and I never used the word commit until I got to the access group.

Speaker 2: 29:23

Right.

Speaker 1: 29:25

To me the idea of doing weekly sales forecasts is crazy. We do it and understand why we need to do it. I don't think a sales rep sells because of it, I understand. So the cfo keeps going back through those quadrants trying to get information to verify and validate what's going on. And they'll look at marketing and then they'll say, well, if marketing says I can generate this much, I give marketing an extra percent budget. Am I going to get more in the six? I will have an artist to work out. If that's real because it's not, it's you get no utility for every dollar you spend on money sometimes, um, and then they come to the sales team and the sales team will do that. What can I generate myself? What will mark give me? But they'll also think about what my incentives and I fundamentally I reckon this is where organizations break, because you can have a sales team that has incentives that don't incentivize them to hit the plan that the CFO needs to.

Speaker 1: 30:24

And it just creates nightmares. And I've seen this in small businesses because the small business owner didn't want to tell the truth to their small team, because they didn't want the small team to think that maybe the business is in trouble. I've seen it in big organizations where communication is just that's no one's fault, it just you miss something. Bigger organizations come. So that's how I look at that CFO thing and I think I've seen it. That only way in big organizations is when everyone's incentives are lined up properly to get the outcomes that you need and Simon's nodding and smiling furiously because we've had to fix something in the last couple of months that we thought we were fine on, and then he goes oh, no wonder that metric's not moving. No one's incentivized to move. I want to ask you a question on that from an Australian accountant perspective, because I've done a fair bit of advice for some small businesses over the last kind of five or 10 years advice for some small businesses over the last kind of five or 10 years. And there's a behavior that I see in Australian businesses that, when we're talking about incentive plans and salespeople, that I don't see in North American businesses in particular it's a desire to make sure that you've paid back the entirety of the salesperson's wage before you pay them any more money. On incentives and it's a very Australian point of view and the way you just described it then, which is the fundamental basis of it's not incentivizing them to go and achieve the outcomes of what the business are after is actually a much better way I've had a look at it than I've actually seen.

Speaker 1: 32:00

I've been trying to find a good answer as to how to tell Australian businesses and I've seen models where it's oh listen, I've got a plan. I want them to sell a million bucks this year, but I'm paying them 150K as a base salary. So I don't really want to pay them any money until I get to kind of 800,000. So we've got to hit that number before they pay any more money. And I'm like I get why you're doing it, but each dollar from zero is the behavior you're trying to drive. So how do you want and there's this model where you go back to full circle Australian business you've got if I've hit the nail on the head in terms of the problem you guys have just gone and solved- I know, dan, I love this because and I'll set it up before David can answer so I come from a background of big business, big software North American, european, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 32:48

David's come at this as a small business, as an accountant, and I think it's going to be an absolutely superb conversation. David, tell me about the incentive plans you had for your team prior to being acquired?

Speaker 1: 33:03

Well, the incentive plan was aligned to the strengths and weaknesses of the business, and the business has huge strength in marketing. Because of that COVID stuff, we got 3,000, 5,000 accountants on a web that would trigger a pipeline because we kept doing that empathy with the client that you eloquently explained. And so I thought that because marketing was such a strength and we really didn't struggle to get leads like we have days, a dozen demos get booked in and sales reps come to the website and we don't spend any money on digital marketing.

Speaker 1: 33:38

So I thought, if that's such a strength, I'm going to pay this sales rep 100, 120, 150, 80. What?

Speaker 2: 33:44

a thousand dollars.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Yeah, big damn job, mate. Yeah, that was my attitude. That's your job, I've got a job, you've got a job. The product guys if the product guys don't deliver, the sales guys can't sell us. Where does this idea of commissions come from? I think that's the bit I want to understand your point of view on. Yes, so where does it come from? You don't have a tipping culture in Australia because you have minimum wages. And now I go to Strangest and I have to order my meal off a QR code and you ask me for a tip. There's literally no service. None Get stuffed, I agree. None get stuffed, I agree. What a waste of my after-tax money to tip someone who walked food from a bay marie to my table.

Speaker 1: 34:29

It's just, and so maybe I'd look. I don't know american sales things, but maybe it's the tipping culture and it's the percentage of it. It's also australia is is maybe not the merit. American might actually be like we. We have this. We're a very there's this huge safety net in our tax system and our social system. We don't. We're all going to help you and small businesses can't actually afford a lot of this stuff because people paid really really, really well here. So that was my first strategy. But then based on that strength and why someone was setting up, so because of that, I gave our incentive, incentives whether the sales team had a floor time. Yeah, if you didn't hit your floor, you got $0. Partly because you were paid very well as a base. Like you were definitely paid enough and David your sales guys were on.

Speaker 2: 35:16

They went on 50-50 plans, right, they were more 70-30. No, I reckon it was maybe.

Speaker 1: 35:23

it probably ended up as 80-20. Yeah, so that's important in the context of this.

Speaker 1: 35:29

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So you might say well, how are you attracting good talent if you don't have that big comp structure? And the answer is they had so many good quality leads coming in they could quite easily hit targets because they didn't have to spend their time doing LinkedIn research and it was just much easier to get it in. We also have such an only sell to public practice accountants. That's it. So once you know customer and buying behavior, you don't have to. Mentally it's actually an easy thing to do.

Speaker 1: 35:58

So I think globally we just like base right In Australia that comes from decades of union negotiation, a whole lot of social systems and that sort of stuff. But also I think the business incentive plan should not necessarily need to relate to the strengths and weaknesses of the business. Then you go out and say, well, am I in a competitive labor market or am I not? And two years ago we were in a competitive labor and we did have to do things that I was uncomfortable with to get the right people. We're am I in a competitive labor market or am I not? And two years ago we were in a competitive labor market and we did have to do things that I was uncomfortable with to get the right people. We're not there now, so we don't have to do that stuff, but worry about the market trends after you work out what you need in your business.

Speaker 2: 36:35

Yep and then obviously going through the journey into being acquired part of a bigger company, multinational, different incentive plans. You've obviously had to look at the existing incentive plans and new incentive plans and I think the team you brought in pretty happy with the change.

Speaker 1: 36:55

Most people like having their OTA doubled mate. Yep. It's interesting because a big company to run efficiently needs one commission plan for the whole Yep. It's interesting because big company to run efficiently needs one commission plan for the whole Yep. And as my CFO had on, yeah, 100%. I don't want you to be managing all these different comm structures and different. You might have different incentives for different subdivisions that you've got because different products that they've got, different markets, that's fine. The actual structure of the commission needs to be the same.

Speaker 1: 37:23

So in access, there's no flaw. If you sell something, you get money. But if you hit your target, that's shaded depending on how you get against the targets you search. And then there's succumbing if you're a consistent performer and as you reward best people get reward the most consistent. Absolutely love. Um, that's been an easy sell. A sell is an optimization. When a lead comes in on a huge Salesforce database, who gets the lead? And that's been a big challenge for Simon and I and we've gone hard on one thing and come back and gone back again and seesawed all around it.

Speaker 2: 37:58

Yeah, dan, it's interesting, I think, coming from a big software company background. You look at a sales team and you look at your sales guys. You've got your enterprise, your mid-market, your small enterprise team. Typically there's a volume of customers in that small enterprise, slightly less in mid and slightly less in large enterprise, and every salesperson has a territory in Salesforce. Leads come for somebody in your territory, you grab the lead and run. What's really interesting in David's business before coming in here it was because they knew their target market, so it's accounting practices in.

Speaker 2: 38:34

Australia. They didn't have territories, sales territories. First time in my career I've seen that, but it worked really well and I think the lesson there is you and I, dan, come from big European or American software companies and we think there's only one way to peel a banana. But honestly, I've been exposed to now some really different, interesting models, australian-grown companies, that do it completely differently. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I think it's an interesting. You've got to build your sales team, your lead routing, your commission plans fit for purpose, right. So I don't think. I think the lesson for me was certainly one size does not fit all. And because I come from a big American software background doesn't mean I'm correct Absolutely not. And I think some of the stuff that small Australian businesses do would really benefit larger companies. I think both can learn from each other.

Speaker 1: 39:28

You might remember, simon, a couple of years ago we had a problem where we were, and typically the motion in larger. And it's not just North American companies, like German companies do it, like the Israeli companies do it. I've got a massive list of all the companies I think I should be able to go and sell to or just it's all the companies in Australia divided up. Someone's got responsibility. Why do they do it? It's to avoid fights. It's to avoid the awkward conversation of has someone got more leads or less leads or whatever else. And I think in that scenario I'll go to the story that Simon and I sold a couple of years ago. I think we talked about it on the podcast before, but it's just to solve fights Underneath that. Okay, because where does the lead when it comes in, or who should you be focused on chasing, et cetera. Underneath that, it misses the point that I think as leaders, we've got to look at. Whether you're a sales leader or a business leader we've got to look at. Lean back into a sporting analogy and for those who understand the NRL, if you're Ivan Cleary running the Penrith Pampers at the moment, right, you've got a first string 5.8, you've got a second string 5.8 in the twos and you've got some kid coming through on the juniors who's great in Jersey flag? Right? You don't go to the Jersey flag kid a week out from the finals and say, listen, I've given everybody a good run and I'm going to put you into the first for the finals and the grand final week because you haven't had much of a run. He says I'm going to put the best team on the park to win the final. So we as salespeople, when you've had that model that says I'm going to evenly divide and conquer in territories and match it all up, it's this model of saying the guy which the underperformer, gets exactly the same size territory as the top performer. It's, not, to your point, about autocracies before. It's not about equality. A business is there to make money for the shareholders and the owners and the people that work there. If you want to get a better lead, be better, sell better, learn, and so underneath that, I think that the divide and conquer model is a little bit broken. But then, underneath that, the expectation of salespeople that says you know what? Why does the rainmaker always get the rainmaker leads? Because he's the rainmaker, because he's better, and why do I pay him more money Because he's better, right, or he or she's better, they're better. But that fundamental piece, I think, is broken.

Speaker 1: 41:50

But the thing that Simon and I read into a number of years ago we were given this model the year before, all accounts divided up blah, blah, blah, off we go. We had reps that had like 600 leads in their territory About 600. Blah, blah, blah, off we go. We had reps that had like 600 leads in their territory. We've got 600 targeted accounts, not leads. Targeted accounts you're going to sell to.

Speaker 1: 42:07

It's only 52 weeks in a year and you can take four weeks off at lead if you live in Australia. We're North Americans. We get four weeks' leave Too bad, you've got 48 weeks. How are you possibly going to talk to 600 companies, even if I've got a phenomenal marketing team and I've probably got four or five personas in each of those companies I've got to go and talk to? So I'm not talking about 30,000 or 3,000 possible, but you can't talk to them. It's not going to happen. So you still turn it back and you go. I'm not going to touch 80% of this territory, I'm going to focus on 10 or 15% of it and even in that group, you're not going to get to them all. So I'm going to focus on 10 or 15% of it, and even in that group you're not going to get to them all.

Speaker 1: 42:45

So we actually went through and went right. Our territories aren't 400. They're like 20. We had the best year ever that that company had had by just getting the team to focus on 20 odd leads and we closed more business in the next financial year by two or three I think it was like two and a half X in the previous year by just saying bring your focus down.

Speaker 1: 43:08

Yeah, I think again where you go before, dave, get really focused on outcomes for customers. What's the problem you're solving over there? Don't get too worried about the deal size. You're solving great problems for customers. They will invest in it because they know they're going to have to spend money to get good outcomes. They want good support, they want good consulting, they want good delivery. They will spend money to get good outcomes and that was what we delivered. But I think to your point, simon, it's like the broken North American model of everybody's got an assignment, every customer's there and look interestingly, some consulting I've done over the last little period. I think that model has been broken as well, even by the big North American companies. They're filtering back and saying let's get focused on customers that we can actually service properly. You were Like it's just, simon. I don't want to share my true thoughts with people who pay my wage these days. There's no reason why someone in person to close a deal in Agreed.

Speaker 1: 44:13

I have no idea what you just said about rugby.

Speaker 2: 44:15

That lead is a passionate pen.

Speaker 1: 44:18

I'm the wrong person to enter a sport. I'm the wrong person to enter a bad sport. If there are Sydney Swans fans, I will talk about the time Dale Morris tackled Buck in the 2016 Grand Final. John Longer in Grand Finals and delivering unended happiness to my family. Now you know it's hard to get a serum. That's that good that you know those talking points and those relationships.

Speaker 1: 44:42

But what you guys spoke about is like the glory days, bdming and long lunches and call credit cards and local relationships, and leads come in on an internet website. Now they're routed through advanced CRMs. Some calls are done on Teams, yep. So you can't be this big giant globe and then then say, oh, but where you can only sell to these postcodes yeah, it doesn't, it's not passing a pub test.

Speaker 1: 45:08

Um, when I was at nav would run a big campaign and the leads would come in and it was always the leads. And I complained because what wouldn't? And he said, well, you mishandled the last two that we gave you and I'm like what a great lesson to make, what a brilliant lesson. And so I think part of the answer is a sales leader or manager who's strong enough to say to someone you did a good job here. And then you sort the week from the chaps because then that sales rep will get their act together and say right, what would I have done differently? Performance change. And then the other ones will do the petty crap and you realize they're half the door because you've managed them for the first time and it's easy for us to channel a podcast. What I'm learning?

Speaker 1: 45:52

Big organizations are really hard to change. Despite all of the desire and efforts of the leadership, there are so many reasons why it can't move one degree to the left. And so sometimes and I've said this to Simon I got myself in trouble. Don't worry about moving one degree, make a big move, move 30%. And just then it introduced risk into an operating model and I don't want to do that, Yep, but we take them on the journey, don't we?

Speaker 2: 46:21

Yeah, we do, we do.

Speaker 1: 46:23

And also, simon, it's not. You know, when you talk about the sales motion we had before, we didn't have territories, the level down we did so. The success managers had members that they looked after and our success managers had upgrade and churn downsell targets. So it was a really hard role to watch both ways and we could just say we're doing okay. But we regularly miss up cell numbers because they can't, and what I do like about what Access has done is they're separate divisions, separate skills, separate career paths, and now we need to get how to make sure. We're going to have to start introducing patches into Change GP.

Speaker 2: 47:05

I think what worked really well with what Dan was describing is we would give somebody 20 new business patch. Once they'd turned through that and we could see that they'd put the effort and they'd spoken to everybody, the right engagement had happened, we'd give them another 20. And so they were constantly burning through Rather than a list of 500 that they just scratch their heads. And I'll start in A and finish at Z it was real incentive.

Speaker 1: 47:29

I think our gun SDR will be throwing her cereal against the wall hearing this conversation because we've got some automation sales force at the moment. Something happens. She gets like 500 leads. She said Dave can't handle this, can you stop it? And I said we'll get there, ash, just not right now. And I tried to. She'll love that. You've just said that, simon. I'm sure you'll get a message very can we have a conversation?

Speaker 1: 47:52

absolutely, yeah, I want to ask you dave, you, you mentioned something at the start of the conversation around um, you were the third salesperson and sort of owned that motion, and I think it's a really interesting lesson for lots of small business owners to understand. You see, lots of small business owners they get six months in and all of a sudden they haven't really got out there and cracked what their sales motion looks like and then all of a sudden they need new revenue. I've been a higher sales guy. What were your lessons around actually having cut your teeth and understood the entire sales motion for the business before you brought on that sales team? When you look back at it, what do you think was much better as a result of having done that? That you probably wouldn't have known if you'd brought someone in much earlier.

Speaker 1: 48:42

One thing I think that we hold them back and we train them and we teach them the systems and the best thing you can do is just pick up the phone. Yep. So Aaron, our success manager, day one we took him to an industry event, brisbane. Marilia, day one stuck her on the sand, literally day one in the office. We took them out and they met 100 customers. Scott, who's now head of sales, day one, stuck her on the sand Literally day one in the office we took them out and they met 100 customers, Scott, who's now head of sales.

Speaker 1: 49:06

Day one we had an online event with 30 speakers and like 1,000 people attending a digital conference. I think it was just over COVID. So we're doing digital stuff. We got him to emcee a room and the lesson in all of that is rush people in front of the customer, Love it, and we waste so much time on internal staff.

Speaker 2: 49:30

David. That reminds me of a story I remember when I joined Financial Force in 2016,. We were in a little serviced office and I walked into the office and I we had one services guy, one sales guy and one pre-sales guy and I said, look, let's go visit a client I think this is day three, um, before you'd started, dan, but, but not long before and I said to our pre-sales guy um, you know, I've seen the top deal we've got. Let's go visit them, let's go have a conversation.

Speaker 2: 49:58

I get this panic, look from um, our pre-sales guy at the time. And I said what are you nervous about seeing a client? And he goes no, I'm not, but I'm not allowed to see clients yet. And the organization had this really rigid set of internal e-learning and process and everything before you actually got your pen license and you're allowed to go talk to the client. And I said I threw him his jacket and I said, fuck, that the most important thing is let's go talk to the client and actually understand what they're looking for. And we've obviously built a pretty good relationship since then. That was Adrian Heng, yeah yeah, good story.

Speaker 2: 50:35

What was fascinating about it is I gave him the license to actually beg forgiveness rather than ask permission first of all, but second one, his eyes lit up after we got him in front of the client and good people in front of clients, that's what they live for, and you've obviously hired some great people, david, because just chatting to Scott, he's a lovely guy, he's just, he's hilarious. He's your Metallica sales guy, which I love, but he's at his happiest not when he's talking to me or you, but when he's talking to a client.

Speaker 1: 51:10

I had a deep inference and he literally said I just need this stuff resolved so it can all get out of my way. Yeah, yeah and your football, that's it.

Speaker 2: 51:21

Get in the ball. End up a field.

Speaker 1: 51:22

get in the ball, get in the ball, get it somewhere near them and let them sell. Yeah and yeah, I just think we get. We just get in our way. And my happiest day is when, talking to people like strategy Now a lot, as I've sort of my, my skillsets expand, then I've got that. I really enjoy that I can strategize what we did the last two days. A lot of our members were already at that event and I was pitching my strategy and practicing my pitch and I got 20 people to tell me whether it was crap or not. The value ends before we chuck it in an email and send it to 30,000 people and we're all better for it.

Speaker 2: 52:01

That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 52:01

Sure, can I comment. One other comment about salespeople, as long as it's a good one. I'll start off a bit negative, but you're all liars Really near myself to your audience.

Speaker 2: 52:16

David, you've got to say that mate. If that's the thinking every salesperson that talks to a CFO is in the back of their mind to say I need to come from the basic premise that I'm a liar.

Speaker 1: 52:27

He doesn't trust me yeah exactly 100% 100%. It's the concept of the fashion and they're professional in their conval reliable, accurate, present well, but compared to accounting honest, honest, and you know those attributes and those values you'd associate with professional.

Speaker 1: 52:52

But sales is not a profession and salespeople will often talk about being the profession of sales. A profession's a legal term. A profession has standards and rules and regulations, has ethical behavior, obligations and it has disciplinary action when you don't comply. That's why you have PwC hold in front of a Royal Commission or a Senate Inquiry. So don't having that's a statement of fact. So my advice to salespeople don't carry on in front of an accountant as if you've got the same level of professional obligations. An accountant stuffs up, their license is revoked, their entire livelihood is taken away from them, their status, their sense of self-worth and maybe it's a benefit. The sales professional, the person who conducts themselves, never has that risk and it's an important thing to understand. When interacting between those two people, you can seriously be really professional. We've got some unbelievable professionals, simon. They might lose their job if they don't perform, but they won't lose their livelihood when their designation is stripped away from them.

Speaker 2: 54:04

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 54:05

And that goes back to my comment about the dentists as well. The dentist is the professional. They've got the same obligations. I just think that's an important obligation. If you recognize, don't put an A's on it, just do what it?

Speaker 1: 54:16

is. I think there's another point to that as well, though, david, which is if you want to be it, you're right. There is a level of education that anybody goes through to do any of those roles we talked about before lawyer, dentist, accountant, et cetera, et cetera and even after the education, you still have to get certified and have to maintain a continual education. Programs are part of every one of those certifications, right? You don't maintain them, you get kicked off the bar. You don't maintain them, you can't take your practicing certificate, right.

Speaker 1: 54:43

If you want to be a sales professional, what's your investment in continued education? The subject matter area if you're in solar, if you're in technology, if you're in whatever, how do you stand toe-to-toe with an executive that you're selling to a whatever organization, and are you being that level professional? Yep, show your craft, and I 100% agree with you. Look, I did an economy, I did an economics degree, I've done an MBA. None of them make me a sales professional. They don't at all, but my behavior does, and I can stand toe-to-toe in a room with a professional as you've defined it, and I agree with your point of view If I've done those things and if I act in the way that those executives expect. That's the standard of profession.

Speaker 1: 55:34

If I'm doing those things, I'm an equal and trust is earned. It's not owed. And you can lose trust in a heartbeat. But it takes a long time to build and once you've built it, you have to do the work to maintain it and continue to invest in it. And we've all been the victims of losing someone's trust in a business relationship and you look back and you go. It could have been big, it could have been minor and I've got to rebuild it again.

Speaker 1: 56:02

Right, and what do I do? What am I going to change in my behavior, moving forward, in order that that person has confidence, that organization has confidence that they can rely on my advice. They can rely on my behavior as well. And I'll share something very positive, simon, and this is maybe a good example we can share across our team. Scott wakes up in the morning and reads the sports news, and then he reads Accountants Daily and then he listens to all the industry podcasts and then he asks me questions about the news. And then he jumps on Facebook and then he goes into the accountant community Facebook groups to find what accountants are talking about. That's someone who can confidently jump on a sales call? How about them Knicksicks?

Speaker 2: 56:43

or whatever the equivalent.

Speaker 1: 56:46

And that to me is professional. Your peer respect comes from stuff 100% agree.

Speaker 1: 56:54

Well, Dave, we're getting to the top of the hour and I know we've all got busy days ahead of us today, so I definitely wanted to thank you for your time, Simon. As always and we're always in the show with a parting piece of advice, mate, whether it's something we've talked about already or just a piece of advice for our listeners and salespeople what's one key nugget out of your career? I spent $10,000 on a sales training course when I had $23,000 in the account. So you'll usually get a return on investing in yourself Great point.

Speaker 2: 57:31

Love it, great point.

Speaker 1: 57:32

Thanks.

Speaker 2: 57:32

David, thank you. It's been awesome chatting to you today, mate. That's some really good insights, and I think what I love is you've been on both sides of the fence. You've built up a career as an accountant and a CFO. You've gone into sort of startup mode software. You've moved into a very large multinational software company. You've obviously had to change along the way, but, boy, you've got some interesting insights.

Speaker 2: 57:56

I think salespeople can learn from somebody that's done both sides of the fence. A lot of salespeople, sales is all they've ever done. I think the best salespeople I've ever worked with have always done something else. They've got something to reflect on, and I think if you're a salesperson, that's career sales the best advice I can give you is learn from people like David that have done not just sales but they've done a whole bunch of other things because they've learned about the other side of the coin from a buying perspective. What do you look for in a salesperson? What do you expect? What sort of trust do you need to have built with a salesperson? And I love it, david. By default you're a liar until you prove otherwise as a sales guy Awesome.

Speaker 2: 58:38

Title of the show. Thanks everyone.

Speaker 1: 58:40

Thanks everyone for listening. If you like the show, look, please drop us a comment. If you're watching on YouTube, please click subscribe and like down below. If you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple, I think you can press the plus button to make sure you get all of our upcoming episodes, and Simon and I are committing to do a few more this year than we did last year. So, yeah, so we look forward to talking to you guys all again soon. David, thank you so much for your time. Simon, thanks, as always.

Speaker 2: 59:06

Awesome. Thanks guys.