Chad Peets: Why Most Sales Reps Underperform & Remote Reps Ignore Development | E1193

We bring in a CRO pre-product. You need a sales person to create the sales playbook. How- what does a VP of engineering know about creating a sales playbook? Any inside sales person should recognize that by being in the office, they are gonna get better faster. If a sales- inside sales person is not willing to make the sacrifice of a 30-minute commute every day to further his own career, I don't want that person. Y- you have to care and be willing to sacrifice to do exceptional things to be exceptional. And what I find today is people are not willing to do that.

Ready to go? Chad, I don't think I've ever been quite so excited about doing a show following a discussion pre-us starting recording. So, this is gonna be a lot of fun. Thank you for joining me today.

Yeah. No. I appreciate that. Based on the people that, uh, you've interviewed in the past, I- I find that hard to believe, but I'm humbled that you said it, so thank you.

Do you know what also? I spoke to Chris Deignan and Mike Spicer before this show, and like, if you want like hard heavyweights who are incredible at what they do saying someone is the best in the world at what they do, I'm like, "Oh, shit." (laughs)

It's my brothers. It's my brothers.

He's gonna be- he's gonna be good. So I'm looking forward to this. So I wanna start off with just a little bit, though, in terms of context. How did you make your way into sales first? And let's start there.

I'll give you the- the short version, but, um, I saw the movie Wall Street when I was 12 years old, and I knew I wanted to be a stockbroker.

(laughs)

Um, I knew that. So I went to USC. I studied finance. I graduated from USC. I went to Merrill Lynch to be a stockbroker and that was, uh, 1997 and 1998. And at that time, that industry was changing. It was becoming a fee-based industry, less about trading stocks and more about just fee-based. And- and that's not what I wanted to do, one. Two, I was turned off a bit because it was such product pushing. By that I mean, "Hey, go sell this product to your customers. We're gonna charge one and a half points. This is the shit we want you to sell this week." And I didn't feel at the time, like, w- w- does it matter if that's the right product for the customer? It was just, "We're gonna go push that product." The other thing that was clear to me was to be successful in that industry, I was gonna have to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. And I was 22 years old, I looked like I was 16, and I would likely have had to call friends and family to raise money, and I was never going to do that. Um, I- I just simply was not comfortable doing that. So at the time, I had a client that came in, and I was doing some financial planning for him. And his wife said to him, "You should hire this kid." And, uh, and I was all arrogant and shit at the time. I was like 22. I was making... I think I made 100 grand my first year outta school. I thought it was all the money in the world. And I s- and I kinda chuckled. I said, "Shit, man. You can't afford me." And, uh, just arrogant and smug. And- and he's like, "How much money you make?" I said, "I make 100 grand this year." He started laughing at me. He said, "You don't even know what real money is. You have no idea." And just put me right in my fucking place. And he said, "Look, I run the largest software sales recruiting firm in the country. I think you could do it. Um, you should come talk to me." "Wow, okay." So, I went and talked to him and decided I'm gonna get into software sales recruiting at, uh, 22 years old. Changed my entire path. I had a wife at home. I was going from making $100,000 to being a- a recruiter with, uh, no base salary, um, and it was all gonna be on me. And I- my wife said, "You're gonna do what?" I said, "Yeah. We're gonna- we're gonna give this a shot." And, uh, first year there, they- they were the largest firm in the country. I was the number one guy at the company first year there. I was the number one guy at the company every year I was there. And then in 2001, the bubble burst, the partners turned on each other, um, and basically both tried to hire me away from the others. And I said, "Hey, look. I- I- I can't be in business with people that are... If you guys are gonna do this to each other, you're gonna do it to me." So I started Pietzen Associates 2001. That's when I- I had that experience.