I talked to a lot of buddies who are small business owners is being really clear what the priorities of the business are and sticking to them without getting distracted in 2016 it was a very small AG people say hey Marcus you're one of the youngest directors of this Fortune 500 company you run an 85% sales or at this time you've been promoted every single year you've broken every single record you won every single award how are you doing this I'm like I don't know I just work hard I remember my first book launching it making
$9.95 USD the first purchase like an hour later and myom like exploded welcome to the how to sell podcast I'm your host Luigi Preston enzy and as always I'm pumped honored and excited that today is going to be a really interesting episode and you know what I hate introducing him but I have to because he is my co-host so Dave welcome back hat a strong word man relax hate well for our listeners who might not or our audience who might not be able to see are you wearing your Chelsea top I am I am go
we are hasn't been a great start of the year but I'll come back at least you signed another 25 players and your coach doesn't never know I like sales it's a numbers game L we'll get some um well look we're really excited because this week we've had some really great interviews right Dave interviewing heads of enablement directors of enablement CFOs we've got CMOS coming up but obviously as part of our Playbook build for our audience a key market for a lot of sellers is that small medium business owner and I'm really pump because this week
we have not just a business owner but somebody that coaches trains sellers all over the world he's got an incredible brand so Marcus welcome to the hatale podcast gentlemen I'm pumped to be here I think we'll have some fun not only because we're wearing matching black colors but we'll just have fun regardless I know it yeah and it's good that we've all got facial hair that's true that is absolutely true your beard look amazing cuz I was just sharing you know I was just sharing with you in the Green Room Marcus how I've just embraced
a beard after I'm 41 years old I thought I need to show my age and somebody sent me a message on LinkedIn to say my beard looks ridiculous so thank you for sharing that it doesn't look ridiculous they are wrong done there we go SLI that person the 50s so well done all right so let's get into it so Marcus maybe just before we jump into this episode do you want to tell our audience thousands of people follow you but do you want to explain what you do in your business how you help people achieve
their goals yeah absolutely so I'm Marcus Chen founder of comic called venley Consulting Group we work directly with B2B sales people a lot of SAS sales team SAS reps help them ultimately max out their comp plan and to stop losing deals every single day every single month I've been doing this for about four years now we're a small but lean Team all across the world we have a lot of fun before this I was in bdb sales for over 14 years all from down carrying the bag doing the job to running big teams of 110
plus employees had a lot of fun doing that so it's been a cool Journey but I'm pumped to be here awesome so you've effectively owned your own business for four years now the first thing I want to ask because I think you know even though you're out there teaching people how to sell do you mind sharing a story of a recent purchase you made as a business owner for your business yeah absolutely most recent purchase it's a good example it's an undertaking of making a switch with something I already had in place so I had
already had a software in place I've been using for sales CRM really really good tool and I was looking to essentially make a move there are some specific things I really needed I need a better data analytics better Data Tracking a better way to have the data for the entire customer awareness Journey from the time they hit any of my pages to all the way the time they close I wanted to know from the time they hit a single page how many days until they become a paying customer in all the Pags of visit in
between with the current tool had I knew it wasn't going to be there so very simply what did I do I had my tech advisor go and start researching companies I gave him a little bit of guidance so he's what I call a technical buyer he can't say yes to that person but he could say no to them right so he started having meetings with all these sales people multiple meetings demos Etc then he came to the table and made a recommendation I looked at all the data I had one call without rep and it
was done I think my whole process because my urgency level want what I want wanted done was probably three weeks to decide from the time I decided I want to do something to the time I actually put my credit card over and we started Implement making that change that's great that's fast during that call could you tell that the selling was happening to you on the call or did you control the conversation with your experience how did that call go so it's pretty interesting I always probably because my background I like to see how they're
going take the call I don't want to take too much control like all right here's why I'm here today I want to see this and this some as side you can close me I'm like let's just see how they do how do they start the call what's their attitude like how are they going to run this demo with me now what questions will they ask it was really interesting because it's it's the same issues I see across the board to be quite Frank they did have a pretty terrible job on the demo but because I
was already in a buying State yeah I already knew I was going to buy so I had to guide the demo hey show me this show me this so I already knew what I wanted to see it wasn't what they were trying to show me so once I validated my hypothesis about the solution I had to guide them to the close if you will it was probably easiest sale they probably had realistically because of that prior to the call did they connect with you on LinkedIn share any content with you was there any sort of
pre-warm up towards that not really actually I was really surprised about that some of the other companies that my tech advisor met with a couple had connected with me and I got maybe one email and that was it no LinkedIn message no calls nothing else so they didn't share any insight with you prior or try interesting yeah Lally I remember the email because there was some along lines like you know hey Marcus met with Jay on your team appreciate you taking a look at XYZ software let me know if you any questions okay that's fine
very vanilla very blah so I'm like delete all right yeah you know thank you very much that brought me zero value you know that's really interesting so you had somebody that was your technical influencer or advisor that was going out looking they went to look but none of those vendors were proactive to reach out to you right to say hey here's some insight these are some things that people are doing Etc and then when they got to the actual call obviously they went into demo but do you mind sharing what did they Discovery look like
there wasn't really much of a discovery and this is where I think a lot of sales people don't understand that Discovery it was a step it's a phase yeah it's like ongoing it's like never really ends right it's always going so in their mind they're probably like cool I met with Jay his operations person Discovery done check demo that person check now I have a demo with the owner it could be a check so we get on there in the their mind they had what they're going to do so their mission was I'm going to
show a cool demo in their mind I could tell they already had all these things they want to show me so again the call is very normal poort hey how's it going it's going good cool awesome well hey let me go aad and share my screen let me show you a couple things on Zoho this this and this this this and this it wasn't even interactive right if he show me actually hold on like on this page show me the pipeline how does a pipeline work for you if you do this how do do you
do this show me the analytics on this page how does this work because I already knew what I was looking for now yeah I was an inbound lead right meaning I'm G spend money with somebody I'm super War it's gonna be you don't mess it up basically so that's what was interesting that there was wasn't really much Discovery there was no real follow-up steps I think if if I didn't say okay cool let's let's do this send me over to payment link I to close myself basically I think you're absolutely right obviously different buying intent
inbound versus out we can talk about that this probably another podcast but you already had a solution you were looking to move what was the outcome you were looking to achieve your CRM was achieving something but obviously wasn't giving you what you needed what what was that outcome that you're looking for so this is where I might be a little different very decisive person as you know Luigi if I know I want something I already decide why it's going to help me overall I know I've already ad led to how it's going to overall impact
me across the board so for example I already knew hey in order for me to have better data I need to have a system that can manage the data provide me the analytics which more importantly I can use the data analytics to make better decisions for the business so this allows me to understand should drive more traffic towards this lead Magnet or that lead magnet is have does this one have better conversions or does this have X have better conversions when we look at our press C Journey that buys what pages they look at how
much time they spend what's resonating the most what can we add what can we remove so I wanted that all that data to make better decisions for the business the business will grow so I already made that connection where I'm like a CRM that can do all these things that has this data will help me grow my business I already made that connection to business impact most people may not get to that level yeah right on their own they need a sales person to help guide them there I already gotten there that's why such an
easy sell but most people you know like hey looks pretty nice it seems like a nice to have like they had Quantified it out I Quantified it out already I'm like cool if I want to scale to 10 million a year then I'm GNA need these things in place now like I can't have things that's gonna only take me to seven figures year and need be beond that yeah was the sale rep able to get that information out of you during the call or was it you had these in the back of your head and
you just asking the questions to verify your thought yeah I had already made the sequential Connection in my mind I have this problem here's a solution it helps solve this problem of data analytics which will High to my business impact it's bigger yeah so I made that I I connected all the dots myself and I most buyers aren't going to do that n most are not going to do that so really if I was to summarize the key reason you're looking to change from one vendor to another one platform to another because the ultimate goal
that you're trying to achieve is you want to scale from Seven figures to potentially eight figures and you have a lack of data that's preventing you from building the strategy that will allow you to get there correct that's it that's literally it MH okay so the ultimate Roi was a fundamentally growth yeah exactly and on top of that I knew the inverse by not doing it it would cost me eight n million a year yeah so that's the correct ABS I already mentally knew that walking in that's interesting look as Lou mentioned earlier you share
a ton of valuable content across various platforms so it's not hard to find you and and what you share right but was that seller prepared did they reference anything that you spoke about or any of the content you pushed out there and blend that into the conversation at all no not at all and that's what I always find fascinating I understand there's some prospects like they're like ghosts online right like you know they have the LinkedIn profile no picture can't find anything about them right you know the picture on the website is from like 20
years ago if you just Google me you can find me relatively easy I'm the top ranked search not to my like not that many Marcus Chan out there you can find me very easily and you could use you could just consume anything about me and you can pretend to know me within seconds absolutely it's crazy to me yeah yeah but hey got I got to ask this question yeah is that CRM vendor or is that CRM provider are customer of yours now they're not they need they need to be on your prospecting list man you%
right 100% right yeah it's always crazy me I'm like all these sales enablement tools all need more help with their sales yeah hey so this is great and I think so we we've touched on one aspect of what was driving you to change right the fact that you are looking to grow and you just lacked some visibility over and what your strategy could look like but I'd love to understand as a bus business owner because obviously running a corporate p&l with tens of millions of dollars is very different to running a p&l with you know
six seven even eight figures right but if you're looking from a business owner's perspective what are some of the key challenges that you experience in your role so it's interesting I can actually speak from the vantage point because I used to run a nine figure p&l right yeah so before in my corporate life and I can speak a small business owner and you just have different headaches yeah right and also because I was working in a corporate environment different pressure so which would like to speak about either a small business owner or from a corporate
environment I can talk about either other I'd love to hear from a small business owner because they're very different I mean you know when I ran my Styles team and when it wasn't my money that I was playing with so I could hire if the hire didn't go to plan it's bad but it's not my cash that I was burning but as a business owner if we make a wrong decision it could stunt our growth for period of time bad decision could destroy the company correct it's completely different operating and pressure because it's also my
own money right 100% I think some of the challenges and and I talked to a lot a lot of buddies who are small business owners talk a lot of small businesses is being really clear what the priorities of the business are and sticking to them without getting distracted because you know when you own your own business you're always getting pulled so many different ways and you're always like trying to block the noise out be focused so it's being clear on the priorities are for the business and then ultimately making sure every decision you make is
align to those priorities whether it's intentional or unintentional and I would even argue potentially at a bigger level it's the same thing you get different worries and concerns but you also know as you mentioned one bad decision has a way different impact on small business it could the business it could shut the business down it could stunt it but the one right decision can pay long-term dividends as well because it it goes in inverse so it's why it's always so key to be really clear on what your priorities are and some small businesses have no
idea yeah I'm always intrigued in this I've been a business owner for pretty much all my life very similar to Luigi what made you change course from a corporate world to World of Entrepreneurship two very different worlds two very different characters from Comfort to flight or die what made you make the the change so first of I never wanted to be an entrepreneur that was never a goal never a plan my parents were entrepreneurs they came to America with absolutely nothing you know and because of that they actually went and they started a small business
a small restaurant that was super hard they they try to do that so I saw I'm like oh man I don't want to work in a restaurant 80 plus hours a week and barely make hands of meet I was like a terrible life that's not what I want let me go the corporate route because I didn't become a doctor or Laurer like they wanted me to so the corporate route even that time I still working in corporates getting paid to own your own business that's my mental belief and I learned a lot and what was
interesting was I started in 2007 my corporate career I didn't start getting the itch and until probably 2016 yeah in 2016 it was a very small age I didn't know what it was it was people say hey Marcus you're one of the youngest directors of this Fortune 500 company you run an 85 person sales Oran at this time you've been promoted every single year broken every single record won every single award how are you doing this and I'm like I don't know I just work hard I'm just a regular guy and they said you should
just write a book then I'm like that's an interesting idea so then I started looking online I'm like maybe I should write ebook now this is before ebooks were a thing it w wer as popular back then so I'm like let me just buy an online course learned how to do basically create an ebook and automate it now it's super easy but back then 2016 there wasn't as many tools available right yeah I learned how to do it my first book and I remember launching it and making 9.95 USD the first purchase like an hour
later and I my mind like exploded because in my head in my corporate career at this point I I was having business conversation sales conversation enclosing people in person right uh my parents is entrepreneurs people were coming in we took their money here a stranger online gave me money I didn't talk to sh BL and at that point I'm like this is interesting honestly you can't leave for 995 for what else could I build and I Le online courses and this is before everyone online courses so bought another program learn how to build an online
course automate everything and then I remember it took me two years to build out cuz I was still in hotel room about 100 nights a year traveling non-stop on weekends I built this online course for bdb sales people I think people want this no idea I launched it in January 2019 after two years I'm like oh this is such a waste of time I'm pretty sure no one's gonna buy this I didn't have a LinkedIn audience I didn't have really any audience I I think at the time I had about 10,000 Instagram followers Instagram has
been eh for me right and I'm like let me just kind of put a post out and see what happens I woke up made $2,000 overnight I'm like oh this is different $2,000 is much better much better I saw the opportunity because my corporate career well over a decade I'm like what else do I want to do and I I I got to this point where I I I felt like I could do more it was it even though I had a really good reputation I'm still in the training videos to this day but I
knew I could do more beyond the company and I felt like I was getting tied by leash I couldn't fully do what I impact more people so then I was strategic about it because I got a lot of equity I was part of my comp I had time and out I had pres Club that's going to happen the summertime that year I knew my stock was going to invest so I kind of timed all these kind of big in events and then I went all in in September 19 2019 and I'm like this is it
I went all in on uh just do my own thing and that was my LEAP that's been almost four years it's crazy what was that feeling like that day that you walked out the door and it was day one in your business so first thing I did was I deleted outlook on my phone my account completely opened up because I was on calls all the time and then it was the O moment what what did I just do at this point my friends and family all they saw was like here I was wearing fancy suits
and I'm flying around corporate Jets doing cool things big sales team I'm always posting pictures of me doing all these cool things I'm always a pres club they're like he's got a great life yeah like did he just throw that all away for what some little coaching business some little startup business is that the right move so I got a lot of critique a lot of haters for sure and I had people that were seconding guessing me questioning me and it was interesting last company there for almost nine years a lot of people close the
door to me you start seeing who your real supporters are see who are the supporters and and who are the reporters the people who report on you and do back so there was that o moment right after and then I was like let's get to work and then the next two weeks I'm like grinding I'm busting my tail working super hard and it was interesting because I work super hard for two weeks and my wife said how's it going cuz she had kind of give me a little space and I said oh it's amazing it's
been absolutely incredible and she's like cool what what have you been up to I have no idea and I realized for two weeks I had no idea what I was doing I had no plan as an entrepreneur cuz you have no sement of structure anymore it's all you I had all the structure before but as a creation of what done and the system is already in place to now it was white space so it was a pretty interesting time but fortunately I put a plan together and got to work and I think you've just shared
so many nuggets of gold because I think for a lot of sellers this is where they need to be looking if they're prospecting into that business owner and it's early days they're not going to have all those systems and processes built they're going to have gaps right this is where that research for me is fundamental I know by looking at your profile you have a system in place so it would be remiss of me if I'm selling to you to talk about systems and processes because you've already got that I wouldn't be talking about establish
I may be talking about optimizing right corre but I just want to go back a step because you mentioned tide by leash and one thing that I love about the content that you share you bring your personal aspect you show Family Photos what you're doing with your time outside of work how important was the decision to build a lifestyle business to actually have freedom because obviously the corporate world happened to me man it's why I left right oh yeah it's making great money but I was limited in time how important was that in your decision
to move from a corporate to starting your own thing oh it was huge and I I'll show exactly the moments that it hit me so we had a kid in January 2017 and I'm traveling all the time and it's going good and my wife works full-time but there was always this guilt because I was traveling during the week so I I felt like I was letting her down as a husband I was just being a good da I let my kid down that already felt bad but then we started uncovering that my kid has all
these food allergies so as he started getting a little bit old six mon feeding with food he'd have a reaction my wife have to rush to the hospital or go in the emergency vehicle to go to the hospital and here I am stuck in some City so if I had get on a plane it' be another four hours to get back so there's a guilt I take over and stuff but still it wouldn't alleviate that right and that really bother me I I want to be a lifestyle business because there was things I was missing
I knew I I couldn't do pickups to school drop school any type of school thing that have even though he was young time I can do those things oh I hope it's on a Friday while I'm in town so when I started my business it was cool but the exact moment it really hit me this was the right decision I remember it was about one month after so it was end of October and at this point my kid's pretty young he's like two and a half years old at this point and I remember normally he
falls gets hurt runs him M and the moment it made sense because I was like kids like moms that's probably what it is that's a story I told myself but that moment end October he fell start crying he ran to me and I realized at that point because I had been home for the last four to six weeks every single day we had a different bond that was deep a different level because I was actually there that's when I was like that was a right move I'm so glad I did it now I can actually
be the dad I want to be be the husband I want to be and have zero restrictions as long as I can build this life and fight through the hard parts of being an entrepreneur yeah boom that's not just powerful but I think again for a lot of people that start their own business that was my motivation I needed that freedom and flexibility and if we tie that back to you buying a CRM potentially there could be a connection to say you're not getting what you need is actually pulling you back into the business and
you want to pull yourself out of the business that's 100% that's why I always like to ask I try to find that out but mate look we could be literally talking for another hour whenever I talk to you man I'm just like it so connected I just want to say mate before we wrap up thank you man your contribution you make to our community is incredible and we will drop in our show notes where you can find Marcus he drops content pretty much I think every day do you do seven days a week on yeah
seven days a week typically 12 pieces of content a week we're about to ramp it to 19 a week I do One A Day man SC we're scaling up baby we're scaling up Dave we're gonna have to our content just to keep up with Marcus but I just want to say thanks honestly I say this with a lot of gratitude because there are pieces of content that you share that get me it it stops me and especially that one that you shared recently with your young man and it really stopped me and I'm like you
know what he's right yeah um it just makes you kind of change your perspective and get your thinking a little bit differently and that is the content that I feel is the most valuable out there right so thanks for what you do for our community man thanks for being on our podcast Dave do you want to say anything before we move into the next segment no thank you so much Marcus I reckon probably your hardest sale being similar cultures to Luigi and I is how did you sell this to your mom and dad when you
were going from the corporate world to entrepreneur but we may save that for another episode well we'll we show all the proof you don't build up so I'll tell you biggest sale of your life oh oh yeah oh next to selling the wife thank you mate thank you so much
