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Welcome to the Revenue Rebels podcast, hosted by Alan Zhao, Co-Founder of Warmly.ai.
We feature B2B SaaS revenue leaders who have challenged traditional methods to achieve remarkable results.
In each episode we cut through the fluff and dive deep into modern tactics used to achieve success: intent-based outreach, social selling, B2B Netflix, video marketing, warm calling, customer led sales, influencer marketing and more.
On the show you can expect episodes with those who create demand - marketing experts, partnerships gurus and social media superstars and those who capture demand - outbound and inbound sales experts, leaders, and practitioners.
Our goal is to shine a light on modern, effective and unique revenue generating methods and equip you with the insights you need to unlock your next strategic advantage.
We're huge proponents of signal-based selling and signal-based, data-driven B2B go-to-market as a whole. Ask us what "Autonomous Revenue Orchestration" means and we'll be more than happy to shine a light on our vision of what the field of B2B revenue will become.
For more content, check out our YouTube page and LinkedIn newsletter!
Vince Beese: [00:00:00] I lucked out and I got my first sales leadership role at a company called LivePerson. I was working at AT& T. One of my partners was, went to this startup. He tapped me on the shoulder. He said, why don't you come over here and help lead sales? It's LivePerson, the 10 person company and startup in Manhattan, right?
Vince Beese: Eventually became. Huge. We went public in 14 months. Imagine you just got off a call and it was not the greatest call, right? It actually was shitty and you want to blow off some steam. And sometimes when you work remote, well, who are you going to blow off steam to? Your dog? I mean, you could, but your dog's not a really good communicator.
Vince Beese: How as a seller, can I take advantage of AI? There's so many tools and so many things break it down for me. And the basics, part of what we're going to do out of this, uh, hub is selling community. Is education, man, like I want to bring in experts, whether via zoom or in person at this case to educate our members on here's the five things in the five tools I [00:01:00] use.
Vince Beese: And here's what they actually do. And here's how you can actually use them.
Alan Zhao: Welcome to the Revenue Rebels podcast brought to you by Warmly. On this show, we cut straight through the fluff and dive deep into the specific tactics that B2B revenue leaders across sales and marketing are using to find success in today's environment.
Alan Zhao: I'm your host, Alan Zhao.
Alan Zhao: All right. Today we have on here, Vince Beze. He's the founder and CEO of Sales at Scale, which is a B2B sales consultancy for VC backed startups, as well as founder and CEO of Sales HQ, which is a co selling co working community. For high performing sellers and sales teams, Vince has 25 years of experience in senior sales leadership positions at companies like Meta and Sugar CRM, as well as scaling for companies to successful exit today, we're going to be talking about building a sales community and developing yourself in a remote environment, Vince welcome.
Alan Zhao: Thanks. Appreciate it. Great to be on the show. [00:02:00] Let's get into a quick background about yourself and we'll dive right into the topics.
Vince Beese: I have an interesting kind of path to a sales career, right? I wanted to be in broadcasting. I went to the university of Maryland and I thought I was going to be a sports broadcaster.
Vince Beese: At least that's what I wanted to, to realize how hard it was to break into the industry, had some limited success. It was a metro traffic reporter and a DJ at an alternative radio station. And then, you know, I just by happenstance, I think a lot of listeners out there, I kind of fell into sales, right? I was at a company.
Vince Beese: They were starting a new electronic publishing division. They needed somebody that did like a bunch of different things. 1 of which was sales. And I jumped in, this is like mid nineties and learned about online and bringing publications online, but also then selling advertising of all things, right? Never done that before in my life.
Vince Beese: So I kind of fell into it and loved the whole business aspect of it. You know, it was like, really what makes the company really move is sales. And then fast forward, [00:03:00] I lucked out and I got my first. Sales leadership role at a company called live person because of a relationship I had. This is the theme.
Vince Beese: We'll continue to talk about building my network and my relationship. I was working at at& t. One of my partners was went to the startup. He tapped me on the shoulder said, why don't you come over here and help lead sales? It's. Live person, the 10 person company and startup in Manhattan, right, eventually became huge.
Vince Beese: We went public in 14 months. So I got my bug and start in the startup world going from AT& T with hundreds of thousands employees to a 10 person startup in Manhattan. And I saw the difference. And from that point on, I was startups for the rest of my career. I saw the difference. I knew that was a better fit for me.
Vince Beese: And so, uh, that really launched my kind of startup career and really my sales leadership career. And then fast forward to, as you mentioned, you know, four more exits, um, and, uh, countless ramping [00:04:00] up building sales organizations. And to today where I do a couple of things that are very much related, which is, as you mentioned, sales at scale, where I help early stage, stage founders and leaders.
Vince Beese: With their go to market execution, right? And then with that, I do it inside of a place called sales HQ, which is a co selling community for high performing sellers and sales teams. So very much related. And I know we'll, we'll dive into that. And my firm belief over my entire career of building your network and building your communities that you're part of, which is really going to propel your career.
Vince Beese: And success, quite frankly.
Alan Zhao: You talked about building community and building a network. I'm sure it was very different back in the day. If you had to start today to build your community and network in this remote world, how would you do it? Well, there's, there's so many
Vince Beese: great tools. And by the way, Alan, I was doing some research on my own LinkedIn profile, and I was able to extract all my contacts at LinkedIn, like anyone can, and then you can sort it by the date that [00:05:00] you created your relationships.
Vince Beese: So it was 2004 and, uh, John Squire, a guy I'm still connected to today, was my first contact in, I think, April of 2004. So showing you how you can start your, your network, showing you how you can build these relationships. I met John probably 2002, we connected on LinkedIn, already have known each other. And we continue to relationship.
Vince Beese: And so one of the ways, if you're just getting started, LinkedIn is the best platform for this to begin your network. Right? I give you an example. My daughter is 23 years old. She's been out of college for about a year. She didn't have any kind of, uh, network really outside of her college and high school friends.
Vince Beese: What did I suggest? Go to LinkedIn, build your profile, and then start inviting people. Look who I'm connected to, right? Utilize my, my network. So as you're out there and you're starting your, to build your network, use the, your friend's network to build your network and then go from [00:06:00] there. And then strategically pick and choose who you have things in common with that you want to invite to join your network and then actually meet with them sincerely, authentically, meaning you have a topic you want to talk to them about, or you want to share something, or you're asking for something.
Vince Beese: That's what you want to do with your network is is take advantage of it, right? Share with them, get something in return. I personally started doing again 2 to 3 coffee meetings a week. And it's people on my LinkedIn profile that I either have never met with before or it's My ongoing relationships as well.
Vince Beese: So LinkedIn by far is your number one platform and then
Alan Zhao: branch out from that. Go from there. Well, it's becoming one of the top social networks and it's really breaking down the barriers between work and personal. So it's very easy to connect with somebody and then just say, Hey, what's up? So your posts, I like them.
Alan Zhao: Here's some of my stuff. You built your own public track record resume of all the things in your thoughts. [00:07:00] And so it's, it's very easy to know more about a person before you connect.
Vince Beese: And that's the thing. I mean, don't get so caught up in, I have to post, I have to post, I have to write articles. Read some of the good, follow people that you respect and you admire and comment on their posts or just read them.
Vince Beese: You don't have to in one day go from a thousand. Connections to 10, 000 connections, or I have to post four times a day because this person does for ease into it. And just, it's, there's a lot going on there. So that's to me, the first form of building your network. But also within LinkedIn, you're going to build little communities in that.
Vince Beese: What I mean by that is like, If you're an SDR, maybe you have your group of SDRs that you have a side conversation with and created a channel with, whether it be on Slack or within LinkedIn, because you can do obviously group communication there as well. So start forming your little groups that are building these little communities as well and collaborate.
Vince Beese: Like we do that on text messaging all the time. I've got numerous different groups on my. Phone, [00:08:00] friends, colleagues, business people that these are all micro communities that you're building, right? It's collaboration. It's sharing and learning from each other, right?
Alan Zhao: Sometimes I feel like you can actually build an even bigger community if you do it remotely, and if you do it correctly, because of how quickly you can enter these communities, how easy Slack has made it.
Alan Zhao: So how about developing yourself remotely? If you were starting out, what specific resources would you use? Someone who's looking
Vince Beese: to get in sales or newly into sales, something like that. If you had to start today. Where would you go? I would say that I think the most important thing if you're looking for a job or you're starting a new job is, is, is choose the company or more importantly, the leader you're going to work for wisely.
Vince Beese: That leader you work for really should help mentor you and help you grow. So questions like talk, talk to me about what the onboarding training looks like. The process, how long is it? [00:09:00] What's the detail to it? Talk to me about what ongoing training internally looks like for people in my role, talk to me about my career path in my role.
Vince Beese: So number one is. Choose your, the, the person you are going to report to or report up to more importantly than the product you're selling. It's the people that you're reporting to are going to help you nurture you along. That's number one. Then outside of the company that you work for and choose, right?
Vince Beese: You've got to challenge yourself to continue to expand your horizons and your learning. So we mentioned it and I'll mention it again. LinkedIn is a great way to do that. If you're an SDR. Follow other SDRs that you respect or people that write about SDRs or BDRs or inside sales or account executives.
Vince Beese: Follow that and learn and learn with the different sources of education. Well, um, you know, whether it be white papers or webinars or podcasts like this, that people are following and dedicate a portion of your week, [00:10:00] every week to continue with personal and professional development, and then lastly, we'll get into this, find your community, you know, I'm part of pavilion.
Vince Beese: Alan, I know you're part of pavilion. I've got an executive coach and I'm also part of sales HQ. Thank you. Start finding your niche where it's, where it's your people as well. Remote, absolutely build from there. And then let's segment down from that to get to a local level as well. So you can start doing things in person.
Vince Beese: There's numerous things you can look into. Meetup was a great platform before I haven't looked in as much of a lot of local kind of events and conferences you can look into, but there's lots of other ways you can get involved locally as well.
Alan Zhao: Some new people may not know the benefit of. Of meeting up in person and building community in person.
Alan Zhao: Maybe they haven't been around long enough in their working career to do so. You have an interesting take, which is that sellers in a hybrid environment will outperform sellers who are a hundred [00:11:00] percent remote. Or a hundred percent in office. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah. And it's not
Vince Beese: just my belief.
Vince Beese: It's a fact. Um, matter of fact, a friend yesterday shared with me a study that came out from, I think HubSpot puts out a weekly email. And one of the statistics they said was hybrid sellers were 28 percent more likely to meet their sales goals. Then both a hundred percent remote employees or a hundred percent in office.
Vince Beese: And isn't that interesting, right? So you're 28 percent more likely to hit your goals if you're in a hybrid and what is a hybrid? It means some portion of your week, you're in an environment, either your own office or a shared office with others like yourself. Right? So I also know from personal experience of running sales organizations that That my teams that were either in a hybrid or 100 percent in office, 100 percent of the time outperformed those that were 100 percent remote.
Vince Beese: So I know we're [00:12:00] all in love with remote and I'm not against it by any means, but I'm saying that you would be surprised if you have been 100 percent remote for a long period of time to be reminded what it was like to be in an environment with other people that do what you do. I think you would be, you'll find that you'll be re energized.
Vince Beese: I think you'll find that you'll, your creativity levels will go up because your collaboration will go up and just the feeling of actually sitting across from somebody and talking about something. For example, imagine you just got off a call and it was not the greatest call, right? It actually was shitty.
Vince Beese: And you want to blow off some steam. And sometimes when you work remote, well, who are you going to blow off steam to your dog? I mean, you could, but your dog's not really good communicator. Imagine you go grab a cup of coffee with somebody in this hybrid environment and you end up like, Oh man, I just had a shitty call.
Vince Beese: It's mentally rewarding as well. And besides that, when you're in an environment where you're meeting other people face to face, lots of things come out. You [00:13:00] sell to the e commerce vertical? Oh, I sell to the e commerce vertical. I didn't know you sold to that. Who are some of the accounts you're going after?
Vince Beese: You get to that level of collaboration, but I just go back to it again. It's like most people in sales tend to be on the extrovert line, right? Whether it's full extrovert or slightly extrovert, you're typical. So you enjoy this interaction. Like I enjoy talking to you right now at remote, but I wish we were sitting right next to each other from a podcast, because I guarantee you our eye contact.
Vince Beese: And context and everything would change a little bit by having that face to face interaction. And those of you that are out there that started the sales role, probably in the last five years ago, you probably have never been on, on site of the client meeting before. And I have to tell you, being on site in a conference room of all the players on the client side, first sporadic people on zoom distractions on it, you've got their full attention for an hour or 90 minutes.
Vince Beese: [00:14:00] There is, if you can get an onsite with a client versus zoom, you better jump all over that. If that's part of your business, your mid market and above, because there, for those of you that haven't done it, it's a huge difference. The relationship you build that the awareness and the actual, um, kind of, uh, dedication to that meeting, like the focus of that meeting.
Vince Beese: It's just a different, it's a different level, right?
Alan Zhao: If you're a fan of the Revenue Rebels podcast, please leave us a review on Spotify and Apple podcast. Your support goes a long way to helping us bring on more amazing guests. Thank you. Trade offs as well. I mean, there's nothing to hide behind once you turn off Zoom.
Alan Zhao: You can go back to your TV or whatever you're doing, but you 100 percent aware.
Vince Beese: Well, you know, like the client side, they're not looking at their phone while you're in the room. You're not looking at the phone when you're in the room. You're focused intently on that. And don't think you're not building that relationship a lot better while you're in that.
Vince Beese: And then when the meeting breaks, what are you going to do? So how do you think we did it? You're seeing their eyes. [00:15:00] You're looking into their eyes and asking these questions, which is a different one. You're on the zoom and you're like, yeah, it was a good meeting. They're ready off to the next thing or have to run to the bathroom or whatever it is.
Vince Beese: It's All these example items I'm trying to say is, and again, I'm not against remote. Remote is here to stay. The tools we have are phenomenal, right? Like, all that stuff's great. But when you have an opportunity to meet a person, whether it's on a personal level or a colleague or a peer or a mentor, you have the ability to meet this person in person, go for it.
Vince Beese: And especially client meetings, because the advantages far outweigh being remote.
Alan Zhao: How do you maximize your time remotely? If people who are hybrid outperform people who are 100 percent one or the other,
Vince Beese: I've seen kind of, to me, what remote has been great for, for me personally, in how I. I think increase my efficiency and productivity is I, I dedicate portions of my day or, or a day of week to do the things I need more quiet time, [00:16:00] like writing potentially for me.
Vince Beese: I like to do that first drafts by myself with not a lot of distraction. So for me personally, I might use a day or two a week that I will stay in a kind of isolated remote location to do those quiet things. But when I need the energy to pick me up, I'll go now into sales HQ and get the energy to do maybe for me, it's, you know, it's following up on calls.
Vince Beese: It's doing tours of the facility, stuff like that. I think there's this distinction between the stuff that you do well in a quiet environment and the stuff you do well in more of a
Alan Zhao: So coming back to sales HQ, the co selling community that you started, if someone were to join as a member, how do you envision them spending their days and maximizing their time through this program?
Vince Beese: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think we'll learn more as we open the doors, but how I envision it today is I like to say this, the difference between like us and a, we work in other coworking places that those places [00:17:00] you go in there and you go into a glass box.
Vince Beese: Yeah. With your organization, your company, your team, and you tend to play inside your box at sales HQ. The floor is the playground. So my point is how they're going to maximize their time is that we're going to do what we used to do, which is you're going to do your calls and you're going to do your demos and you're going to do your interactions out on the floor.
Vince Beese: And why? Why is that great? Back in the day, and it wasn't that long ago when you were a new sales rep, when you came in, you sat down, you would sit next to potentially someone's doing your role that I experienced. And how did you learn? You listened to what they were saying. You listened to their calls and you picked up on things.
Vince Beese: And then you asked them after their call, Hey, that was an interesting, uh, response you gave to that objection. Like, did it, you know, you learn so much more by sitting next to somebody that's doing what you're doing in real time. And I think that's the thing that, man, it's hard to even measure, but we know for a [00:18:00] fact.
Vince Beese: And anyone listening out there that's probably nodding their heads, that's been on a sales floor and a sales environment says, yup, you can't get that remote. I don't care how many gone calls you've recorded. You just can't get the same level of attention and, you know, real time kind of learning you get from sitting from other people on the floor.
Vince Beese: And what's interesting about sales HQ, it's not just people from your own team, which it could be. It's people from other teams that might be selling something completely different from you, but you're learning little tidbits from them as well. And then maybe you get up to take a break because we need breaks and the monotony, and you go to the water cooler and get a cup of coffee and you collaborate on that.
Vince Beese: Like that's real time. Collaboration, that's real time relationship building, that's real time networking, right? It's those things that I'm telling you now that I'm launching this and I'm back into the office myself. I say to my wife every day, I go, God, I need sales HQ more than probably anyone else because I'm sitting right now in my, my, it's a nice office.
Vince Beese: This is my basement. This is it. There's nobody behind me. [00:19:00] There's nobody on the side of me. I'm that type of person. I seek. Creativity. I seek, uh, you know, feedback from people on, Hey, I got this idea. What do you think about that? I want people to punch holes in it. That's how you get better to get back to what you asked me before is like, how do I improve?
Vince Beese: Well, don't believe your own bullshit. Go test it on people. If I'm in a room and sales HQ with other sales, people in sales leaders, and I think I've got a great idea, I can pull three of them aside and say, Hey, I got this idea for this new thing, blah, blah, blah. It does this. Do you think that's interesting?
Vince Beese: Would you use that? You don't know how many times now I get people that are in the software world who are authentically saying to me, I'm not trying to sell your people anything. I just love to come in to your group. We've got this new product or this new feature, and I just want to get their feedback.
Vince Beese: And now we have this kind of a lab, right? So it's not just a community. It's also a hub for sharing ideas and sharing, you know, how, whether it be tools and so on and so forth, uh, are getting absorbed in the sales community. And [00:20:00] one last thing I'll be quiet is the number one question I get, you probably hear in your podcast.
Vince Beese: All the time it's like, how as a seller can I take advantage of AI? There's so many tools and so many things. Break it down for me in the basics. Part of what we're going to do out of this, uh, hub, the selling community is education, man. Like I want to bring in experts, whether via zoom or in person at this case.
Vince Beese: To educate our members on here's the five things in the five tools I use. And here's what they actually do. And here's how you can actually use them because other than chat, GPT and some other things, it's kind of hard to really keep up with what's going on out there. It's moving at such a fast pace. And I think that this sort of environment, this sort of a community in general, it really helps with that.
Vince Beese: Right. Education, what's going on, because whether you're in your early twenties or in your fifties, if you don't keep up with what's going on in technology these days, you're, you're toast. You're done. Right.
Alan Zhao: Absolutely. I think that's, that's definitely one [00:21:00] of the benefits of a remote environment is that many jobs are remote.
Alan Zhao: And so you have the ability to take meetings remotely, which means that other people from other companies could potentially even listen in. And so you're taking the best of two worlds is you're combining the remote meetings that you're having with clients. And then you're also creating this community around that.
Alan Zhao: So you can cross pollinate some of the best practices, just like you said, best practices, best sales objections, handling practices, and all the while building a community. So that's fantastic.
Vince Beese: And like, let's say you are a hundred percent. Remote worker, which are a lot, and I'm in the Raleigh area, uh, whether you're an individual contributor or a leader that doesn't have a team here, we're going to replicate things.
Vince Beese: Like if you're interested in joining, we'll do a love morning stand up like you would, we'll do celebrations with a real, a real gong and a real bell, not emojis on a slack channel. So if you're want to celebrate that big deal that you signed, we'll have specific times of the day. That you can celebrate that we're going to do fun stuff.
Vince Beese: Like sales is fun, man. Like, [00:22:00] and not that it's not fun working remote, but it's more fun. It's like watching people on the amusement rides first being on the amusement rides. You know what I'm saying? Like, Oh, that rollercoaster looks cool, but wouldn't the rollercoaster look a lot, be a lot more fun if you actually rode the rollercoaster, I would use a sports analogy, but I'll be honest with you.
Vince Beese: The way production is for football games and TV. Like it's actually a better experience to watch football games on TV sometimes and freezing cold in the stands where you can barely see the play 50 different angles for a replay. So I stay away from that analogy.
Alan Zhao: Are there people in your career that you'd like to give a shout out to?
Vince Beese: Oh my gosh. Well, he, he, he might not be listening because interestingly enough, the, the, the gentleman that got me my start really in my career is Scott Cohen. Uh, he was, uh, uh, he was at this company called 24 seven media. That was one of my partners when I was at AT& T. He's the gentleman that left [00:23:00] 24 seven media and went to live person at a senior level position and said, Hey, I think you would be a great sales leader here.
Vince Beese: I'm like, well, Scott, I've never really even run a sales organization. He goes, yeah, but I've worked with you. I see what I see the characteristics and what you're about. He took a chance on me. I mean, like I didn't know shit about sales leadership. Right. I was managing processes and partnerships, but I didn't manage a team and this guy took a chance on me and launched my career.
Vince Beese: And, uh, yeah, Scott Scott Cohen. If you're out there, man, thank you for giving me my start. And that's how it happens out there. If you don't have. If you want to be a sales leader, but by the way, be careful what you wish for it. Cause there's a lot that comes along with that. You didn't have to be a VP of sales somewhere.
Vince Beese: You have to show the characteristics that you not just do your job today. You've got to do the job you want to be. So if you want to be a leader, be a leader in your own role, [00:24:00] be a mentor to your own people that are doing what you do. And trust me, it will come out right. It just does. So if it weren't for Scott, I wouldn't have never gotten to the sales career, you know?
Vince Beese: Um, and, uh, you know, I, I still look back and one of the things he said to me, it was the funniest thing he said, he goes, Vince, what you need to remember about sales is the world stops rotating on its axi if we don't sell anything, that's how important sales is. I'm like, wow, that's pretty profound statement that we as sellers are the most important thing in the world.
Vince Beese: But it was, Look, it was exaggerated on purpose. It's like, if you think about it, Alan, right? What's the most important thing and we, and at any company, it's, if you're not growing, you're dying, right? And typically growth comes from the efforts of a lot of people, but sales is a big component of that. And I think what we're doing now in the last 18 months is recognizing the fact that companies need to get the profitability like we always used to.
Vince Beese: That [00:25:00] was the main goal of a company was to get the profitability and growth as fast as possible. And I think, again, I think we're all waking up and realizing the importance of, of, of. salespeople, the process and how you go about your business. So
Alan Zhao: yeah, salespeople I've heard from one LinkedIn post I saw recently is the backbone of the American economy.
Alan Zhao: So it is no joke. They produce and we wouldn't be here as a company for warmly if we didn't have them. So definitely see where you're coming from with this. Any last words of advice for our listeners?
Vince Beese: I would, I would say my biggest piece of advice is work on building your network every single day. It's not just, I don't mean by just adding people to your LinkedIn network, which is important specifically.
Vince Beese: But work on your network every day because it's your network that you build in your early 20s and advance [00:26:00] your career. That's, that's going to help you all along the way, whether it's advancement to a new role or finding a new role or learning about something new. If you're going to spend Time to really help yourself.
Vince Beese: It's building your network. And then second piece tied to that, which is really find your community. And I don't mean it just from a work standpoint, outside of work within work, find your different communities that you are involved in. Cause again, it goes back to helping with your health. It goes back to helping you from professionally.
Vince Beese: There's communities, it's really strong, you know, and I give the example of my, my, uh, my daughter was part of a tech layoff and, uh, just did a simple post on LinkedIn for some help. And you know what I mean? And it didn't happen. I've been working on this for quite some time, right? That I recognize, Oh my God, that's really kind of these people to react to.
Vince Beese: Some of these people know me. Some of these people don't know me, but they know that. They probably look at my profile and see that I share, I'm very [00:27:00] giving. And let's see if we can get back to Vince now for his daughter to find an extra career, so spend time building your network authentically and genuinely for sure.
Alan Zhao: LinkedIn has done a great job of creating a giving community. Definitely see that. How can people find out more about you?
Vince Beese: The great thing about my name Vince Beze is there's not a lot of Beze's on LinkedIn So I would say the first and foremost is go to LinkedIn send me an invite Um love to connect with people out there, especially if you want to network and really collaborate.
Vince Beese: That's number one um, if you're local in the triangle, which is Um the Raleigh Durham area you can find us on saleshq. co Or from a professional standpoint, it's sales at scale. com. Those are the three best ways to find me.
Alan Zhao: Great events. Well, it's great having you on here. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about community and how to grow your sales network and up level.
Alan Zhao: Thanks, Alan.
Vince Beese: Appreciate it,
Alan Zhao: [00:28:00] man.