Product Startup Podcast Episode 141: Build a Repeatable Product Sales Process

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a 30-year sales process expert on how to build an easy system

00:00:05 Kevin Mako: to start selling your product to wholesalers, distributors, and retail stores.

00:00:13 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,

00:00:22 Narrator: product developers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial

00:00:30 Narrator: idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business.

00:00:40 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses.

00:00:47 Narrator: Now, on to the show.

00:00:50 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Scott Brogan to the show. Scott is the founder of Company Expert, a sales process consultancy that has worked with over

00:00:58 Kevin Mako: 100 emerging brands. He has spent over 30 years in sales, including working for seven. Fortune 500 companies in sales capacities.

00:01:06 Kevin Mako: Today, Scott is going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can start to build a process around identifying

00:01:12 Kevin Mako: partner companies to sell to, preparing how to give your pitch, and how to improve your sales process over time to rinse and repeat. Now, on to the episode.

00:01:22 Kevin Mako: Hey, Scott, welcome to the show.

00:01:23 Kevin Mako: Thanks. Thanks for having me, Kevin. I'm excited to be here. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show today to talk about sales, but specifically

00:01:30 Kevin Mako: about pounding the pavement. How do you actually get the bowl rolling to start making your first sales as a new hardware brand. Whether you're putting your first product

00:01:39 Kevin Mako: to market or you're a smaller brand that's releasing a new product to market, at some point, you'll come across the concept of selling your product B2B, either through wholesalers,

00:01:47 Kevin Mako: distributors, resellers, et cetera. There is a science and a process that's worked for well over

00:01:53 Kevin Mako: 100 years, if not further, that really can engineer that to make it work well and work in your favor, even if it's your first time ever trying to sell your product to one

00:02:02 Kevin Mako: of these entities. So Scott today here is to talk about that process. He's quite literally written the processes on this and has all sorts of things in and around the space.

00:02:11 Kevin Mako: But I'll leave it to you, Scott. How did you get to where you are today?

00:02:13 Scott Brogan: And what are you working on with sales processes now? Yeah. So thanks again for having me here today. And I'm excited to talk with everybody.

00:02:20 Scott Brogan: And I know when you think of the topic sales, it's very intimidating for a lot of people. It's like giving a public speech, right?

00:02:26 Scott Brogan: Some people would rather be at a funeral then to get up and talk in front of people. But once you build a system, a process in place,

00:02:33 Scott Brogan: it becomes part of your conversations when you have your discussions with your prospects and it becomes part of the way you do business.

00:02:41 Scott Brogan: So what we're going to do today is really talk about what is that process, what is that system to put in place to make you feel at ease in having consultative

00:02:50 Scott Brogan: discussions with your clients and something that I've done for the last 30 years and working with engineering companies, professional service firms, product firms,

00:03:01 Scott Brogan: and really helping coach them to being successful at having conversations with the clients because if you want to be

00:03:08 Scott Brogan: successful, you have to be yourself, but at the same time, you have to be consultative. You have to be a solution driver.

00:03:17 Scott Brogan: You have to try to identify problems and help your client solve problems. And that's what you do every day. Sales is not, it's just an extension of a lot of what you do every day.

00:03:27 Scott Brogan: And I'm here to kind of talk about how you can kind of build that

00:03:30 Kevin Mako: practice into your own conversations with your prospect.

00:03:34 Kevin Mako: That sounds great, Scott. Much appreciated. It's such an important topic because it's one of the very powerful avenues to sell product.

00:03:40 Kevin Mako: When you first think of selling a new invention idea, one of the first things that comes to mind is, okay, well, I'm going to sell direct a customer via Shopify, website, whatever,

00:03:48 Kevin Mako: or I'm going to sell via Kickstarter, Indiegogo, via crowdfunding campaign, or I'm going to partner with another brand and they're going to sell it.

00:03:54 Kevin Mako: There's another big avenue, which actually takes up the vast majority of physical product sales in this world, and that's selling.

00:04:00 Kevin Mako: to wholesalers, distributors, resellers, et cetera. There's a number of different names, and depending on the category that you're in,

00:04:06 Kevin Mako: they may be coined differently, but it all comes down to selling to a business,

00:04:11 Kevin Mako: another entity that then takes your product and sells it onwards. It's a number of different deal structures there, but the point is, how do you get in front of these customers?

00:04:18 Kevin Mako: And how do you get them to buy your product versus somebody else's product? And that's what we're here to talk about today in terms of process.

00:04:25 Kevin Mako: So, Scott, let's get going from the early phase. How do we start building that plan or what do you really want to?

00:04:30 Kevin Mako: start with when you're coming up with the idea of selling the product

00:04:35 Scott Brogan: to another business to business entity. Right. And the partners that you just described, we call it a leverage play because

00:04:42 Scott Brogan: you're really leveraging the credibility of those partners, right? Because you've got a new product you're launching. You don't have a brand yet.

00:04:50 Scott Brogan: So you really leverage your brand of the partners that you're trying to sell to. And it's a great way to kind of accelerate your growth very quickly

00:04:57 Scott Brogan: until you establish that brand and be able to go out and directly sell, it's a great way to kind of jumpstop your business.

00:05:05 Scott Brogan: So one of the things you really have to think about, and I would say this for virtually everything across your business, is you've got to start with a goal. What's the

00:05:13 Scott Brogan: purpose of making the call? Who do you want to reach, right? So what are the goals that you want to achieve? How much do you want in product sales?

00:05:21 Scott Brogan: What do you want to do for building a relationship? What's the goal that you have in the outreach. I hate cold call.

00:05:28 Scott Brogan: I absolutely hate call call because most of the time they don't add value. They're poorly structured. They're not well thought out. And I'm talking

00:05:37 Scott Brogan: with somebody that doesn't understand my business. And what we're trying to do is to turn that on a test, right?

00:05:42 Scott Brogan: And for you to have a constructive call, a call that can add value, and the client knows why you're calling them.

00:05:49 Scott Brogan: And it really starts out with having a purpose of the call, right? Why are you call. So you've got to write down your purpose, your goals that you want to achieve, and then

00:05:59 Scott Brogan: you've got to really spend some time in thinking about who do I want to call, like what type of companies do I want to call?

00:06:07 Scott Brogan: Because the conversation for one company is going to be totally different than a conversation for the next. And clearly, as a salesperson, you really want to understand

00:06:16 Scott Brogan: the companies. You want to understand who the competitors are. You want to understand who they

00:06:21 Scott Brogan: distribute through, you want to understand their strengths and weaknesses, some opportunities and threats, but really having a conversation with them that is well

00:06:30 Scott Brogan: informed before you even make the call. So understand who your target market is. What is that collection of type of companies that you want to go after?

00:06:40 Scott Brogan: So think about the technical term, it's pharmacics, but the size of the company, are they a distributor, are they a retailer, what's the

00:06:49 Scott Brogan: revenue the company is? Where is the company located. So identifying that collective group of companies that you believe your message is

00:06:58 Scott Brogan: going to best resonate with. That's your target market. So what are those group of companies that you want to approach with a goal that you put in mind?

00:07:07 Scott Brogan: And once you've identified the companies, you really have to talk about the who. Who within those companies should you be calling?

00:07:14 Scott Brogan: You're not going to be getting any decisions out of the IT department, right? So who within those

00:07:21 Scott Brogan: companies are the key influences or decision makers that are going to purchase your product that you just developed, for example.

00:07:30 Scott Brogan: So you've got to identify the right individuals and you need to kind of document what you think their pain points are. Why is your product going to appeal to

00:07:39 Scott Brogan: them? What are some objections you think you may get to the sale of your product? So really,

00:07:45 Scott Brogan: you've got your goal, you've got your collection of companies or target market. And then within the target market, who are the two or three individuals that

00:07:55 Scott Brogan: are going to have influence on the purchase of your product? And remember, there are multiple in B2B sales, typically a B2B sales

00:08:03 Scott Brogan: for larger companies is upwards of seven people that are involved in a purchasing process.

00:08:10 Scott Brogan: So you have to kind of identify what are the ones that I need to reach out with out to. And it's not just the CEO. It's not just the purchasing manager.

00:08:19 Kevin Mako: You've got to identify who are those key influence? And that's critical because you've got to kind of shape your message for each one of those influences.

00:08:28 Kevin Mako: That's interesting that you mentioned that there's generally seven key individuals to complete a purchase decision within, you know, a typical distributor,

00:08:38 Kevin Mako: wholesaler, that type of an organization.

00:08:40 Kevin Mako: So for somebody who's trying to put this information together, first of all, building out their goal, obviously, that's something they can do internally, they can write it down.

00:08:47 Kevin Mako: You've got a ton of resources that we'll talk about towards the end of the show on how to actually build out these goals and strategies.

00:08:53 Kevin Mako: But just in simple terms, to move forward, if you're looking at figuring out who the companies are and figuring out who the people are, this is generally just done via Google.

00:09:01 Scott Brogan: There's not really special tools or instruments you need between Google and LinkedIn. You can probably access at least the basic version of a lot of the information that you're

00:09:09 Scott Brogan: talking about here. Yeah. And I think the easiest way to look at it is think of you going for an interview with a company.

00:09:15 Scott Brogan: You're doing a lot of the same thing you should be doing if you were interviewing the company. All of this stuff is available. You can go on LinkedIn.

00:09:24 Scott Brogan: You can go on Google.

00:09:25 Kevin Mako: You can go on Class Door to find out a little bit about the culture of the company. But all of the things you would do if you're going for an interview, you'd do the same thing

00:09:33 Kevin Mako: and get prepared for that call with a client. That's a great insight and an easy way that anyone with your hardware product can start doing this preliminary research.

00:09:42 Kevin Mako: So, Scott, let's assume that we've done the research. We've identified the targets. We know what companies we want to go after, at least in the beginning.

00:09:48 Kevin Mako: You can, and here's the other thing about this as well. This could be a process that's built over time.

00:09:52 Kevin Mako: You don't have to do this and have your list completed overnight and expect that that's your full and final list that you're going to sell to.

00:09:59 Kevin Mako: Start with your first 10 or your first 20, get used to the process of doing research and continue to increase the quality of research as you go and learn from prior things that

00:10:08 Kevin Mako: are happening to develop your, essentially your CRM system, your customer relationship management system.

00:10:14 Kevin Mako: One way or another, even if you're starting just on a notepad, you're building a set of data about prospective customers that improves and is added to

00:10:21 Scott Brogan: over time. So let's assume we have at least our starter list. We've got a bunch of people that we want to reach out to.

00:10:26 Scott Brogan: How do you approach the next steps of getting in front of those folks?

00:10:31 Scott Brogan: Yeah. So, and this is obviously the most challenging aspect because people generally don't like co-calls and there are specific

00:10:40 Scott Brogan: strategies you would use in dealing with administrative systems, leaving voicemail messages and things of that nature.

00:10:47 Scott Brogan: I think the most important thing to remember is the people that you're reaching out to, it's part of their job to really

00:10:55 Scott Brogan: understand what products are available. If you've got the next greatest product and you ignore that and it goes to a competitor,

00:11:03 Scott Brogan: that's not a sign of success for the person who didn't take that call of yours. So part of their role, part of their job is to find out what new products are available.

00:11:14 Scott Brogan: But part of your role in being successful is how do you position that product within that

00:11:20 Scott Brogan: client's portfolio or relative to other complementary products or some people could consider competitive products within the portfolio.

00:11:30 Scott Brogan: So if you're selling a comparable product, well, why is it different than the one they already have?

00:11:35 Scott Brogan: What's the compelling reason that I should listen to your story because I've already got one of these? So you've got to be able to answer those type of questions.

00:11:46 Scott Brogan: And the only way that you can do that is do the research that we talked about. But clearly having a strong and compelling proposition to say,

00:11:54 Scott Brogan: I realize you've got this product. I think there's some other product. I think the reason why you want my product is because it complements

00:12:02 Scott Brogan: this offering or because it fills a niche where I

00:12:05 Kevin Mako: I think this other product doesn't fill. So thinking strategically, if you were sitting in their feet and somebody gave you a call

00:12:13 Kevin Mako: and selling their product, how would you put that product within their portfolio? What are the easiest things that I can see and how to do that?

00:12:22 Kevin Mako: Of course, always writing these things down, but as you're doing your research on a prospective company, you're looking for both their pain points and their opportunities.

00:12:29 Kevin Mako: Simply think of how your product either solves their pain points and creates opportunities for them and or, ideally both.

00:12:36 Kevin Mako: Because if you can go in with the research done, have that on paper, and have what you believe is your opening opportunities and your opening pain points that you're

00:12:44 Scott Brogan: solving, it'll be a lot easier for you to quickly identify and review some of those things

00:12:49 Scott Brogan: as you happen to get on the phone with these folks, as opposed to stumbling through and trying to remember what those are if you haven't done the research up front.

00:12:57 Scott Brogan: Yeah, and that's the whole point, right? Because if you understand the company you're calling, you understand the person you're

00:13:03 Scott Brogan: talking to, you've already thought through those issues. You already have your note. And the next call, guess what? You're talking to a very similar company.

00:13:11 Scott Brogan: You're talking to a very similar individual, and it's going to be a very similar conversation. So the more you do this, the more repetitive it becomes, the more natural it becomes.

00:13:21 Scott Brogan: And again, it becomes part of the system. And that's what we're all trying to get to where you think of the different stages of learning when you first start out,

00:13:30 Scott Brogan: you're unconsciously incompetent. You don't know what you don't know, right? And then once you start training, you've learned a little bit more,

00:13:39 Scott Brogan: you become consciously incompetent. You know what you don't know. And then ultimately,

00:13:46 Scott Brogan: you become consciously competent where you know you're doing a good job. And then the final stage, and you do this every day in your job today,

00:13:55 Kevin Mako: you just don't think about it. You become unconsciously confident. you just go through the sales call, you know how to answer the question, you know what objections

00:14:04 Kevin Mako: are going to come in, you do it naturally, you don't think about it. You don't think about the process because you become unconsciously confident during that whole process.

00:14:12 Kevin Mako: That's brilliant. The four stages of intellectual competence when it comes to sales or really anything in your business,

00:14:19 Kevin Mako: but if you're focusing on sales, understand that you're starting at the bottom and that's okay. You learn by doing, you learn by trying these things out, continuing to document

00:14:27 Kevin Mako: and continuing to improve so that you can push yourself further and further down the pipeline until you get to that

00:14:33 Kevin Mako: end state where you're just naturally competent at answering the questions that come along because you've rinsed and repeated this model before.

00:14:40 Kevin Mako: But also, and something that Scott, you're a big proponent of also building in the correct process and improving and adding to your process

00:14:47 Kevin Mako: documentation to be good at this over time. Talk about process of sales because I think that also from the eyes of the inventor makes it easier to get into sales.

00:14:56 Kevin Mako: If you can think of sales as a rinse and repeat process where you're slowly adding to your material over time, it becomes less stressful

00:15:02 Kevin Mako: on those small nuances that you may be afraid of on making those initial calls. Because you're looking at it as a fundamental A plus B equals C.

00:15:10 Kevin Mako: And as you continue to improve your processes, the steps that are required, increasing your opportunities, decreasing your pain points for that eventual customer,

00:15:19 Scott Brogan: you will find that it ends up being more of a rinse and repeat model as opposed to having to continually think about the stress of one individual phone call or one individual step.

00:15:28 Scott Brogan: of the process. So tell me about some of the processes that you've developed that you find are

00:15:32 Scott Brogan: important for hardware startup to emerge into the space and to continue to improve those processes over time.

00:15:37 Scott Brogan: Right. And I think a couple of things, if you start from the very beginning,

00:15:42 Scott Brogan: you're going to decide what your target market is and the people you're going to go after and the companies that you're going to talk to and the individuals you're going to talk to

00:15:48 Scott Brogan: within those companies, you're going to find that some of those companies are not going to be a good fit. Well, others are going to be a great fit.

00:15:56 Scott Brogan: So getting back to understanding and kind of optimizing that process, you're going to go to a learning process that you're going to find

00:16:04 Scott Brogan: with a lot of you in new firms, just coming out with a new product. And what happens is, and you want this to happen, it's going to happen, is that you're going to think,

00:16:14 Scott Brogan: like, this is my target market for this product. And then you're going to hear a comment for somebody that says, God, I could see that product being used in this way.

00:16:24 Scott Brogan: And then you're going to say, geez, I never thought about that. That's a great idea. And guess what? You pivot. You go to a different market.

00:16:30 Scott Brogan: And then all of a sudden, that changes your focus to a different marketplace where your message is going to be highly resonate with those key decision makers.

00:16:39 Scott Brogan: So you've got to learn, you've got to listen, you've got to adapt, you've got to improvise as you move through it.

00:16:45 Scott Brogan: But recognize that as you go through this process, you're continuing to learn, continuing to improve your processes.

00:16:53 Scott Brogan: and when you're coming into objections, for example, you want to make sure that you put down what that objection is and write a response to it.

00:17:03 Scott Brogan: Again, because you're going to get that objection and you're going to want to have a clear and compelling response on how do I overcome this

00:17:11 Scott Brogan: objection during the process. So when you're going through each stage of the process, you want to make sure that you learn from that process and you

00:17:21 Scott Brogan: continually improve from that process. And otherwise, you're going to be continued to make the same mistakes. But making mistakes is part of the game.

00:17:28 Scott Brogan: But remember, the people that you're calling want to hear about new and exciting product.

00:17:34 Scott Brogan: And if I can just give you one word to leave you with, it's enthusiasm. You know, that enthusiasm from you, coming from you, the conviction in your voice,

00:17:44 Scott Brogan: your passion, that overcomes a lot of process, right? Because you're excited. You know it's going to be a good fit.

00:17:52 Scott Brogan: You're passionate about what you do, and that resonates with people because you could say whatever, but if you're passionate, if you speak with a great deal of conviction,

00:18:02 Kevin Mako: that goes a long ways. That overcomes a lot of mistakes. Although I'm a big process guy, because I know ultimately you'll become unconsciously

00:18:10 Kevin Mako: competent, being passionate, being driven, making those calls, even when you don't want or sometimes, that overcomes a lot in the whole selling process.

00:18:20 Kevin Mako: That is incredibly powerful stuff. I love how you brought up two major topics there. One is feedback and the other is enthusiasm.

00:18:27 Kevin Mako: Feedback is huge here, not just because it's good to listen and learn and improve your process,

00:18:32 Kevin Mako: but know that you're talking to an incredibly intelligent individual within the industry generally when you're on the line there.

00:18:37 Kevin Mako: If you're talking to a buyer's agent and their product category is related to yours, the feedback that they are going to give you is invaluable because they're doing that

00:18:45 Kevin Mako: over potentially 30 plus years of experience as being a buyer for that category. No matter where they are in the line, they've probably seen a lot of things in that space.

00:18:54 Kevin Mako: So listen to what they say very, very carefully, because as Scott mentioned, they may actually give you that golden nugget tip that tells you, I'm not the right person to

00:19:02 Kevin Mako: be selling to. However, have you tried this person over there? And there's going to be a reason why they're directing it that way.

00:19:09 Kevin Mako: And there's a reason they're giving you that feedback. It might be feedback on another place to sell. It also might be feedback on your product.

00:19:15 Kevin Mako: Maybe something you can do differently, one of the objections that they might have, that you can do differently to actually improve that product to make it sellable to them.

00:19:22 Kevin Mako: Whatever the case is, note that feedback down because it's coming from an expert, generally, especially if you're speaking to the right person that we're talking about earlier.

00:19:30 Kevin Mako: The second thing that you talked about is the enthusiasm. And I like that you bring that up because not enough people do bring it up on the podcast,

00:19:37 Kevin Mako: but I like how you mentioned just how powerful it is. As a new seller, inevitably, you're going to make those mistakes. So find the ways that you can overcome those mistakes.

00:19:46 Kevin Mako: And like Scott's saying here, enthusiasm is one of the best. big ones that you can do, it should also be very easy for you. Because for most of the listeners

00:19:53 Kevin Mako: on this podcast that have a invention idea that have developed it and are ready to start selling it to the market, this is your baby. This is the thing you've been working on.

00:20:00 Kevin Mako: This is your dream. This is your passion. Allow that to come through your messaging. Because keep in mind who you're

00:20:07 Kevin Mako: competing against in a lot of these situations, you're competing against some selling department of some fortune whatever X hundred company that's selling their next

00:20:16 Kevin Mako: widget or gadget from some person who's just been told to sell it amongst, you know, a thousand other things that

00:20:21 Kevin Mako: they're trying to sell, whereas you are calling them with a thing you developed, it was your

00:20:25 Scott Brogan: idea that you passionately stand behind, that your name's behind, everything else, that gives you a competitive edge.

00:20:31 Scott Brogan: So although they may have the history, you have that unique character, you have that enthusiasm, you have that special ability to say this is why one

00:20:39 Scott Brogan: and only product that I'm very proud of. Of course, there's pros and cons to that from a buyer's eyes, but they can't beat the enthusiasm

00:20:45 Scott Brogan: factor there, especially as a hardware startup. Yeah, that's critical. And I think I've seen it on both ends from both a receiver and a giver with

00:20:53 Scott Brogan: passion and honesty and driven and really put your heart and soul into something does to the conversation you have with people.

00:21:02 Scott Brogan: And that comes through. It's clearly a difference between somebody who's trying to sell a product and the person who invented the product.

00:21:10 Scott Brogan: And that's no different than somebody who founded a company much like many of you, as well as people who have founded product, you know, there's just a set level of passion.

00:21:20 Scott Brogan: There's a story behind it as to the reason why they founded a company or developed this product. And those stories, again, are very,

00:21:27 Scott Brogan: very compelling and something that you should consider as part of your discussion with your clients is, you know, why did you invent this product?

00:21:36 Scott Brogan: What was the motivation behind it? And storytelling, you know, is as old as time, right? But many times, B2B salespeople just don't think

00:21:44 Scott Brogan: it's appropriate to bring up kind of a story. And you have to, it's new one within the B2B world,

00:21:51 Scott Brogan: but telling stories, you walked in and you saw this pain point and

00:21:55 Kevin Mako: you didn't see a solution so you built this product. And this isn't the pitch that you use on shock tank. This is kind of

00:22:01 Kevin Mako: the conversation, the story that gets to your value proposition and why you're different, but it

00:22:07 Kevin Mako: tells it in such a way that it resonates with people because at the end of the day, people don't remember facts. They don't remember numbers, but they remember the story.

00:22:16 Kevin Mako: That's powerful stuff. And I can tell you just from a little bit of behind the scenes with some of the retailers that

00:22:21 Kevin Mako: I have conversations with, every major retailer around the world right now is increasing the acceptance of one-off inventors.

00:22:31 Kevin Mako: It's a huge hot topic. Obviously, because of the growth of Kickstarter and you go-go, they're seeing major brands come out because buyers are saying,

00:22:39 Kevin Mako: I actually want to buy a product that has that backstory behind it. It starts out in certain smaller categories and it's growing and emerging over time.

00:22:49 Kevin Mako: So the retailers are highly sophisticated machines. They're looking at it and they're saying, okay, we traditionally, it was kind of difficult

00:22:55 Kevin Mako: to get a one skew product, an original product from one inventor. Until you had a brand line, it was very hard to get into retailers.

00:23:01 Kevin Mako: It's still difficult, but the tides are changing. And it's changing at the point where retailers are starting to introduce programs to allow

00:23:08 Kevin Mako: it to be easier for somebody that just has one product to get in the doors. Not necessarily saying

00:23:14 Kevin Mako: you're actually going to make the sale, but just know that it's easier than ever before and

00:23:17 Kevin Mako: going to continue to get easier as more and more retailers are jumping on this concept of inventor sold products.

00:23:25 Kevin Mako: So something where they've got that passion and enthusiasm, it allows the retailer to resell that passion and enthusiasm, maybe through the story behind it or the packaging

00:23:33 Kevin Mako: or whatever else. They can charge a higher price for a new and innovative product because it

00:23:38 Kevin Mako: is this one-off thing that everyone's so passionate about the backstory of the inventor.

00:23:42 Kevin Mako: And you'll notice that of these major products that you see out there that has an owner backstory behind it, look at the really big ones that have succeeded.

00:23:50 Kevin Mako: You will see that the story is used in so many of the marketing materials, even on the back of the package, whereas never before would you see this kind of backstory.

00:23:59 Kevin Mako: Now, more than ever, you're starting to see that trickle in a whole bunch of different product categories.

00:24:03 Kevin Mako: So if there's any time to start selling direct, might as well start selling now. The other beauty of it, is it's free. It costs nothing to pick up the phone.

00:24:10 Kevin Mako: It costs nothing to do all this work that Scott and I are talking about today.

00:24:13 Scott Brogan: It's something you can do just with hard sweat and getting out there and getting your name and your product out there to more and more people over time,

00:24:20 Scott Brogan: improving, refining your process. Scott, before I let you go here, talk a bit about what you do

00:24:25 Scott Brogan: in terms of building out some tools, some of the tools that you offer and some of the coaching

00:24:30 Scott Brogan: that you do to help people step by step through all the nuances of building out these sales processes. Yeah, when I first got involved with stales, it constantly amazed

00:24:40 Scott Brogan: me because I came originally from an operating environment. So I ran in operations. And operations, they were very process focused, step one, step two, step three.

00:24:49 Scott Brogan: And when I got into sales and I worked for multiple sales organizations, I always felt like I was starting from scratch. I would go join the organization.

00:24:57 Scott Brogan: There would be no selling system. There would be no sales playbook. I have to figure out everything on my own. And frankly, I looked around me and saw a

00:25:06 Scott Brogan: a lot of field people not being successful. And I said that, you know, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better system.

00:25:12 Scott Brogan: So I kind of took that operational knowledge and said, well, why can't we apply that to something that people say it's more art than science?

00:25:20 Scott Brogan: Well, I'm saying sales is just as much science as it is art. So I brought the science into sale and put processes around to

00:25:29 Scott Brogan: help people be successful. People like your listeners of your podcast, people who aren't used to selling, how do you provide a system?

00:25:38 Scott Brogan: How do you help them, not figure it out on their own, but put a system

00:25:42 Kevin Mako: in place where

00:25:43 Scott Brogan: you tell them, step by step by step, these are the things you should be doing. These are the things you should be thinking about because, frankly, the selling industry is

00:25:53 Scott Brogan: far behind many other industries. It's not very mature. And what we're trying to do is to help companies like your listeners become more effective

00:26:02 Scott Brogan: and more efficient in selling by providing. a system to them.

00:26:07 Scott Brogan: And how do they learn more about those systems? Yeah, so my company name is Company Expert, and so it's Company Expert.com, and we've got

00:26:16 Scott Brogan: over 100 playbook, and they range from business planning to selling to marketing, and we've

00:26:23 Scott Brogan: got several different membership options, one of them, which is free, so I encourage you all to take advantage of it.

00:26:29 Scott Brogan: While you're on the site, we also have a B-to-B forum with over 100,000 members, so if you

00:26:35 Scott Brogan: have a question and you want to get feedback from other B2B members, please take advantage of that.

00:26:39 Scott Brogan: But I want to kind of leave you with a thought is that, you know, we're in a very difficult time here with inflation, getting the supply chain, getting help.

00:26:49 Scott Brogan: You know, it could be a little overwhelming with that on top of sales and all that, but recognize some of the best breakthroughs that have happened in very difficult times.

00:26:59 Scott Brogan: Disney was started during the Great Depression. And if you look at Legos, Legos, when I was the kid, you had a pile of Legos, you figured out what to do with.

00:27:07 Scott Brogan: They were ready to go bankrupt just before the last Great Recession. And they kind of rethought their business.

00:27:13 Kevin Mako: And they said, well, what can we do differently? And sometimes you as an entrepreneur have to do the same thing. They rethought their business. And then they got into movies.

00:27:22 Kevin Mako: They got into Legoland. Now they're in Asia and Europe. And they're thriving because they thought differently about their business. So in times like these, it could often be.

00:27:31 Kevin Mako: overwhelming, but these are the time change creates opportunity and now it's really an opportunity for you to really go out there and start selling.

00:27:39 Kevin Mako: Scott, much appreciated for your words of wisdom there. Absolutely can echo that. Know that if times are slow, it's the perfect time to be

00:27:46 Kevin Mako: building out your processes, learning from them, improving them so that when things start to

00:27:52 Kevin Mako: really take off, at that point, you are well geared, both on the product side, your products

00:27:57 Kevin Mako: is completely ironed out, ready to ship, tested, tweaked, refined, you've got amazing product

00:28:01 Kevin Mako: ready to ship. And on the sales side, try tested and true for how you're actually going to move that thing to market.

00:28:06 Kevin Mako: Because you don't want to spend the first year or two of a major economic boom

00:28:10 Scott Brogan: organizing those processes when you can do it now when things just call it slightly sleepier. And you've got a little bit more time to learn and improve and figure out your system

00:28:19 Scott Brogan: to make it work. So as always, Scott, those notes that you mentioned in terms of the website and whatever else,

00:28:25 Scott Brogan: I'll put those links in the show notes for anyone listening in that wants to click through or you can go directly to his website there, check Scott out on LinkedIn.

00:28:32 Scott Brogan: And again, thanks for all your words of wisdom. And we'll look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you.

00:28:37 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a

00:28:47 Narrator: big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the original and leading

00:28:54 Narrator: firm in North America to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients.

00:29:03 Narrator: If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O Design dot com

00:29:12 Narrator: for a free consultation from one of Mako Design's Ford Design Studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.