Richard Harris With The Harris Consulting Group

Intro: [00:00:01] We’ll come back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get into things, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Richard Harris with the Harris Consulting Group. Welcome, Richard.

Richard Harris: [00:01:08] Hey, how are you?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] I am doing well. Before we get too far into things, tell us about Harris Consulting. How are you serving, folks?

Richard Harris: [00:01:16] Yeah, I appreciate that. There’s sort of three main pillars in my business. One is straight up sales, training, straight customer success, growing the revenue side. There’s a sales ops side where some customers want me to come in and just build out their sales operations processes and stuff like that. And then there’s the general advisory services, which is how I’m really connected with you and that startups just need some help. They need somebody to bounce ideas off of. They need to get out of their own, out of their own mindset and get out of their own way or get out of the the bubble that’s created with their VCs. Not that those are bad things, but just like, Hey, who’s someone that has no skin in the game will be super direct. So that’s, that’s what I do. And I think that’s probably 90% of the reason you and I are talking.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:03] So is your background always been in sales?

Richard Harris: [00:02:06] Yeah, ever since I was little. My first I mean, my first sales job was selling candy at school. So I bought it from the high school kid who was doing a fundraiser, took it to the grammar school and sold it. I sold Jolly Ranchers. So yeah, I think I’ve always been in sales.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:21] Now what do you tell that founder or maybe just somebody that’s not even a founder, but anybody on the team that says, you know what, I’m just not a natural sales person? Is that a necessity in today’s world, or does everybody have to have at least the mindset of a sales person?

Richard Harris: [00:02:39] No, I don’t think so. I think that we all have our strengths in what we think. I think when people say that, they just they unintentionally don’t realize that they are in sales and they’re pulling in the car salesman mentality and they don’t want to be viewed as that. But that being said, an engineer doesn’t know as much about sales. They know some because they have to convince the computer to do something. They have to convince their teacher it was the right thing. They have to convince their boss that it was the right thing. That’s all. Salesmanship or salesperson? I would say for the same reason. I don’t know, Jack, about engineering. Don’t ask me to program anything. But I’m smart enough to know I should go find somebody who’s smarter than me in that realm. But I think people don’t give themselves enough credit about being, quote unquote, in sales.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:31] Why do you think that some people put kind of a negative spin on sales, even though without sales, you know, nobody eats?

Richard Harris: [00:03:39] Yeah, it’s a great question because we are lazy human beings. We create false belief systems because somebody told us that we always hear the horror stories of of bad sales people. And frankly, it’s not educated. Right. There’s 3200 universities in the United States. Maybe 300 actually have a degree in sales. So it’s not one of those things that people think about. A lot of people in sales never wanted to be in sales, never thought about being in sales. It sort of found them. And that’s a pretty standard conversation when you talk to salespeople. So I don’t think it’s been ingrained at an education level kind of like marketing has or some of those things. Now the beauty at least, and I think it’s the same probably in the engineering world and I assume in marketing, but particularly in sales, you don’t need more than a high school education like you got to know how to do math and you got to learn how to have a conversation. But you don’t need an education to have this kind of a job. You know, like a teacher, you have to be credentialed and even even someone who works in a traditional laboring job of construction or or plumbing or something, which are great professions, not always, but oftentimes those are very skilled professionals in their career, and they’ve done some level of apprenticeship or training and had to do those things before they could go on their own. Sales has that same approach, but there’s no certification. You have to have to be a salesperson.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] Now, is that part of the challenge when it comes to training up a sales team that, you know, a lot of people want to have everything scripted and controlled and and some of sales is just being a good listener and being able to communicate effectively.

Richard Harris: [00:05:35] Yes. So, yes, on the second part of being a good listener is the most important thing and being a good communicator, which means a lot of things to the first part of your question. Most salespeople. Have a false belief systems that they don’t want to have a script. They think they can wing it all the time. They think that they’re that good. And I remind them all the time that one nobody’s that good, including me. And two, they are using scripts. I guarantee you if an engineer goes and does his 10th pitch of the product to someone, they’re going to say the same things 90% of the time, the exact same way. That’s a script. Now what I don’t want people to do, there’s a difference between having a script and memorizing it and sounding scripted. I don’t want anybody to sound scripted. That’s terrible. So that so but again, script like sales is a four letter word.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:34] But having a script is, is having some sort of a guideline and a guide that where you want to move the conversation and when you get to a certain point to say a certain thing a certain way. But isn’t it the heart of selling, listening and understanding what the true problem is and how you might be able to help them solve that problem?

Richard Harris: [00:06:54] Yes. And and you can do that by prompting the same set of questions to every single person you talk to. Right now, if I’m pitching to a marketing person about hours and I have a certain set of questions I’ll ask, I have very similar, if not the exact same question, maybe worded differently if I’m talking to a head of sales because I just know the personas are different. It’s no different. So it’s scripted, right? I just don’t sound scripted. It’s a script. I know what I’m going to ask. I know how to ask it, and then I know how to sort of pivot when something else comes up. Like, I shouldn’t be surprised ever when someone says they don’t have the budget. We’re looking at the competition, we’re not sure what we’re going to do. I’m going to take it back to my team. I know exactly what every answer to that is. So those answers to those pieces and those objections are written out for me, and I encourage that for every organization I work with now.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:51] Do you encourage it to be written out kind of by the higher ups, or is it something that you say, okay, this is the spirit of what we want to say and then you we work together to kind of craft it in your own language.

Richard Harris: [00:08:04] It’s a great question. I think the the it depends depends on the objection. So and it also depends on the size of the organization. So if I’m in an early stage start up and we’ve got 20 people and there’s a competition question coming up, I might go interview the CEO because they’re going to have some insight that I don’t know yet. Right. And then I might go talk to the head of engineering and then I will work to craft that with marketing or sales so that it sounds like the right way to say it. As you get into a bigger organization and you start to have things like sales ops and revenue ops and sales enablement and those things, then it’s up to those people. I do always encourage there to be a little bit of a committee, so if I’m ever writing a script out for a sales team, I want to I want to get two or three different people in there and have them. How would you write this? What would you say? How would you say it? And one thing I want everybody to listen to is for me when I’m talking about scripts. Depending on the situation. Like if I’m doing cold call scripts, those scripts are don’t change a word kind of a thing. But if it’s the objection handling script of competition or budget. There definitely needs to be authenticity. Like how Richard says something is, not how someone else should say it. So I want them to memorize the script so well that they know it. And then I do want them to find their own authentic voice because I don’t want people to be robots.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:31] Right. You don’t want it to sound like a play. It has to be an authentic conversation.

Richard Harris: [00:09:36] Right. Right. Now, that being said, you know. You know, if the competition comes up. I know there’s three bullet points I need to say about these people now. And these are the three bullet points I want to say it and how I want to say it. Well, I still expect everybody on the team to cover those three bullet points right now. How Richard says it is different than how Sarah might say it and maybe Sarah’s better at it than Richard, then I need to adapt or whatever. So but yes, there’s a lot of nuance in here.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:06] Now, in your work in working with startups, is it typically the founder you’re dealing with or are you helping them kind of evolve into a sales team?

Richard Harris: [00:10:17] Yeah, it’s a really, really good question. It depends on the client, right. So some of them are early stage, super early stage. And I’m literally writing the go to market strategy in the conversation and crossing a little bit into marketing and messaging. Not entirely. And I’m trying to get the founder to go through those founder led sales. Other organizations I work with are how do we go from founder led sales to a sales team? How do I get my founder who just hired a director of sales, to finally let go of the deals? And then how do we do that in a healthy way so that everybody can feel like it’s being trusted and that the process is going to work well and that the sales will continue.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:57] So what are some do’s and don’ts when it comes to making that transition from a founder led sales person to a sales team?

Richard Harris: [00:11:04] Yeah, the first thing is the founder has to sit down and throw up all over paper, literally everything, and they have to do it five times. Och competition, competitor one, two, three and four, five times write it down and they got to get it out of their head because that’s where founders, I think, get so frustrated that, well, why can’t they do it? I can do it. It’s like, Yeah, but you got all the knowledge. So that’s one is that you’ve got to get it out of their head so it can then be morphed and crafted into a sales pitch script however you want to go for it. That’s the first thing. I think the second thing founders need to know is that there will be a decrease in mileage, meaning you won’t get 25 miles a gallon, you might get 22 when the sales team starts doing all the sales versus the founder, because people, founders don’t realize their title is founder gets them in the door. Their title is founder and CEO gets them a greater belief system because it’s their baby. The founder, oftentimes on a technical side, knows all the ins and outs way better than a sales person can. They know their product roadmap so intimately. They know that if someone says, Could you do this? The founder in a split second could think about all the other things on the roadmap and where that would be right, as opposed to a sales person. So being able to remember that your sales people are going to not carry the the that’s not credibility. That’s not the right word.

Richard Harris: [00:12:41] But they’re not going to they’re not going to be able to carry the the gusto that you have as a founder just because of who you are and your title. Right. That that’s a big piece I think people overlook. And I also think founders overthink how easy it should be and how long it’s going to take. I was just on a podcast this morning and we were talking to a new well, you know, he’s 16 months into his into his tenure as head of sales, and he’s the first head of sales, which is dangerous because sometimes they don’t make it past 18 months. And he said that he didn’t do forecasting in the beginning. What he did was capacity planning. Like if this is our capacity and if we achieve these metrics and if we hire these people, this should be our revenue. If we can’t hire these people, then that’s on him to some degree. But if the expectation from the founders are, well, we should have 25 sales people and it’s almost May 1st and we’re going to have them all by October 1st. That’s tough. You know, you’re going to have to hire 50 or 60. What’s your capacity for that? So I thought that was so I think oftentimes it’s the boards are asking the founders and the founders don’t know different and that’s okay. That hey, we should have a forecast. Okay, well, great. Well, if you’re early and you don’t really have any data, your forecast is just a finger in the air trying to measure the wind. Those are the big pieces, those.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:06] And then when you make that first leap and you touched on it briefly and you have that first salesperson, is there some do’s and don’ts to get them kind of ready to go? Is it that kind of brain dump where you want to have some sort of facilitated conversation where you are getting into the weeds about how the founder sold stuff and documenting it? And then is that where like somebody like you can save a startup a lot of time because you know the question to ask and you know how to go about kind of capturing that and transferring that knowledge.

Richard Harris: [00:14:42] Yeah. And it depends on how someone like me would utilize that. So the first thing is, before you hire that sales person, the CEO needs to, as I said, throw up on paper and see what that kind of person is going to look like and how technical those conversations are, because that’s going to help determine the type of salesperson they hire. They can also hire someone like me who’s going to spend an hour and just start grilling them because maybe they don’t know where to start the conversation. Right. And I know how to do that. Sometimes they’ll have me sit in and listen on sales calls with the founder so I can take those notes for them and figure that piece out. And so I think that’s a big piece of when and how you do it. When you bring in that first sales person, the first piece of advice is don’t ever hire one hire to it. It costs you the same amount of time to do one as it does two. And if one of them if one, if you hire one and that one person fails, you’re starting over from zero. The piece that I always say people like, well, that’s going to cost you. No, it’s not. You’re not committing to two one year salaries. If the worst thing that happens is in 60 days, one of them didn’t work out well. So you overpaid for 60 days. But boy, you’re not starting over. And if in 60 days they’re both doing great, well, now you’re ahead of the curve. So I’m always a fan of hiring cohorts of two or three at early all the time, but certainly at that early stage level where, you know, the wrong hire can set you back unintentionally.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:15] So what kind of gets you fired up about working with these startup and early stage companies?

Richard Harris: [00:16:22] I mean, I think it’s just what you said. It’s it’s early stage. It’s like, you know, it’s a paint, a canvas. It’s exciting, right? You get to work with people who are so passionate and they want to learn, right? It’s one thing to come in and teach somebody Shakespeare, but if they really love Shakespeare, it’s a whole lot easier. And for some people, sales is a little bit like Shakespeare. Like they get it, they understand it, they can comprehend it, and some people really want to get good at it. And I think that’s a that’s the part of it. I think it’s the excitement. I certainly love to see the cutting edge of what’s going on in the world. Like, that’s cool to me seeing that. Oh, wow. I didn’t know that could do that yet or so. That’s always exciting. I can get fired up about it and get excited and I just love the conversations and the dialog. A lot of the conversations are like this where it’s just like, okay, what do you want to do? How are you going to do it? And any consultant who doesn’t say this is just full of it, who doesn’t want to be paid and be thought that they’re right all the time, like I’m not always right and I’ll be the first to tell anybody I worked with that. But you know, everybody’s egos like yeah, like working with them because they think I know everything and not not in a negative way, but it’s like I have knowledge and I want to give it to them and I want to share. But yeah, like we’re all excited about that. And if someone says they are, it’s kind of like, I don’t believe you.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:45] Now, is there ever a time when the founder believes that they have kind of cracked the code on the language and the messaging? And then you come in there and say, you know what, maybe you should emphasize this more and deemphasize this. Is that part of the coaching that comes in.

Richard Harris: [00:18:03] It is, and that often comes in early where I start, where they start to tell me what about the company? And they’ll start telling me about what they do. And I will, I’ll, I’ll engage them and say, Don’t tell me what you do. Tell me the pain you solve. And they’ll start again and then they’ll they’ll still miss a little bit. They’ll get better. No, no, no, no. That’s still what you do. Tell me what pain you solve. And eventually I sort of explained to them, I said, remember, people buy pictures of pain. They don’t buy the words you use. And I said, Think about it. I’ll do this exercise with you for those listening. No, we have not planned this ahead of time. If I tell you to think about an ad on television for Tylenol, what comes to your mind?

Lee Kantor: [00:18:47] A headache.

Richard Harris: [00:18:48] Okay. And how do they express that headache to you in the in the commercial.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:52] Some visual around the brain throbbing or your head grabbing your head?

Richard Harris: [00:18:57] Yes. And what color is that threat? Is that pain.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:01] Red and black.

Richard Harris: [00:19:03] Right. I mean, like the same colors of the Tylenol right box. Right. So they aren’t telling you about a headache. They’re showing you the pain. So that’s what I want founders to do. So I want founders. And I don’t mean to go in and say, look, we’re going to save you 15 hours a week. Like that’s that may be true, but nobody’s going to believe you. It’s more like, hey, if you’re spending 2 hours on a Sunday night preparing a report for Monday every Sunday night. Our solution can cut that to 30 minutes. Would that be helpful? And then someone’s going to go, Yeah, if you can save me 2 hours on a Sunday night, I’ll listen. Doesn’t mean they’re going to buy, but they can picture themselves sitting at a computer on Sunday night for 2 hours, putting together some report that has to go out. And so that’s where you drive the interest is that picture of pain. What’s the use case that you’re trying to express, not what you do?

Lee Kantor: [00:20:00] And then for a lot of founders, that’s not intuitive, right? Like they’re very good about the technology part of what they do, but they don’t kind of feel the feeling that maybe their customer is frustrated with.

Richard Harris: [00:20:15] Yeah, and, and I don’t think that’s a founder tech thing either. I know lots of salespeople who aren’t good at it. I wasn’t good at it. Like I’m not some oracle of all things sales. And I know there are times where I missed like that’s, that’s part of me being a human and it’s through no fault of their own. It’s because they followed their passion, which happens to be the tech side or the founder side or whatever it is, but it can be learned. And that’s the really important piece. So and they don’t sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. Right. If I told you I don’t know anything about you, right? If I told you to go out and buy a timeshare today, if you ever bought a timeshare.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:56] No.

Richard Harris: [00:20:58] I’ve never been on the timeshare pitch.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:59] Yes.

Richard Harris: [00:21:01] Okay. So you get a concept of it. I’ve actually bought our families, bought two of them. So my knowledge of timeshares may be beneficial to you if you were going to get serious about it. Now, it doesn’t mean I know more about timeshares than you do. It might mean I know a little bit more, but it’s the same thing with with everybody, right? I don’t know anything about tech. Like I. I tell all my clients that I will run a better discovery call than just about anybody on their sales team, including the founder. And I’ll let them test me on it. I’ll put my money where my mouth is. But I also say, but I won’t be able to talk about how your product solves the pay. I don’t know that yet. And it’s going to take me a while. So it’s the same thing of like, I know what I know, but I also know what I don’t know. And I’m willing to learn.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:52] And those are traits of a good salesperson.

Richard Harris: [00:21:56] I think their traits are good human beings. But yes, I think they are yes, they are great traits of salespeople, but I think they’re great traits of founders and they’re great traits of engineers or sales engineers. And so often, particularly in startups and particularly in sales egos, get involved early on because we’re excited, we’re passionate, we’re super smart, we’re close and deals. I think one of the this is a really good example. You asked earlier about what’s one of the mistakes founders do? One, I want all founders and salespeople to read books like Addicted to the Process or Never Split the Difference. However, don’t think just because you read the book over a weekend that you’re now an expert in sales. And that’s probably one of the biggest challenges I see from founders is that they hire someone, they bring them in, they do that. Sales leader does really well. They’ve taken it to the next level, 0 to 5 million or half 1000000 to 10 million. Then all of a sudden they start to read a book and they do a little study and they think, Oh, I can do this. My sales leaders just they’re expendable, their call center. And that kind of goes back to, well, you should be better at sales because you know the product better. You will accelerate faster because you’re a technical person and you like to read things and implement things quickly. That’s how your mind works. Sales people aren’t necessarily wired that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:16] So and then managing a sales person is might be a different animal from a lot of the early stage people’s experience. Is there anything that any advice on that end for managing a sales person and compensating them?

Richard Harris: [00:23:31] Yeah, so two different questions. So it’s kind of three, it’s motivation and compensation and managing. I had a mentor tell me once that the soft skills are the hard skills. So a lot of sales leaders get promoted because we know the product. We know the objections. We know how to talk about the competition. We know how to negotiate. We know how to close deals. Nowhere in there was. I know how to manage someone whose cat just died last week. Right, that personal stuff. And so I think the key is making sure you spend time getting to know people when you do your one on ones do walk and talks. Even if you’re on Zoom, say, hey, I know we’re doing this on Zoom. I’m not going to do it on camera, so I’m going to go for a walk. Why don’t you go for a walk, too? Like, let’s let’s exercise and move our body a little bit in a healthy way. But getting to know those people personally, like what are their goals in life? What kind of car are they? They can have a car they wanted in life. What would it be if you could go on vacation next year? What would you where would you want to go? Great. All right. Well, let’s see how I can get you there. Right. That to me is the kind of stuff recognizing the ability of your sales people, of there are doers, there are planners, there are strategists and their executioners. And by that I mean closing deals, not something negative. And so knowing that you’re going to have different types of salespeople means you need to understand how to navigate and manage those people.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:02] Now, how did this startup shutdown even get on your radar?

Richard Harris: [00:25:07] So I know Tammy McQueen, who I believe is over there, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so I’ve known her for many years when she was over at Sales Loft, Sales Loft had me come and speak at all our Rainmaker events. She attended our event, our surf and sales event in Costa Rica, the very first one. And we just stayed in touch over the years and supported each other. There have been times I needed her help on something or she’s asked me for advice. And then this the startup shutdown thing came and she’s like, Oh, Richard, I want you to do this. I’m sure. Why not? And so that’s what happened.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:42] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice and get on your radar, what is the website?

Richard Harris: [00:25:50] Well, I’m going to go one step further. So write this down, people. It’s legit. 41559691494155969149. It’s my real cell phone. Number one of my business cards is the one my parents got. My parents call me on and my kids and text me and call me. That being said, you can find me on LinkedIn. Richard Harris. I’m the one with the silly little team by my name. We can’t trademark a name, but I just sort of like, hacked it. And you can find me at the Harris Consulting Group dot com the Harris Consulting Group dot com. So feel free to reach out in any of those ways.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:32] Well, Richard, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Richard Harris: [00:26:37] Oh, man. I appreciate you guys for just helping support the community at large and the startup community and the sales community. And I think that’s you know, it’s all about putting some good karma in the world, and I appreciate the opportunity to do it alongside you.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:49] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Outro: [00:26:55] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup Showdown Pitch Competition Visit Showdown VC. That’s Showdown Dot VC. All right. That’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.