[E269] From Vacuums to IT sales, with Grandpa Stork (Part 1)

Jason: Hey there, welcome to another guest episode series on the Sales Experience Podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. So on today's episode, I have a very special person on the show. So Stork. His name is Anthony Hall. And he is a kind of a world traveler. So he is currently in South Africa. He started his sales career in the Bay Area selling technology. Early on, he was selling vacuums. He's done sales forever. His first IT sales job was in. 1992. He describes himself as a dragon flying superhero in training and it veteran. He has a lot of things going on. So he does training, coordinating, consulting. He has a holistic information security practitioner Institute that he helps. He's does cybersecurity training. He has so many different things going on. That is a culmination of his various passions. And I am excited to have him on the show because we are going to talk a lot about. Sales and where he started in sales and also the evolution and what matters most. And a lot of it comes down to relationships. So hopefully you enjoy this two part series with me and grandpa Stork talking and just having a good time chatting about sales. Grandpa Stork, welcome to the sales experience podcast. Grandpa: All right, Jason. Good to be here, brother. Jason: So I'm super excited. First thing for everyone listening and or watching this. Tell everybody where you're currently located. Grandpa: I am in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I've been here since January, and, if there's any place to be locked down, it might as well be locked down or isolated or quarantined. Which, actually, none of that is really going on here. Everything is open, but if you're going to be stuck in a place, It's nice to be someplace tropical as it were, by the beach, quick access, and weather's beautiful. Even in what you guys are experiencing, it's wintertime. It's, we're doing winter in the U. S. It's hot here, Jason: yeah and it's interesting because during this whole COVID pandemic lockdown for various people, I chat with those. Who are in various places in the world and I wouldn't say stuck, but in places like Bali or someplace tropical, that's not a bad thing. But just so everyone knows, you're in Tanzania, I'm in California. The awesome part is that we connected through LinkedIn. We're in a group together where we had this 30 days of video challenge and then grew into a friendship there. And just seeing the world in a way that we want to improve it in some way. And the fascinating part for me is that literally through the internet, which a lot of people just take for granted, but we can do this video phone recording, and it's good when it works well, sometimes it cuts out, but I'm glad that we can chat. Grandpa: Yeah, and hopefully it'll stay consistent, and sometimes it's hit or miss, but for the most part it's been fairly decent as far as internet. Besides, I'm a California kid too, man. I grew up in the in the San Francisco East Bay area, and I miss Cali sometimes, but not with what's happening in the States now. I'm like, I'm good where I'm at. Jason: Yeah, I bet. I totally understand that for many things going on in the States. It's so fascinating because my experience of you has only been from you making videos, doing content, us talking from you in Tanzania. And it's always funny when I think about you. Being from the Bay Area, which is where I'm from, and obviously it's a sales podcast. So let's talk about that because I think you have very many fascinating stories along your sales journey because there's what you're doing now and then there's what you started out doing. So tell me the story again about how you got your first sales job. Grandpa: When we talk about my first sales job, oh my goodness Jason: Your first IT sales job. Let's talk about that. Grandpa: Okay let's see. My first job in IT was actually with a notebook computer company. I was working for Manpower and I was hired to go answer the phones for this notebook computer company. So I'm on this temporary assignment and I'm there. I'm hired as basically a receptionist. And even though I hadn't studied a computer science in school or didn't go to college or university, but I did have an interest in computers and in technology, but that wasn't really something that's pursued. And so when I got this job answering the phones at this noble computer company, I. Just was watching. You're there watching them put these things together and designing it. And what was interesting to me, because my background has really been in the building trades as a laborer, carpenter, digging ditches, building, framing houses and decks and fences. What was interesting was I'm watching him put this laptop computer together wow, that's not too much different than when we're building the house. And you're putting in the plumbing, you're putting your electrical, the lighting, and we talk about the drafting and the diagram and the engineering for a home. The same, some of the same principles will fall in putting these components together that make up your laptop computer and being able to function. You want to do when you hit the button, the lights come on, we do this, certain things happen. It gets good for me by the time that my first week was up, people would call in and I'm answering some of the questions that order or some other part because they were, I found that a lot of the other questions were similar and I would ask questions and I became. Basically, I've made myself part of the sales team in that process. And after that first week, they hired me permanently. And that was in 1992. And I haven't looked back since. And so that was my first experience in IT sales, working with, in that field. But it led to what I was capable of was a job I got working for a software developer. And, we talked about this earlier, but it was interesting that I go to this interview, and I'm meeting with this young cat, and I go into his office, and I answered an app for an international sales manager to help them with their sales. So I go in, and I sit down with this young guy, and we're talking, and what I noticed as we're talking, he's a big fan of Bill. And so he has an Elvis clock, Elvis poster, and he has this, I think his Elvis clock hat with the legs, and the legs are going back and forth. And we had a great conversation. After I left at the interviewing I sent him an email just to thank him. So I wrote an email, wrote, thank you very much for blah, blah, blah, help taking the time to see me. And so when you write something like that, I, because I was trying to make a play on the whole Elvis thing and you don't know how it will translate. He later on told me that. He had to read the email three times when it finally hit him. He just laughed out loud. He went into the president's office and he said, we got to hire this guy. And that was in 98 and that really helped. I would say it accelerated my growth because working for this company, it's called Pegasus. It's interesting that some of the jobs that have the flying involved for Pegasus, the wing haulers. And so the name of the company was Pegasus and that fact that it allowed me to. Travel the world and gain experience and really learn and have confidence in myself and to gain more. Jason: One thing I've seen is that sales people worry about only being able to win if they use manipulation tricks, tactics, and hard closes. So they end up struggling to close deals, make their quota. Or earn the kind of money that they want to make. If this sounds like your current situation, or maybe you want to make more money in sales without feeling like you're selling, then my upcoming book called Selling with Authentic Persuasion will help. In it, I'm going to take you on a journey to transform from order taker to quota breaker. If you're ready to become an authentic persuader, Crush your goals and create success in your sales career. Then go to jasoncutter. com again, that's jasoncutter. com and pre order the book today, even though Grandpa: I didn't have the kind of degrees that some of these young guys did, or some of my peers did. But the fact that I felt on a level playing field that I was, I could sit down and talk and have these meetings. And it really was an amazing experience to have the type of mentors that even though they didn't look like me. They still embraced me and took me under their wings, as it were, and helped me to grow my own and succeed, and it's one of the reasons that I'm still traveling and I'm doing what they're working on doing now. That is what I think we all as stealthy to try to bring to the table a bit of ourselves, a bit of our personality and how do we connect and make rapport and that was just one of those instances where it just all came together and it was a good thing. Jason: So a bunch of questions I have about that. So about this Elvis interview, when you went into that meeting, you're trying to get this job. Was that like a tactic? Had you been taught that? Look around the room, try to find something, build some rapport and then use that later as like a strategy? Grandpa: My first job was working as a Kirby vacuum salesman. Carrying around this big vacuum cleaner with all these attachments to people's houses in these, affluent neighborhoods and going door to door and trying to get in their home to vacuum or shampoo their carpet and hopefully sell them at the time, which was, $800 vacuum cleaner. But being involved, and even in the construction sales where I was an estimator and other things that I've done, it's always been people oriented. And so as you're talking with people, this becomes just part of my personality relating with people. But it also became part of strategic approach. Jason: I set that up hoping you were gonna go the path of the way I believe as well, which is yes, it's a strategy. Yes, it's something you focus on. It's more autopilot because you've been doing it for so long, even at that point. And trying to get that job, the Elvis interview is that it had just become natural because of interacting with people and trying to build connections and building rapport and looking for things in common, but the part that I want to point out and remind people is that it's the caring part, it's the intentions behind it, it's having that caring aspect, which I think is. important and goes a long way and is missing from a lot of people. The other part that I know is, and this is from a hiring perspective for anybody who's hiring salespeople, or if you're a salesperson, you're trying to get a job, the one thing to take from this story that you have that I focus on the most is the way that you showed up. The way that you did what you did during the conversation, the follow up, the trying to connect, and then moving things forward. Is always the same way that somebody is also going to operate in their sales career. So if I'm a hiring manager and you did that to me, that means you paid attention. That means you cared. That means you listened. That means you followed up. That means you wanted to keep moving things forward and you weren't just going to sit by and. You actually were proactive. And I know that if I put you on the sales team, that you're going to do those same things. And that's important. Grandpa: We have to take chances too, I think as well as sales people and not be afraid to show our human side or our sense of humor. And for me, that's one of the biggest things is that we have gifts. We have talents, use what be who we are and not being afraid to show ourselves. And to express our humanity with one another, even on that level, and you're in a meeting, and that's one of the things I've found as I've traveled and have meetings in different countries. A lot of the best meetings we've had were sitting in the all stop in Germany, having a pint, and just talking after a trade show or after a conference or something. And we're meeting and talking, and it's just relaxed. But that's how I view, really. Ideally, that's how I really view that. We're having a conversation. You have expressed the need, but I, what I have product or service to meet that need. But what else is around that? What are the things that are important to you? What are the things that you're interested in and involved in outside of that? And how do your own interests play into, how do those things feed into? what service we're offering or whether or not we're a good fit. And sometimes it just may not be that it may not work this time, but that's okay. The relationship you build or what can get you into the next meeting or referral someplace else. And so treating people as human beings and as honoring that time, then for me, ultimately, It's a win if you're able to make a connection and find some place where to even grow beyond that. And I think that's, for me, has been the most rewarding part of kind of my sales career. Jason: All right, that's it for the first half of my conversation with Grandpa Stork, aka Anthony Hall. Make sure you can find him. The best place really is LinkedIn. If you go to LinkedIn, you search Grandpa Stork, you will find him on there. And he's got a lot of great content. He does a lot of things, a lot of energizing, different posts that he puts out there. Definitely something different for LinkedIn. And that's it. I will see you tomorrow in part two. That's it for another episode of the Sales Experience Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you find yourself on iTunes, can you leave the show a rating and a review? It helps other sales people and sales leaders find the show and please subscribe to the show and share episodes you find valuable with anyone you know in sales. Help me on my mission of changing the way. Sales is done. And if you're ready to work together, go to Jason cutter.com. Again, that's Jason cutter. com to find out how I can help you or your company create scalable sales success. I will see you on the next sales experience podcast episode, and keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.