Episode 17 Edited
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[00:00:00] Richard Ellis: According to recent research by McKinsey, leaders who outperform their peers create a clear path to action that allows teams to execute on initiatives proactively or react rapidly to unpredictable shifts in the market. 64 percent of outperformers act with speed when faced with market shocks or internal changes, allowing them to capture a first mover advantage.
[00:00:28] Richard Ellis: Welcome to Some Goodness, where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips to help new and future C level leaders maximize their impact. My guest today is Larry Sweeney, a transformative sales leader who has mastered the art of Building and scaling high performance teams in the tech industry.
[00:00:46] Richard Ellis: As SVP of global enterprise sales at Nerdio, Larry has earned a reputation for driving industry leading growth through a unique blend of cultural leadership and results focused execution. His track record of exceeding ambitious [00:01:00] targets and developing sales talent has made him one of the most respected voices in enterprise sales leadership today.
[00:01:06] Richard Ellis: And I'm excited to have him as our guest, Larry, welcome. Thank you, Richard. That was a heck of an introduction. Thank you. Well, I've really enjoyed working with you over the years and I'm excited to dig into a couple of topics here today with you. One of the things that we were talking about is when you stepped into your role at Nerdio, you were faced with ambitious growth targets, and that's probably not dissimilar to a lot of leaders taking on a new role.
[00:01:33] Richard Ellis: You know, your mindset was. Hey, if you give me a number, I'm going to hit it no matter what. So let me just start there and just ask, how does that internal drive translate to how you build and lead your team? Even when that goal or that ambition may be way out there.
[00:01:48] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, I think it's founded on just a, at least for me personally, just a fierce competitive spirit and just my desire to win [00:02:00] and just about anything that I do, whether it be at work playing board games with my kids.
[00:02:06] Larry Sweeney: Or anything, and when I think about it in the context of my team, or maybe a team that I recently took over, I'm looking for a few things around what people believe in, people themselves, coaching, practice, and then cadence. But I think most importantly, Richard, it, it starts with belief. And when I talk to the folks on my team and I talked to really any team, I'm gauging how much they believe in the company, how much they believe in the product, the market, the support they get internally, and really what they care about the most, which is their ability to overachieve on their number.
[00:02:42] Richard Ellis: I like the idea of starting with belief, right? Do they believe in the mission and the purpose or the company's products, what we do, and then translating that into, do they believe that they have the abilities to achieve their goals and expectations, et cetera. As I think about, you know, just a number of companies we've served [00:03:00] and leaders we've worked with, certainly, you know, you see leaders placed in a new organizations where the team maybe has lost their belief, right.
[00:03:06] Richard Ellis: Or they're challenged. Have you come across that? Or what would be your approach? If people were like, man, this is just ridiculous here.
[00:03:13] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. I like to start though, like why belief is so powerful and just use an example. Right. Yeah, let's do it. Anybody that's heard me talk about believing my teams are on stage or whenever, I often use the example of Roger Bannister.
[00:03:28] Larry Sweeney: And if you don't know who Roger Bannister is, sure you do. He was the guy that broke the four minute mile back in 1954. While breaking the record or breaking the four minute mile was an incredible achievement, that's not the point. The point is that leading up to that, it was scientifically proven that it was impossible for the human body To run faster than a four minute mile.
[00:03:50] Larry Sweeney: Like all the experts looked at it. And as soon as Roger Bannister broke it in 1954. And that belief that it couldn't be [00:04:00] broken was broken. The next guy did it 30 days later. So that was like an extremely powerful example of why believing in what we're doing and believing the support that we have and accomplishing it is incredibly important.
[00:04:19] Larry Sweeney: So if I'm in a situation where a team has lost belief or simply doesn't believe. Then what do you do and how do you really think about getting to that point where they do believe I do that by surrounding myself with like minded people that's so critical that the people around me inspire me every day in the work that they do.
[00:04:43] Larry Sweeney: I think that when we build teams of people and coach people to think creatively about doing things differently, doing their territory in a different way. Richard, I've even taken salespeople and swap their territories. Like on the spot to basically don't put them in a [00:05:00] situation where there's no preconceived belief.
[00:05:02] Larry Sweeney: Right. And that fresh set of legs and new perspective enabled both of them in one instance to do 200 percent of the same quote of the other guy hat.
[00:05:12] Richard Ellis: Wow. Just by shaking things up and kind of removing some preconceived, you know, maybe limitations or notions that there are some limits here.
[00:05:20] Larry Sweeney: Sometimes it's as simple as that.
[00:05:22] Richard Ellis: I love that story. I was into track when I was younger and in high school. And while I wasn't a long distance guy, I was a sprinter. I always appreciated, you know, the, the records and the goals. And you do get to that, Hey, here's the record. And the limit's probably not far from that, but I did not recall them thinking that that was a human limitation.
[00:05:41] Richard Ellis: And then he overcame it. That's incredible.
[00:05:43] Larry Sweeney: And the incredible part is that once he overcame it, the belief was broken. And the next guy did it literally 30 days later and hundreds of people that did it since. I'm not a sprinter. The only way I'll be able to break a four minute mile is in my car. But I did play offensive line for many, many years in football.
[00:05:59] Larry Sweeney: You know, it was kind of [00:06:00] doing the, doing the grunt work every down, every play.
[00:06:03] Richard Ellis: I also liked what you said about surrounding yourself with like minded people and certainly having the right growth mindset or that belief or that passion, whatever it is, that can be contagious, right? And I just find myself energized around people like that.
[00:06:18] Richard Ellis: And so. You know, as a new leader coming into an organization, certainly there's, you know, maybe people that just aren't in the right roles, right. And you might need to make some switches and there might be just some capability mismatches. But as you think about you've come into new sales teams in the leadership position, I love that just practical, Hey, swapping territories can help anything else along those lines of what you might do to shake things up, create some new momentum, break down preconceived notions.
[00:06:46] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, I think people are comfortable in working in a predictable environment. What I mean by predictable environment is, you know, when I wake up tomorrow, what am I going to go do? And it's not just [00:07:00] manic insanity. And what you have to do is. Establish a cadence and what I've done is it's a 12 week cadence, and it's a Excel spreadsheet where every column is a week of the quarter, you're 12 weeks.
[00:07:19] Larry Sweeney: This is what we're doing week one, which is typically close anything that pushed from the prior quarter. This is what we're doing week two, where we're holding all of our quarterly business reviews and those flow into week three. Then in week four, which is the last week of the first month of the quarter, we are finishing up that month.
[00:07:38] Larry Sweeney: Then in week five, we get into doing maybe deal reviews, more deal reviews. And in week six, we get into looking at out quarter pipeline, as an example, to make sure that we're creating momentum there. But what, what you've done though, is you've established a cadence. And you've [00:08:00] established that predictable rhythm of the week that gives everybody a sense of peace and a sense of calm.
[00:08:08] Larry Sweeney: When you surround all of that and drive a culture of constant peer and manager coaching, then every single day, every single person, no matter what level they are, are getting better. And it's okay to make mistakes. I absolutely love mistakes. There's a book that I read that was given to me by one of the folks on my team, it's called Aratech.
[00:08:27] Larry Sweeney: And it was written by a guy by the name of Brian Johnson. And in there, there's a whole section on mistakes. And he breaks down the word mistake into two different words, miss and take. When you think about making movies, the director's got a set of actors that mess up a scene. That's called a miss take.
[00:08:42] Larry Sweeney: So what does the director do? He goes and he says, okay, you do it this way, you do it this way, you say this, you say this. They get the scene perfect, but we go and enjoy the movies every day. Same exact thing happens when we're on calls with each other, our partners, our customers. We make mistakes. Mistakes are awesome.
[00:08:59] Larry Sweeney: [00:09:00] Mistakes are our opportunity to get better and create the perfect scene, the perfect meeting, the perfect sales team. You know, all done in the sales gym, right? The sales gym happens immediately after a call is done. Everybody gets on the phone, critiques each other, you know, what did we do? Well, what could we have done differently?
[00:09:18] Larry Sweeney: Maybe we could have spun it this way and really sticking to that. Like people get excited about an idea like that. They do it a couple of times are sticking to that in the context of that cadence really drives a sense of belonging, a sense that people care. And a desire to
[00:09:34] Richard Ellis: win. I like that. So we start with a belief.
[00:09:37] Richard Ellis: Do we believe we can get there? But then you've got to back that up with some tangible planning and cadence of activities, and that will foster, you know, that belief, right? Cause now you've got a plan that you can be confident in. And you can learn along the way you can make some mistakes and you can adjust.
[00:09:53] Richard Ellis: Is that kind of how you think through that? And is that plan for you? You mentioned that 12 week cadence. Is that just for you personally as a [00:10:00] leader? Or do you cascade that down to your managers and the reps and say, Hey guys, this is our operating.
[00:10:06] Larry Sweeney: Everybody's got a copy of it on their desktop. It's a, I could share it with you.
[00:10:11] Larry Sweeney: It's a PowerPoint slide that we started off in Excel that literally is rows and columns. And the columns are the weeks of the quarter. And the rows are all the activities. So like 15 different activities, quarterly business reviews, the large do reviews, the end of quarter calls to pipeline hygiene, things, everything like that, so it's predictable and I know what I'm going to be doing this week.
[00:10:32] Larry Sweeney: I know what I'm going to be doing next week. And then at a more micro levels where all the coaching and development to go get things done is happening. But yeah, that's absolutely cascaded from my level down to my leaders, down to the individual contributors. Across the entire organization.
[00:10:48] Richard Ellis: That's really good.
[00:10:49] Richard Ellis: As kind of a process geek myself, I can appreciate that. And I've seen that in you just in working alongside you and supporting you over the years. The other thing that comes to mind is I think, Hey, what is some goodness [00:11:00] that Larry kind of brings to the team? And I always get the sense that people just like working with you and around you.
[00:11:06] Richard Ellis: And I just experienced kind of a good culture, right? So as you think about, you know, maybe your personal style of, you know, what kind of culture are you trying to develop in a team or for an organization? Anything unique about your approach or things you think about when you think about that?
[00:11:22] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. And the simple answer I will give you, Richard is fun.
[00:11:27] Larry Sweeney: It's interesting because, you know, culturally and stereotypically, when you think about high power sales teams. Like we think about the movies, we think of stories of sales leaders, throwing things across the room, quarterly business reviews. Yes. You know, managing through fear, right?
[00:11:43] Richard Ellis: Coffee is for closers.
[00:11:45] Larry Sweeney: Right. These are the good leads. You know, and I've seen it happen, right? I've seen it happen in quote unquote real life, but that's terrible. Like it, it literally the last thing that a sales leader should be doing. And what I try to [00:12:00] bring really to every meeting, no matter what I'm doing, it's just to bring a little bit of fun and a little bit of wit because it diffuses tension.
[00:12:08] Larry Sweeney: It makes everybody feel more at ease. I mean, we're all human beings with feelings, you know, our co workers, our partners, our customers. And if there's anything this virtual world has taught us is that human connection, kind of that 30 seconds you have after you get off of the elevator and walk to the conference room where you can do that meeting, you don't have that anymore.
[00:12:26] Larry Sweeney: And in that 30 seconds, so you can have a little fun, right? You can talk about whatever. So in this virtual world, trying to bring a little bit of that fun is super important. I think the other thing that I'm pretty consistent about that I encourage people to think about is I don't coach in public. I don't fundamentally don't believe in breaking somebody down in the middle of a QBR in front of the room.
[00:12:50] Larry Sweeney: I think coaching is a private
[00:12:51] Richard Ellis: activity. And when you say coaching, are you talking about like, you know, correcting someone or calling them out? Great point. Great [00:13:00] point.
[00:13:00] Larry Sweeney: So yeah, let's dig into that a little bit. So providing coaching publicly, you know, and working a deal that's helpful for everybody. But when a manager or myself needs to have a difficult conversation with somebody, We save that for a one on one situation, because you don't know what's happening in that person's personal life, or you really don't know, you know, what's going on.
[00:13:21] Larry Sweeney: So I think people appreciate that, kind of respect those boundaries, but bring it on, bring the coaching for their territory, for their deals, things like that. But when it's more so the difficult part, that's the one on one piece. And when people are having fun, they act more freely, they make decisions more freely.
[00:13:42] Larry Sweeney: And then you just save those feedback sessions for, for when you have to straighten the road out a little bit.
[00:13:48] Richard Ellis: I like that. And it goes back to what you were saying about, you know, you love mistakes, right? We all make mistakes. That means we're making decisive decisions and taking action and then we can learn from those.
[00:13:58] Richard Ellis: But you can only do that [00:14:00] if you know you're not going to get called out publicly, right? Or embarrassed, right? And so that kind of fosters that mindset of, yeah, I'm going to be bold and courageous and I'm going to take action and I'm going to learn from that. And that's going to be okay. Right.
[00:14:13] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. And the last thing you want people doing when they wake up in the morning is starting off afraid and clammed up.
[00:14:19] Larry Sweeney: Because that just leads to inaction. Right. And you won't get any hustle. There's always self doubt. There's no productivity.
[00:14:28] Richard Ellis: Yeah, one of the things I've really appreciated over the years is just this idea of failing fast, right? And, you know, a lot of times we have to try things to see if it's going to work, you know, and sales is hard, right?
[00:14:40] Richard Ellis: You got to get through a lot of no's before you get that yes. You've got to try some different things to get to the right buyers or to resonate or be relevant or create urgency. And so sometimes that is trying the unproven. And so I like that idea of, hey, we got to believe we can do it, right? You've got to have a cadence or a plan to do that.
[00:14:57] Richard Ellis: So that you've got some path or method [00:15:00] to get there. You got to have some fun along the way, right? But you've got to also have a safe space to make some mistakes and learn from those. What are the other things that I just recalled from some of our past discussions, and then kind of that execution, and sometimes we don't always get it right, is the idea of the difference between, I think you called it, reporting on the business versus creating business and making it happen, right?
[00:15:24] Richard Ellis: Do you recall our conversation there? I do, I do, yeah. Yeah, so I think our audience would appreciate that perspective, so let's dig into that before we're out of time here.
[00:15:32] Larry Sweeney: Yeah. So as sales leaders in high growth companies, you, you, you kind of, you hit a pet peeve of mine here, I think it's the other day when we were talking about it, because our job is to drive exceptional growth.
[00:15:44] Larry Sweeney: That's what we're here to do. What we're not here to do is report on not exceptional growth about a plan. So if all of your reps are telling you, Oh, it's going to be a bad quarter. It's just not going to happen this quarter. Or if one of my leaders is saying that. [00:16:00] Then they may know after working for me for a while, that that needs to be quickly followed up by, but here's how I'm going to go get it.
[00:16:08] Larry Sweeney: And I promise you something, Richard, there's always a way there. There's, there's always a way. And when you find that way. It is incredibly fun and accomplishing it is even better. Can we tell you a quick story on this? Yes. Love stories. Do it. Yeah. So do I, actually. Years and years ago, I'm probably going back 10 years.
[00:16:29] Larry Sweeney: I was working on a sales team that we had this problem where we were going to miss our number by, it was probably like 25%. And we were all staring at each other in the room. We were like, what are we going to do about this? And the guy managing the team went off and he came back the next week and he's like, I figured it out like, Oh, you did, you know, here's what we're going to do.
[00:16:51] Larry Sweeney: We're going to go out to these two customers and we're going to offer them the biggest possible deals that we've ever done before. And when I talk about biggest possible [00:17:00] deals, I'm talking about eight digits here and the team that I was on, we're not putting eight digit deals together. I mean, we were right.
[00:17:05] Larry Sweeney: I'll make a sale to that point. It was maybe seven. And we flowed the idea to like six customers, Richard, one bit, one bit. And we got, we got it and we made the number. And I'll always remember that. I'll always remember that as. What a, what a, what a inspiration that was to not just report on a bad quarter, but go out and figure a way to get there.
[00:17:28] Larry Sweeney: And we got there by thinking creatively, challenging the status quo and doing something a little bit crazy,
[00:17:34] but
[00:17:35] Richard Ellis: crazy worked. That's amazing. I love that. And how rewarding is that? Not only for, you know, you and the rep, but the rest of the team to go, wow, we made the impossible happen, right? I mean, just like your story earlier.
[00:17:46] Richard Ellis: Yeah, it happened. Okay. So there's one more kind of characteristic or capability that I think about when I think about the teams that you build and the people you kind of attract and lead. And that is kind of this [00:18:00] idea of grit and hustle. And I don't know if you use those words. I use them a lot. In fact, Hustle is one of our seven core values here at Revenue Innovations.
[00:18:09] Richard Ellis: But I think we're aligned on those, but tell me what each of those mean to you as we kind of wrap up this episode.
[00:18:14] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, we hear that a lot, right? Grit and hustle. And sometimes you scratch your head and say, what does that mean? So, why don't I just give you like a couple examples of grit and hustle that have happened to me personally over the years?
[00:18:26] Larry Sweeney: And maybe that'll help illustrate a point. Love it. So being gritty, right. And in my role as a sales leader, let's just say showing up to a meeting with the board and having to communicate bad news and it being a difficult conversation, the logical one, and then immediately hanging up and doing an all hands presentation for my team.
[00:18:46] Larry Sweeney: In a very optimistic, motivated way. So compartmentalizing all of that, watching your forecast meltdown with five days to go in the quarter and then calling up every single leader and every single rep one by one to figure out, is there a way that we could look at every [00:19:00] deal differently? You know, enduring the roller coaster of every quarter up, down, close a big deal, lose a big deal.
[00:19:06] Larry Sweeney: And then realizing the pipeline create that your team did in the prior quarter wasn't enough. And then scheduling a call blitz the following week to build it up so you have business go after next quarter. You know, grit is that, using that mental exhaustion that you feel at the end of the day as a force inside of you to fuel you to do just that one more thing that day.
[00:19:28] Larry Sweeney: And then doing it every single day. There's just some examples of when I think about grit, hustle's a little bit different. And I can give you a couple of examples of hustle.
[00:19:35] Richard Ellis: Yeah, I would love to, cause I think I'm there with you on the grit. It's like that perseverance, you know, and that grittiness to persevere through adversity, through almost the impossible.
[00:19:45] Richard Ellis: One compliment that I've gotten a couple of times that just really means a lot is when people say you are unflappable, you know, in the face of all of these challenges, that was impressive. So I love that grittiness look for that in people that we like to work with [00:20:00] let's talk about hustleden
[00:20:02] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, so a couple, a couple hustle things that come to mind, a few years ago, I had landed at Fort Lauderdale airport after kind of a five city run, Monday to Wednesday, and I had landed like Wednesday afternoon, on the drive home, a rep called me and said, Hey, I got a meeting with that person we were trying to get a hold of.
[00:20:18] Larry Sweeney: And I got the meeting scheduled for tomorrow. I'm driving my car down I 95. I'm like, I just got home. What am I going to do? I'm like, forget it. I got off 95. I made a U turn. I drove right back to the airport. I didn't unpack my bags. I didn't take a shower. I just flew right back out to Jackson, Mississippi.
[00:20:37] Larry Sweeney: I still remember. To go out and work with that guy to close that deal. And we got it. Right? We got it. So, you know, that's, that's hustle. It is. And one time I had this customer in a remote part of Florida. It was evading me. I knew that I knew they were evading me or evading my rep. Then they would respond to emails.
[00:20:53] Larry Sweeney: I say, look, I'm going to be in the area tomorrow, but you know, please confirm a meeting time for tomorrow. I knew [00:21:00] for a fact that they were going to do, they were going to wait until I was asleep and they were going to schedule a meeting for 9am the next day and knowing that I wouldn't make it, but I stayed up all night, I stayed up all night watching my email, waiting for it to come through and sure enough, Richard.
[00:21:13] Larry Sweeney: Uh, like midnight, I get the email meetings booked for tomorrow at 9am or 830, whatever it was. I'm like, I knew it. I knew it. And I said, I told my wife, I go, I'm so sorry. I gotta go. So at midnight, I got in the car and five hours later at 5am, I got to where I needed to go. I found a Starbucks, kind of wiped the dirt off my sleeves and, uh, went in and met with the customers.
[00:21:37] Larry Sweeney: A difficult conversation. But it was worth it. You know, we walked away with a deal in excess of a million dollars a couple of months later. So those are two examples of hustle and just never letting yourself give up how that unflappable, you know, that you were talking about that drive to win and create a way, and there's always a way.[00:22:00]
[00:22:00] Larry Sweeney: You got to put yourself in the position of when, right? Like, had I went home or stayed home in both those scenarios, those deals wouldn't have happened.
[00:22:07] Richard Ellis: Right, right. Well, and, and just to have the intentionality and the proactiveness of saying, Hey, I, I know this is what they're going to do. It's going to come across, you know, at midnight, but I'm going to be prepared for it, right?
[00:22:19] Richard Ellis: I knew it. I knew they were going to do it. That is so crazy. What a cool story. That is awesome. Well, grit and hustle go hand in hand. That hustle when I think about that is, you know, that work ethic you look for people that will not give up, that will go the extra mile. But working hard is just part of it, right?
[00:22:35] Richard Ellis: Being able to work through adversities where the grit comes in. So
[00:22:38] Larry Sweeney: everybody like wants to work hard, especially if they're having fun and are passionate about what they do. But sometimes finding that inner strength, that grit and hustle, you have to be intentional about it too.
[00:22:51] Richard Ellis: Yes. And you know, it's most needed in sales, right?
[00:22:54] Richard Ellis: Sales is really hard and it's gritty and you know, you've got to have kind of the right makeup [00:23:00] for it, right? And not everybody is made to do that well, I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been just a great episode diving in. Always love to hear some of your great stories, but we are out of time, unfortunately.
[00:23:11] Richard Ellis: As you know, as we do these podcasts, we love to just share some goodness, not only on topic, but also off topic. And so is there anything kind of just personally off topic here that's brought you some recent goodness to your day or week or family or anything like that you'd like to share as we close?
[00:23:27] Larry Sweeney: Actually, when you said that about family and goodness, I get a couple of goosebumps and I go down my spine, but this past weekend. I brought my whole family to a Florida Panther hockey game. Prior to this weekend, it was just me and my son. Like, he and I have gone all in with the Florida Panthers. We were there at the Stanley Cup run last year.
[00:23:44] Larry Sweeney: But the rest of my family, my wife and daughters, have gone all in too now. Like, everybody's got Panther jerseys and they just had the best time. And being able to be present in that moment and just see the joy that they get out of [00:24:00] being at a game like that, because those games are fun. I used to have a music plan, it's almost like a hockey game plus music, plus karaoke, plus concert.
[00:24:08] Larry Sweeney: It was an amazing, fun time and I have a feeling my hockey expense is about to triple, you know, for the record. That's not a bad thing, right? No, no, no, no, no. When it comes to that, no, no, no, no. It could go up by a factor of 10 and I'd be okay with it.
[00:24:22] Richard Ellis: Well, I love that as an example, you know, being a native Dallasite, uh, here in Texas, right?
[00:24:27] Richard Ellis: Hockey wasn't the first sport that we think of, especially not, you know, when I was growing up. So I didn't really appreciate it until somebody took me to a hockey game in person. And then everything changed, right? It's so different when you're experiencing just the buzz and, you know, the slapping up against the walls and all the good stuff in person.
[00:24:47] Richard Ellis: So I became a fan after seeing my first hockey game in person. Of course I've been trying to follow the stars, uh, and all of that good stuff, but that's awesome. Well, a great way to end our show. Thank you for, uh, spending some time with us today. [00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Larry Sweeney: Yeah, thank you Richard. That was really cool. Always good to, uh, spend some time with you and I wish you nothing but an amazing rest of 2025.
[00:25:09] Richard Ellis: Excellent. Thank you so much, Larry. You got it.
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