Ep18: The Sales Meat Grinder Unveiled: Candid Conversations with Peter Wheeler on the Churn & Burn of Sales

Celeste Berke [00:00:00]:
Hello. It's Celeste on the Sales Edge Podcast. I'm joined by Peter Wheeler. We were chatting off air, and Peter said, hit that record button. We're talking about some juicy stuff as it relates to being an entrepreneur, selling your tech stack, Having mental breakdown.

Peter Wheeler [00:00:17]:
Oh, yeah. Mental breakdowns are part of the job.

Celeste Berke [00:00:19]:
Yeah. Definitely. It's typically I ask Individual's 2 questions, and we flow in and out of that. What's your sales edge? But I think out of all of my guests, you're about to drop some value. So, Peter, introduce yourself. Little bit about your background, what you're working on.

Peter Wheeler [00:00:42]:
Well, I can talk about what I've worked on. That might be the easiest thing because I I Based on what you and I were talking about, that's that's gonna be the more fun conversation, especially for if we're talking to salespeople and we're talking to entrepreneurial salespeople And we're talking to entrepreneurs or founders or people that aren't traditionally salespeople that need that element. I think that's gonna be a lot more fun. So I am a serial entrepreneur, for lack of a better term. My first business, I founded in 1998, drop shipping car stereo. I was Oh. In high school, I think I was old enough to drive. I think I had my license.

Peter Wheeler [00:01:18]:
I think I had my credit card.

Celeste Berke [00:01:19]:
Because I graduated 97. And I do remember driving 30 miles to get a bomb car stereo in my Honda Accord.

Peter Wheeler [00:01:30]:
There you go. So I can joke that I was a .comer. I really wasn't, but It was interesting having ecom, having drop shipping that that early. I seem to always be ahead of the curve, and it always Seems to bite me in the butt. Anyway, did that. Got an automotive for a very long time. Got into philately

Celeste Berke [00:01:53]:
I'm sorry.

Peter Wheeler [00:01:53]:
Which is stamp collection.

Celeste Berke [00:01:55]:
I Could you repeat that one more time?

Peter Wheeler [00:02:00]:
So being one of those jack of all trades, Master of none, but often better than a master of 1 style scenarios. In high school, I had 2 to 3 full time jobs. I had the side thing that I was doing for myself. I went and, applied for a role at a place called Regency. It was right around the corner from my high school, And it was a Philatelic auction house. So we're talking a place that would auction postage stamps to stamp collectors, like, $3,000,000 worth a year. By the time I left, we were doing 3,000,000 a quarter, which is pretty cool. And when they hired me, they didn't realize I was a high schooler until I said I can't start till 3:30.

Peter Wheeler [00:02:40]:
They actually they put a team under me. You wanna talk about super weird as being, like, not old enough to vote, But old enough to have that kind of responsibility. Weird world. At the same time, I was training to be a developer And doing developer work in continuing medical education and the bankers training.

Celeste Berke [00:03:02]:
Okay.

Peter Wheeler [00:03:02]:
So writing in, Flash and action script and visual basic. And thanks to Adobe 2021, I'm officially retired as a developer, so I don't even have to Think about that channel anymore other than I like doing dev rel work, but that was wild. Same time, we're talking overlap. Ended up offloading my car stereo stuff to another car stereo shop, stuck around there. It was one of those things that I pop in and I'd sell on the floor because I was bored or I needed extra Cash did that quite often, and then you were noticing my license plate wall.

Celeste Berke [00:03:35]:
Plus you're right next to a fireplace. It looks like you could Have that going.

Peter Wheeler [00:03:39]:
I am next to a fireplace. Yeah. This this whole room's built out of Legos except for the fireplace wall. Giant Everblocks that is placed called it's called Everblock, And they're in Minnesota. American made giant LEGOs to make rooms or pop up displays for trade shows and events. So love of cars, big time love of cars, was collecting them, and that was part of the reason I was working full time so much Across so many places and ended up with the hated the developer work, left that role. They actually hated the company. And then the stamp place, They shipped me out to Los Angeles, Beverly Hills specifically, the ripe old age of 18 on my summer break senior year, To do an m and a with a place called Superior Collectibles.

Peter Wheeler [00:04:26]:
We were expanding into sports collectibles in addition to the philately. So little old me got to live out of a hotel in Beverly Hills to do this acquisition, and it was hell on earth. So I left there as well. Was not my last m and a, but it was certainly my most unpleasant, and I walked away with a lot of great knowledge from it. Anyway, started doing, some work with the shop that I was getting my cars repaired at and purchasing from, and they're like, hey. You know the Internets? Why don't you do why don't you become our eBay salesperson? You know how to write. You know how to do graphic design. You have all this stuff from before.

Peter Wheeler [00:05:05]:
To Ebay sales. Okay. Cool. Came on, started doing that, walked in the park, started writing service, started doing all this kind of stuff, and eventually became the GM of the Store. Opened 2 more stores and then was legally able to drink. Yeah. Yeah. So took it from a $3,000,000 a year to, 1 repair store, 2 sales stores at 15,000,000 a year.

Peter Wheeler [00:05:30]:
And they shuffled In the mid 2000, and now it's just 2 repair stores. And we always knew that that's where the real money is. Sales is terrible, especially car sales. Now that's another episode. So there. That's why my dealer plate's there. We're gonna we're just going through the stack real quick.

Celeste Berke [00:05:46]:
No pun intended with the tech stack. Yeah. Mhmm.

Peter Wheeler [00:05:50]:
There we go. So I left there, went to work for BMW, kind of. It was an indirect placement for launching their after sales and lifestyle in the region that I live in Saint Louis basically building boutiques inside car dealerships and selling the wheel wax and the hats and golf bags and all those things as well as performance parts, so I got to stay in my happy category. The majority of it was teaching salespeople how to sell Trash and trinkets without busting the deal because we all know once something gets into finance, you're gonna lose it. The joke that we have in the car industry is Some people can afford the car. Most people can only afford the payment, and so you have to keep in alignment with how the payment works. That went awesome. I got to build cars.

Peter Wheeler [00:06:36]:
I got to be a YouTube influencer. I got checks from YouTube. We're talking 2007, 2008, And left that. Did some big work for Dolby. It's where Xcede comes from over there. Start I picked up the moniker XcedeR as as well as Bespoke Gorilla. That's where Bespoke is there, doing work for agencies that sold jobs that they didn't know how to fulfill. Picked up some really cool clients of my own, Miller Kors.

Peter Wheeler [00:07:02]:
I continued with BMW. I continued with MINI Cooper. For Miller, I gave birth to a beer. 2012. Invented a dinner series in for an off premise product, Which means you can only buy it at liquor stores or gas stations bringing it into restaurants. And if you if you know Blue Moon, there's literally a Blue Moon tap handle everywhere. Every restaurant has a Blue Moon Tap Handle. That's what they're famous for.

Peter Wheeler [00:07:31]:
And it was innovative for two reasons. Number 1, Tom Schlafly makes a joke about his business, but I was trying to start a religion in Mecca. St. Louis was the home base of this campaign, which is where AB was based, so that was the 1st uphill battle. 2nd uphill battle was dinner series. Like, these were brand new. So I did a prefix thing, 3 courses, $30. Like, it's normal now to hear that kinda And it's a beer pairing, so I did a beer pairing.

Peter Wheeler [00:07:57]:
The restaurant got a wild card dish. They could do whatever they want, and the big differentiator, the thing that made it work, Was I had a course where it was mandatory to use the beer as an ingredient, and the chefs loved it. And they'd come out and talk about it, and they brag about the work that they're doing. The beer at the time was called Blue Moon Farmhouse Ready. That's a mouthful. It was a mouthful of a beer. It's now called Short Straw. There's nothing more cool than being leading on a project that brings something to life.

Peter Wheeler [00:08:25]:
I'm a father of 2 kids now, and I'm just as proud of my beer as I am of them. Anyway, launched a platform called Eat Local because I really liked working with those restaurants, that to a large, RDS, restaurant delivery service. In that, I had a platform called Dell Assist, which was where I managed the people ops dispatch and basically the whole back office for competitors of mine around the country, Which also made m and a easy because I can understand markets, I can understand where to open. Granted, I had tons of of noncompetes, but the United States is pretty dang big. And it was also just offset payroll. So a lot of things on entrepreneurship, and you and I were talking about this before the show. It's like, how much can I offload To focus on what's important, how much can I subsidize somewhere else to make it worth it? So to provide great customer care, I needed a Huge headcount, like 48 people doing our 1st year, we did $99 in business. And, Like, how do you balance that out? Well, debt is one of them.

Peter Wheeler [00:09:32]:
Subsidizing with your agency is another one of them. Thankfully, I had the cash to do that. But bringing on these customers, it became a profitable entity. I got paid to have staff. How cool is that? So, anyway, ended up we ran 35 markets across 28 businesses at that time. I opened 7 more territories. 2 of them were acquisitions. How old was I I then? 30.

Peter Wheeler [00:09:58]:
I finally turned 30. Hospitalized myself as an entrepreneur, so this is kinda where we were getting into in our conversation. Founder led sales. I had sold a 1,000 accounts for this business. 1,000 accounts in 2 years. Brought it to 2,000,000 ARR and put myself in the hospital. Don't do that. Don't do that.

Peter Wheeler [00:10:19]:
I don't give advice Often, but I'm telling my story, and my advice is don't don't do something that puts that hospitalizes you.

Celeste Berke [00:10:25]:
When I I if I can interject here, I think, you know, it's Yeah. It's Not just the founders. It's not entrepreneurs. We see a lot of salespeople, any level in the organization, and who were burnout, who quit with nothing else lined up. Like, it there's only so much output you can have in the pressure of especially meeting numbers and growth year over year. It's a lot for individuals, especially if you're not Set up to have outlets, it's a tough lesson, especially for younger individuals who are in sales of that hustle bro culture of work, work, work, work, work. And like you said, you end up it can end up taking a serious toll on not only your mental health, but your physical health as well.

Peter Wheeler [00:11:16]:
Fast, easy, cheap money. Coming from the car industry and having p you know, having to go to 7 AM Saturday sales meetings where you just watch Boiler Rim or the the the Blake part of the Glengarry Glen Ross movie. It's not in the play nor the book. It's just in the movie. Anyway, yeah, it's the bro culture. That's just sales in general. It's fast money. No barrier to entry, And it's tough.

Peter Wheeler [00:11:40]:
It's real tough. And, well, since this is a profanity show just like mine, we'll get in the fucking biggest problem that comes from That in just a second. So engage with type 2.

Celeste Berke [00:11:50]:
Lived a full life by age 30.

Peter Wheeler [00:11:54]:
Oh, yeah. Big time. Big time. We're not even talking about, like, nationally published works or any or anything like that. I'm trying to speed through this because you you've locked half an hour, and My recording's usually are an hour and a half for a 60 minute show. Anyway, we're gonna keep going. That sucker fell apart. Market influence is the term that that I got taught about this.

Peter Wheeler [00:12:16]:
We were what was called a last mile service, which meant we did the the tail And all the work. And I'm still a big believer in that. If you can't do end to end, then you shouldn't really be doing it at all. And with that, we had a lot of Organizations that we were a vendor for. You think like Grubhub, Yelp E24, Easycater. There were a lot of them Out there, we were in a pretty complicated and heavy space. There were a lot of players in the space, and what I went through It was pretty simple. They decided to take on end to end, and they didn't need me anymore, and they needed Their own salespeople in there and entrepreneurs especially, especially if you're self funded or trying to bootstrap or not chasing that VC money, You'll learn the lesson a big bank takes little bank.

Peter Wheeler [00:13:11]:
And and by that, I mean, they were able to go into territories and say, oh, these guys charge you a commission. We'll make it 0 If you go exclusively with us, there's no way to compete with that. It doesn't matter customer service. Like, you you always wanna make that argument. Like, where's the additional values? Customer service, this, this, this, this, and this. You can't be same thing you're doing now, but free. Like, that's hard. That's hard.

Peter Wheeler [00:13:35]:
And we ended up just getting shaved and shaved and shaved on that. Now granted the personal relationships and those kind of things and Loyalty and everything else kept momentum, but then credit card fraud kicked in. And I don't ever wanna be in another consumer, Exclusively consumer business? Because those charge backs are monster. Some somebody does a charge back on a $50 buy, let's say, about $40 worth of stuff and a $10 tip for the driver. You've already you got the 50 in. Driver gets their 10, so now you're down to 40. Let's say the restaurant has a 10 per percent commission, so you give them 36, you have $4 left over. Charge back comes in.

Peter Wheeler [00:14:13]:
It's a $50 penalty right off the bat. You're negative 46, and they take the full amount. So you're negative $96 on a $50 sale on a $4

Celeste Berke [00:14:21]:
Right.

Peter Wheeler [00:14:22]:
Profit. Anyway, fiance of 5 years

Celeste Berke [00:14:25]:
husband deals with chargebacks on the daily, so that's a Never ending credit credit card fraud, disputes, issues, no chip and PIN. Yes. Chip and PIN. Just

Peter Wheeler [00:14:39]:
Some organizations are gonna get real smart and figure out a way to underwrite and ensure credit card transactions. That that would be pretty cool. Oh, also in that era. I was one of those people, and I have a PDF of the article. I can't seem to find it online anymore, but I was featured 2012 In the Saint Louis Post Dispatch, my business was one of the first ones in the region, possibly in the country, that accepted cryptocurrency for services in general. And it was it was kind of a slog because there weren't the kind of automations that they have now and, like, integrations that exist now. And I had drivers that wanna be paid exclusively in it. I really wonder where they're at Interesting.

Peter Wheeler [00:15:21]:
Now because when when I was getting it, it was about $3 a point. $3. And I unloaded a 125 of them, did this newspaper interview where I said I don't trust it. It's unstable. It's It's not good for a small business owner. We ran it 5 years later, it did something, but we're talking, what, $450? $375 worth of coins. I gotta settle on that forever. Anyway, hindsight, 2020, and he he met remorse.

Peter Wheeler [00:15:50]:
Fiance 5 years said, I'm not marrying a 10.99. I'm marrying a w two. I don't blame her. Hadn't been a w two in forever. Forgot what it tasted like, and actually, I enjoy the flavor, the older I get, especially. But with the company collapse, I started something called accomplish nothing. It's a double entendre. Like, for me, very accomplished.

Peter Wheeler [00:16:10]:
I have nothing to show for it, And I was a that was an accomplished nothing at the point. And so I buy these I buy these Vanity plates still aligned to the work that I'm doing at the time. Now that one has no wear and tear on it. You see the rest of these are faded or they're discolored. Anyway, So I get back into tech. It's been 20 years off ish, 2015 now, And getting to geospatial. Get hired on his place as a field marketer because that's where my joy was, experiential disrupts field, that kind of thing. And Ended up becoming the interim head of marketing there for about 2 years within my 1st 2 months.

Peter Wheeler [00:16:55]:
And it was a senior IC role for this startup, And they ended up getting acquired, which was kinda neat. But I had I was able to establish a name for myself that 8 product launches. 2 of them is professional services offerings and 2 of them is PLG offerings, which was really cool. And it was neat bringing that consumer Focus. It was interesting bringing to a data as a service and a software as a service platform In PLG. But one of the biggest things that that I was coming in there with was the ability as a salesperson To do marketing and to understand product. That's where I learned some of my biggest pet peeves in the space. We used to sell what was called the geospatial journey, And that was because engineering was usually fucking around with some project that was important to them.

Peter Wheeler [00:17:44]:
It had nothing to do with the road map. And the salesperson, of course, needed to get 100% of the contract value. So we would go into these rooms. Yeah. I was doing enablement. I was doing the trade show, but I was doing all this stuff. You go in the room, and they'd sell the journey. Yep.

Peter Wheeler [00:17:59]:
How many how have you had to sell the journey? You sell 80% of the product for a 100% of the price, and you make up this bullshit flow of, like, Customized to you. We flow together. Know knowing in the background that that's not happening because engineering's making whatever they want to make. I'm not attacking engineers. It just seems to be kind of a chronic thing. All the departments have some sort of chronic part problem, and that's why Product hates engineering, and marketing hates product, and sales hates marketing, and there's no alpha predator in any kind of business. But, Anyway oh, Apex Predator. It was great.

Peter Wheeler [00:18:36]:
Great organization. Great learning these things. Well We went to a farm company.

Celeste Berke [00:18:39]:
Interesting because I usually ask people and and You walked right into it. You know? What what makes them unique? What is their sales edge? And to me, it sounds like it's this unique crossroads of Understanding marketing and sales and being able to fit yourself into both of those roles, but then both See how it all can come together. And, you know, not many people are able to do that. But that 15 years, 20 years of putting in that foundation as an entrepreneur and pivoting and iterating It forced you into that.

Peter Wheeler [00:19:17]:
It's different when it's your money.

Celeste Berke [00:19:21]:
Totally. It's different. Totally. Right? I mean, I I remember being a w two employee, and some days you're like, oh, f. I don't wanna do anything today, so I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna do nothing.

Peter Wheeler [00:19:31]:
Well, that's one of my biggest Pet peeves with my peers in marketing is that marketing always says, well, we're not accountable to Sales. We're not accountable for conversions. Well, guess what? For the past 2 years at Okta, I was a quota carrying marketer, 10 quarters straight 10 quarters straight, a 100% attainment or better for logos and revenue on PLG and on enterprise. It's doable. We have to own it. We have to own it. This is why sales hates marketing because it's like, I filled the top of the funnel for you. Oh, great.

Peter Wheeler [00:20:05]:
Go. You don't understand the funnel's a meatballer. It's not actually a funnel, y'all, and there's no such

Celeste Berke [00:20:10]:
thing as a movement. Coming out.

Peter Wheeler [00:20:14]:
Oh my god. And that's why end to end is so important. And oh, yeah. Just stick your hand in it. Please, stick your hand in it. I dare you. The problem is and this gets into the abuse of the young, the abuse of the money hungry, the abuse of the people that that are aspiring. We start building these XDR teams, and it's not doing anyone any good.

Peter Wheeler [00:20:40]:
It's not. We we teach them these wild and wacky frameworks and not the soft skills to have the conversation properly. We don't Train them in how to sell. We train them in how to quiz. Yep. And a lot of times, it's very offensive. You had mentioned bant Bant. Well, that's an easy one.

Peter Wheeler [00:21:00]:
What's your title? Are you able to, like can you make this decision? Are you broke? How poor are you? Like, am I wasting my time having this conversation with you? You absolutely need what we've got. Like, the end the end, we always answer for ourselves, and we're always wrong. And then, like, are you gonna buy now? Are you gonna buy now? Are you gonna buy now? Like, Who teaches this kind of thing? And the more letters we add, the more insults we add to the question flow. And then people are like, oh, our customers are our partners. No. That's what happens when you sell them a journey. You make them your partner because they're carrying the burden. You treat your customer like a customer.

Peter Wheeler [00:21:38]:
With respect, you promise what you deliver, and you give them value. Period. Done. Anyway

Celeste Berke [00:21:42]:
Looks awesome. And it's kids. And it's interesting because I had a conversation with an individual contributor, huge I mean, I call it huge, org. 500 people on in sales, and we really dove into, hey. What's what's going on? What type of training did you receive? What's the enablement? What's the discovery look like, for you, and they were saying, I can't fill up 15 minutes of a discovery. Okay. How does discovery go for you? What questions are you asking? And there they go with the what's your title? When are you looking to hire? How many people do you have? And then they run out of questions, and then they're jumping right to the demo. We're not Tracking win rates.

Celeste Berke [00:22:18]:
It's it's all over the place, and it's every conversation that I'm having and yet to See companies doing it well, yet everybody's out there touting, oh, we're doing so well because it is that churn and burn. Right? I Works with another individual who's just at their wits end of all the company cares about is filling top of the funnel. They don't care about That customer journey or what happens, the conversations that we're having, it's just get him in, get him to demo, whatever. Repeat.

Peter Wheeler [00:22:52]:
That's that's why ABM getting back into style is interesting and neat to see. You're talking about churn and burn. We used to have something, and, I guess they still do. I just haven't been in the industry a while. The car industry, especially on sales, called working the list. Same kind of abuse. We'd hire these kids. You know, they they'd be coming from some sort of scam financial services Company.

Peter Wheeler [00:23:15]:
You know, they'd be some sort of MLM. And I'm not gonna name because I we don't need to deal with that kind of feedback from those organizations, but we all know who they They are. And they think they have it. They're looking at the fast money. They're looking at the great demo they can drive. They're looking at, like, this lifestyle that comes from it, not knowing how painful it is. And we'd work their list. So they'd come in, hey.

Peter Wheeler [00:23:37]:
You're not hitting quota. Hey. You're missing this. You're missing that. And that we're talking end to end sales. Like, when somebody shows up, They're yours. They're your up. Literally, that's what we call them, ups.

Peter Wheeler [00:23:48]:
It's not just the old men sitting on a bench, and they wander out when you're walking the lot, and they start Making you feel real intimidated. Every that's the obligation. That's what the role is with these kids. You know, you you threaten them. Literally threaten their their livelihood, what they're trying to pursue, the investment they've already made. So they'd bring their grandma in. My grandma would buy a car. Next week, you're not hitting quota.

Peter Wheeler [00:24:11]:
And they bring their best friend's cousin in. They bring all these peep they knew their list. We wouldn't train them. Wouldn't show them how to do it. Wouldn't Show them how to, we'd show them how to walk a deal, but we wouldn't show them how to, like, actually trade horses, burn gas, cross the curb, whatever Term we wanna use. And that those customers, once the person Failed out, became the book of business of the dealership, and it was phrased in such a way that it was that person's fault. So there was no animosity held towards the dealership. And that book of business didn't go to the new hires.

Peter Wheeler [00:24:52]:
We don't we don't ever give warm leads To new sales hires. No. Never done that. You find you find me in industry where that happens, I'll I'll get back into sales right away. Seriously. And you're laughing, but, like, when have you seen, somebody that's fresh be mentored, supervised, Get a warm lead from an existing customer on something simple like an expansion or a renewal. Like, why do we do These folks such a disservice to not teach them properly. And why do we do ourselves such a disservice? And it's greed.

Peter Wheeler [00:25:26]:
Okay. There we go.

Celeste Berke [00:25:27]:
Yeah. I mean, that also, I think, comes from this place of, you know, this is this is America, and you have to earn it. And, like, we've put in the time, and you need to Earn your stripes and, you know, get time in the seat and really, like, hear those noes and, like, it builds grit or calluses that makes you, you know, resentful, probably.

Peter Wheeler [00:25:53]:
Okay. So why are the people that buy computers based on how heavy they are making the decisions? How come we have folks that have never sold? Maybe they sold a fundraising round, and maybe they've sold sold themselves into a c suite role, But they've never carried a bag. Yeah. They've never sat behind a windshield. They've never racked up the hotel And airline miles and the lack of time at home, they're setting metrics based off what they're board, their investors, The street. Oh, I'm hating that term right now. The streets.

Celeste Berke [00:26:30]:
I also used the street in the industry that I came from, though, it's like you said, You're in it in the day to day. You're seeing what's going on. You're so in tune to what's happening and the challenges that they're having in the conversations. So this individual I talked to the other day, this Huge organization said that they have never received, in 2 years, anybody nobody has listened to a call that they've been on. They've never had any coaching on it. They have stopped recording their calls, because why does it matter? In the industry that I came from, there was such a gap between Everybody who was in a let's let's call them the c suite for lack of I was, like, junior c suite. I got to go to the meetings, but I wasn't in, like, the big meetings.

Peter Wheeler [00:27:10]:
Oh, see at the kids' table?

Celeste Berke [00:27:11]:
But I had, like, a seat at the adults' table, but then

Peter Wheeler [00:27:16]:
No. You said at the kids' table, but she could hear what

Celeste Berke [00:27:18]:
was going on at

Peter Wheeler [00:27:18]:
the adults' table.

Celeste Berke [00:27:19]:
And these people would talk about, like, well, 20 years ago when I was there, well, this is how we used to do it. News flash, and he now has done that. Right? Like, The further you are away Yeah.

Peter Wheeler [00:27:30]:
Just spin the number on the phone. Right?

Celeste Berke [00:27:31]:
The further you are away from what is happening, it's really hard to make decisions for other people We don't know.

Peter Wheeler [00:27:37]:
Well, it's it's a perspective problem too. One of the things that I argue when I get into marketing leadership situations is The value of anecdotal. You get into these marketers now and these organizations that lean into growth hackers and ninjas and wizards and whatever terms they wanna make up. Where it's like, okay. These are the reports. This is the net promoter score. This is my favorite spicy topic right now is how many people are coming out that they hate net promoter scores and that they're useless because they are. Nobody's listening.

Peter Wheeler [00:28:08]:
So Nikki Dibbon, who's a phenomenal fractional marketing leader, She's like, when I establish budget for shows trade shows. Salespeople always wanna do trade shows. It's the hottest leads. They get the FaceTime and blah blah blah, You know, Decent T and E. They marketing never stands up and says, what what was the result? They look at it and they go, okay. It cost us much. We did these many lead scans. They don't even look at how the campaign's played out.

Peter Wheeler [00:28:37]:
They don't look at what the conversion was. They don't look at, Like the re the actual ROI. They just go, we had this volume come in because they're worried about the funnel.

Celeste Berke [00:28:45]:
Yep.

Peter Wheeler [00:28:46]:
And she puts it to the salesperson. What did you accomplish? Was it worth it? And that was something I started taking Oh, and we were going to shows, especially with boundless. We were going to shows, like, for open source community because that was a big part of our stuff. Open source means nobody pays for it, And we were getting high conversions from there. When I did the work for Mapbox, that was a community that we supported pretty heavily. And we were able to close $1,000,000 in government business in under 6 months because we were doing the anecdotal. We were getting the feedback from the sales People were getting feedback from the audience. We were this isn't net promoter score.

Peter Wheeler [00:29:27]:
This isn't this isn't leading feedback. This is like honest answers. That show sucked. They picked a bad venue. The timing was off. Like, you get those real numbers. You get the stuff like the coffee was horrible. It's like, okay.

Peter Wheeler [00:29:41]:
That's fine. I'll I'll throw a can of Folgers Crystals into your luggage. What are what what do you need on that front? We're talking about the business case of it. But this is where, like, we're all failing. Is this siloing, this focusing on stuff that is contributory? You know, you have this anecdotal on who you're listening to, and that's just, like, you're you're not establishing metrics that are That makes sense. Yeah. And the silos unhealthy. And that's again where we get into product hates engineering.

Peter Wheeler [00:30:12]:
Yeah. Marketing hates product. Sales hates marketing.

Celeste Berke [00:30:16]:
A huge thing, a phrase that our team loves. We're always like, why does that matter? Why does that matter? And why does that matter? You know, it's just constantly, like, why does that matter? When when we're talking to individuals, and They're going down this rabbit hole of shooting the shit with people on Discovery or talking about their like, why does that matter to them? I'm surprised that companies do so well with just how poorly we are doing. And I think to your point, it's, like, awesome products that are out there. But, eventually, as tech continues, he's going to continue to evolve. We're at this intersection of rapid speed to market. Right? It's speed to market. But at some point, it's not your product. Right? There's 10 others out there like it.

Celeste Berke [00:31:07]:
And this churn and burn on the front end from sales, like, what is that tipping point?

Peter Wheeler [00:31:15]:
Okay. So then, like, going into that, what's the what's the switch that you see happening? There's low code, no code, AI, Code validation. Agent building now. Like, everybody wants to build a category. My favorite my Favorite CEO statement when I go and ask them questions about the product and what they do and how the sales motion's gonna work or PLG as a sales This motion's gonna work. We have no competitors.

Celeste Berke [00:31:45]:
And you're like, it yet. Or do you? Cool.

Peter Wheeler [00:31:51]:
Cool. If you that's fine. Now you have 2 big problems. You're creating a category. The biggest problem. And you probably purple lotion. You might have a little bit of blue, but it's mostly red, bud. Sorry.

Celeste Berke [00:32:10]:
This is the part that we've arrived to that I think is so awesome, is that individuals have so much to offer and are so diverse and have this, like, subject matter knowledge or like yourself, Kind of a savant of many things, like you said, jack of jack of a lot, able to work, but still working on passion projects as well, Blending that all together because bringing that to an organization carries a lot of value and weight.

Peter Wheeler [00:32:38]:
You took my heart. Yeah. But I I would say I'm I'm it's been more of, like, hopping from life raft to life raft than bundling sticks to build that next island. No. And that's that's something that that I hope people start changing and seeing. It's something that I hope organizations stop fearing that Remote work means pea that people are gonna have j ones and j twos and pursue overemployed. People should be pursuing Side hustles. Now don't get me wrong.

Peter Wheeler [00:33:07]:
I don't like the word hustle. I wanna cancel culture. I wanna cancel hustle culture. But You're not gonna have perspective if you're living in an echo chamber of your job. You're not gonna bring in we always talk about experience. People hire in competency. Have you done this job before, and did you do it well? It's a worst thing to hire somebody on. Then you have the other aspect of it is, Do I think they can do the job, and do I like them? And somewhere, it falls in between the 2, but both of those are bad.

Peter Wheeler [00:33:40]:
It's interesting. It's a bell curve. There we go. They're both they're both low, but there's a middle that's pretty high. One thing that I would like to warn people about is Don't convert your hobby into a job because then it becomes a job. Don't convert friends and family into employees or business partners Because from there forward, they're no longer friends and family. That's the hard part. It's hard building out that Scenario.

Peter Wheeler [00:34:07]:
So, oh, there we go. Let's go back 30 minutes to what we were really gonna talk about. Founder led sales, Entrepreneurship, solopreneurship, getting out there in the sink or swim. So salespeople, you wanna do something on the side? Because you have a lot of free time. You really don't. I know you don't. But you wanna do something on the side? Remember, you gotta do the work too. You don't do paperwork.

Peter Wheeler [00:34:30]:
Salespeople don't do paperwork. Never have. That's why we get in trouble. That's why marketing doesn't like us.

Celeste Berke [00:34:34]:
That's why it's not in the CRM.

Peter Wheeler [00:34:36]:
But then everybody else that thinks sales is disgusting and scary And hard? Well, number 1, it is all 3 of those things, but it's a lot of good things too. Don't forget when you're doing the work, you also have to be selling. Because then you get into this weird tide situation where you will starve for months. And guess what? It's harder to sell when you're starving than it is when you're working. And, like, you compare it to anything. Like, you can be single forever, And then you're dating somebody that you actually like, and now everybody's at your doorstep. It's so weird. We have a job that you're totally in love with, and now recruiters are calling you, but but it's also because you're putting out a certain energy.

Peter Wheeler [00:35:17]:
Those ones, it is because you're putting out a certain energy. The rest of the time, like, Just remember, if you're gonna do it all, you gotta do it all. That sucks. That's fun. That's addictive.

Celeste Berke [00:35:29]:
And then you layer in some kids, and you're not Sleeping, and then you're trying to exercise because you're aging, and eat healthy, and maybe take a vacation that isn't actually a vacation. It's It's just parenting in a different location, and, yeah, it's a lot of balls to juggle.

Peter Wheeler [00:35:47]:
So I guess you you hit on the third one that I still miss Today, self care. Self care. Because you're not any good to anybody unless you're good to yourself, Period.

Celeste Berke [00:36:00]:
Damn.

Peter Wheeler [00:36:01]:
So, yeah, how's your journey going? How how much how much fun are you having? How much misery are you having? I'm gonna turn the tables here because I can tell you all my stories, But I'm always curious. Like, you're gonna quit?

Celeste Berke [00:36:11]:
No. And, actually, somebody somebody asked me that a couple of weeks ago when I said, this is tough. Building your own pipeline as an entrepreneur When you're trying to educate, sales training is tough to sell because Somebody has to understand that they have a problem and that they're willing to change, and that they're willing to change to you. And as individuals, we don't like to admit we have a problem or that we need help. So as a VP of sales, a CRO, the same is the case. A lot of times, my entry is an IC and then them becoming a champion or sharing information. And a lot of the information that comes back is, I don't wanna work on that. Like, My strategy's good.

Celeste Berke [00:37:00]:
We're we're working out the kinks, yet we see win rates below 10%, decline in sales, discount. And one of the companies that, I'm talking to, they discount a 100% of the time. Interesting. Okay. 100% of the time at 50%.

Peter Wheeler [00:37:19]:
Is that the is that the pricing model? I've I have yet to really encounter an organization that has ever sold a list.

Celeste Berke [00:37:26]:
Well, it begs a whole another question. Right? Like, why why are we discounting? Why are salespeople doing that? Questions are they asking? Do they know what problems they're solving? I mean, the list goes on and on, And it's been very eye opening. There's absolutely no methodology, no framework, no, established Processes, no training, no enablement, and they're slinging new products in order to keep that funnel moving, and that's what they're looking at the health of the organization on. So it is definitely been frustrating.

Peter Wheeler [00:37:59]:
Velocity.

Celeste Berke [00:38:00]:
Yes. The velocity. It's definitely been Frustrating to compete with a lot of noise out there. As an entrepreneur, what I found is that aligning with sales growth, the company, while there's really only, like, 3 and a 3 employees plus some fractional talent. It has been an amazing place for continued mentorship and growth and business development. So every week, they pour into me. I feel like I'm a w two employee without being a w two employee. I get coaching and the feedback.

Celeste Berke [00:38:36]:
And then with The new partners who are coming on, I'm able to see their learning journey. So it's this amazing let blend of being an entrepreneur, but not Sitting here by myself all day and having team team interaction, and I would say the the first part of my entrepreneurial journey, I didn't know if I could do it because I'm pretty much an intro like, I'm an extroverted introvert. And I loved going into the office because I liked the energy from other people, And when I don't have that, sitting behind my desk all day, if I don't have calls, I'm not interacting with people, It's a tough thing to say. Let's do this again tomorrow. And like you said, you go months months without revenue because you're iterating and, like, Okay. Now I don't wanna work with individuals. I'm looking at companies. Now I'm just looking at this industry.

Celeste Berke [00:39:26]:
They have this problem. So you're constantly second guessing yourself and But no, I won't give up because I bet on myself.

Peter Wheeler [00:39:35]:
There you go. It's a good bet.

Celeste Berke [00:39:37]:
And I've seen The freedom, the flexibility, the upside versus Mhmm. I w two employee of why are you wearing that? Why did this person Do that. Can you contact them? Copy me on this email.

Peter Wheeler [00:40:00]:
You've still got all that. You've still got all that. That's not going away. But now you have the addition of people ask you where you work, you say you're self employed. Right.

Celeste Berke [00:40:07]:
And they're like And

Peter Wheeler [00:40:08]:
they look at you like you're unemployed.

Celeste Berke [00:40:09]:
So you're unemployed.

Peter Wheeler [00:40:11]:
Yep. Or, you know, my favorite is people ask you all types of favors. Can you run errands for me? You're not doing anything today. You're you're not busy.

Celeste Berke [00:40:20]:
I think mine is more so can I have your time? Can you help me with this? Can you help me build out my LinkedIn? That's the biggest one. Can you just give me some pointers? Do you have 30 minutes where you could just help me with this? So tell us, as we wrap up here, I'd love to know If you could sum up, like, 1 myth going into that you wanna bust, What would it be?

Peter Wheeler [00:40:48]:
Who? A myth. A myth. Something that people

Celeste Berke [00:40:51]:
believe that isn't True.

Peter Wheeler [00:40:54]:
That you get more closes with more prospects.

Celeste Berke [00:41:00]:
The old TOF. Yes. More. Mhmm. More has not more.

Peter Wheeler [00:41:09]:
It's more annoying. Oh, no. It is. It weren't worth you're starting to forget with

Celeste Berke [00:41:17]:
This is true. This is true.

Peter Wheeler [00:41:19]:
Without, But, yeah, the demark problems and going to spam and everything else, like, we're gonna go back to the old rules In the old ways of playing.

Celeste Berke [00:41:29]:
Get those beepers out.

Peter Wheeler [00:41:30]:
March. Mhmm.

Celeste Berke [00:41:32]:
Meaning at the pay phone. Wonderful. See pay phones pop up again. Everything old is new again. Actually,

Peter Wheeler [00:41:40]:
I have I have an album online called Feral Phones, where All my travels, I take pictures of pay phones.

Celeste Berke [00:41:48]:
What? That's getting harder to

Peter Wheeler [00:41:49]:
find them. Still function. That's the rules that they have to Still funky. Have a different library

Celeste Berke [00:41:53]:
of a recording. That's getting harder to find, I bet.

Peter Wheeler [00:41:57]:
Depends where you go. It's just like you think video rental stores don't exist anymore, but they do. It's a we'll stay out of social impact. We'll stay out of that altogether, but that's a that's a whole channel I can go down as far as

Celeste Berke [00:42:10]:
Alright. Well

Peter Wheeler [00:42:12]:
money. Bye. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Celeste Berke [00:42:15]:
No. It's been such a pleasure just to hear from someone, right, at this This juncture of entrepreneurship, w two head of marketing in sales understands it all and continues through all the muck and the mud and your building. Alright. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, Peter. Catch him on LinkedIn Putting out some spicy content. Not afraid to challenge others in the comment section, but we'll definitely not respond to your DM if it sucks, and we'll get moved to the other inbox. So no trolling, but Peter's up to great things and always great to see your Savantanist, I will say.