144: Nick Sowards – Never Give Up

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Salesology, conversations with sales leaders. The art of faster, easier, more profitable sales. When you're ready to transform your sales for today's transforming market, we've got you covered with your host, the Queen of Cold Calling and Founder of Salesology, award-winning author, speaker, sales trainer, and coach, Wendy Weiss. (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to Salesology, conversations with sales leaders. And I'm your host, Wendy Weiss. I am the founder of Salesology and creator of the Salesology Prospecting Method. And I'm also known as the Queen of Cold Calling. Today, my very special guest is Nick Swords and he is a sales manager with Ellison Technologies. Nick started out cleaning machines in California when he was 18 years old at his grandfather's company. And then he graduated into selling machines when he was 19. And then he left his grandfather's company at 20 because he wanted to sell new machines. He joined absolute machine tools, selling their imported brands in 2015. He became the general manager for absolute, running their Chicago's facility. And then in 2017, he felt like he needed to change. So he left absolute. And that's when he joined Ellison Technologies. And he is the sales manager for North East Ohio and the Territory Manager for Lake and half of Kyoga County. He has been the number one salesman at Ellison for gross profit and units for 2023. He's also been getting salesperson of the year awards. He's been in the top five to 10 ever since he joined Ellison in 2017. And Nick adds, quote, "We have a great team in Ohio. So that helps. Welcome Nick Swords." - Thank you Wendy, good morning. - Good morning. And so I am so happy that you are here. And let's start at the beginning, which is where I always like to start in your bio. In your bio, you gave us kind of a year by year run down, but give us the backstory. What made you decide to, I gather, follow in your grandfather's steps in a way and go into sales and tell us the story. - Absolutely. First off, thanks for having me on your show here. Really appreciate that. I think when I was little, I would go out to my grandfather's shop, clean machines out, make some money and buy the Nike tennis shoes or bat then the guest jeans was very popular. So growing up, we was pretty poor and couldn't afford that. So I got a taste of making money, working in a machine shop. And during my high school years, I really didn't want to get dirty, but I was just kind of, you know, bounced around of what I was going to do. Then to be honest with you, the weather was a lot nicer in California here, you know, than Ohio. So I was actually going to go to school to be an FBI agent, but I don't believe it or not. And my mom always said I had the gift to talk to people and, you know, certain situations and things that, you know, I could maneuver myself in and out of and, you know, show you said I should get in the sales. And I think it was my senior year in high school. During the winter time, I just realized, maybe Ohio wasn't for me. I wanted to get out of this little box and go see the world. And my grandfather was always trying to get me to go out there and, you know, to be part of the shop. And so I did that. I went out there and started to go to college. At the time, I got my high school girlfriend pregnant. So I was a young father at the time. Trying to do the right thing by marrying her and taking her out there with me and start cleaning machines. Going to school at night wasn't much fun. Then I remember one day, it was during a lunch time. And then of his sales guys were around and somebody wandered into the shop and asked me to, you know, if I could show him this manual laid that they wanted to look at. And the guy offered, you know, $10,000 cash for it. And I think we had a sticker of like 11 on it. So I called my grandfather on his two way, next to a walkie-talkie phone. Told him what was going on. He basically told me to, you know, take the deal. I took the deal, helped the guy out and, you know, collected the cash, walked it up to my grandfather and he'd piled me off, you know, to $100 bills. And said, hey, this is, this is your part of it. And at that moment, I realized, 'cause I was making nine bucks an hour in a San Francisco Bay area, wasn't a lot of money. (laughs) At the time that that $200, you know, off of that one sale, there was a lot more money, you know, that I was used to getting that one time. And I enjoyed it. You know, I enjoyed helping the gentleman out with, you know, the way that he purchased. And I said something to my grandpa. I said, hey, I think I rather sell the machines versus working on them and cleaning them. And he gave me a shot to do so. And I, you know, just took off ever since that stuff there. - That's a wonderful story. I can just visualize that light bulb going off over your head when you got that $200. That is a really, really wonderful story. So thank you for sharing that. - I think I went out to Sizzler that night for dinner, you know. (laughs) - Live at large. - Live at large. - Live at large. - Live at large. - So you, now you manage a sales team right now. Tell us a little bit about your sales team. - Yeah, I have three people that I manage and was part of hiring them. One of them I worked with in a previous life. And I was trying to recruit him ever since I came to Ellison. And he, you know, he signed the contract with the previous team that he worked for and we kept in good contact. And when his contract was up, he finally said, "Hey, I think I want to join the team." So, which was great because this guy's a hustler. He's a bulldog when it comes to cold calling, knows everyone in the industry. But, you know, one of the things, you know, even though it's a working team, it's like we're family. You know, these guys know that they can call me day, night, weekend, about anything. You know, we try to leave the personal stuff, you know, out of work, but if they're having a personal issue, that they just need to rant or talk to somebody about, they know my phone's always open. And to me, these guys trust me. And I trust them to do their job. So I think that makes our team successful is when you got to trust in that bond, you know, like a brotherhood or a family almost. It works very well. I don't have to micromanage these guys. You know, of course, I do look at, you know, certain dashboards, make sure they're making their calls and quotes and all that. But I talk to them regularly throughout the day and I know they're out there working. And that just, you know, makes my life a lot easier. 'Cause if those guys are successful, that's what's gonna make me successful. If they're not successful, you know, then I'm not successful. - I'm very curious about something because you brought up something that I have heard a number of times is I've interviewed different sales managers and different industries and talking about hiring and building a team. And you said how trust is really important. And so, and I've heard that from a number of sales managers that I've interviewed. So my question is when you are hiring two-part question, what do you look for, second part of the question, how do you build trust with the people that you're managing once you've got them on board? - What I look for in nowadays, it's kind of tough because during the interview process, you have to be careful in the questions that you ask the people. So I kind of ask them some general things where they open up. Generally, the people that I have seen or feel that, you know, has been top sales guys or people that have expensive hobbies. You know, that might own boats or muscle cars or they want their wife to stay at home. That was big for me is I started having children at a young age and the cost of daycare was expensive. And for me to stay at home, that meant my wife couldn't, I'm sorry, for my wife to stay at home, she couldn't work. So that kind of forced me to go out there and to push myself to be successful. And that's what I look for in these guys. What are they motivated by? Then I'll ask them, hey, what motivates you? I've had people come in, well, my wife makes a ton of money and the money that I make is kind of play money and stuff and I'm back in my mind thinking, okay, how motivated is that guy to go out there every day and work from that standpoint? So in my previous life, knowing the guy that I hired, I know he was motivated because we work together a lot. So I had no questions with him, but with the newer guys, like I said, I look at what motivates people that I go after that and if it falls in line to what we're doing, then obviously the personality has got to fit, you never want to bring in somebody that is going to be negative. I try to look at positive people as well. Coachable people, to me, is also important. I've had some guys out there in the industry that sold a lot of machines, but the culture that they're coming into might be a little different and I think we have such a great culture here. I don't want to rock that. So to me, that's important, being coachable. We've taken guys that we're not selling machines in different industries and I've trained them and coached them, "Hey, be there for the customers." It's okay if you don't know something, but get the answers and make sure they're right. Never be a yes, man. Never just say yes to appease somebody. People understand you may not know. If you're transparent and truthful with people, I've always seen that the best way. When I got started young and somebody would ask me something, "Hey, sir, I don't know that or a man, can I make a quick call and find out?" Oh yeah, or, "Hey, get back to me." So I think that was some of those traits that are important to me. - So I'm curious, I want to come back to mind. The second half of my question about trust, but you also said something, how do you determine a head of time if someone is coachable? - I started asking them certain questions and I know that's kind of tough because very interviews, people might want to give you the answers that you want to hear. At Ellison, we also do, and this is the first time I did it when I came to Ellison, some personality testing. So I get to see some of the results of some of these personality tests to see how they scored. But there again, you can answer some of those questions to that. I guess it's just, and one of the things I, if the interview goes well, I might try to meet the person for lunch or kind of in a different atmosphere environment. I've heard people like to do three interviews in different atmospheres, different settings. I've done that just to see what type of person that they are. Like I said, nowadays you gotta be kind of careful on some of the questions you ask, but I might ask something in general then they kind of feed into it. Example would be like, hey, what do you like to do for fun? Oh, I take my kids to sports or I'm involved with this when necessarily you can't ask somebody if they got kids these days, I mean, or if they're married, people get kind of offended, but I can ask, hey, what do you like to do for fun? Hey, I like to go hiking by myself or, okay, you know, or I like to do this with the kids. So in my mind, I'm like, okay, you know, this family-oriented guy's got kids and oh, you have kids, you know, that's great. Then I tell him a story about all my daughters, my seven daughters, and then that just kind of, wow, man, you know, kind of opens it up. - You have seven daughters? - Seven daughters, yes. - Wow, yes. - Okay, well now we know why you're motivating. (laughs) - Now you know what motivates me? - Yeah, absolutely. - In the ads of that, I just found out that three of my daughters are pregnant. Two of them's doing the same time in October or one's doing December. So I went from no grandkids to, hopefully by the end of the year having three grandkids. - Okay, well folks, you heard it here first, new splash. - And the kicker is we found out what one of them is and it's a girl. So I was hoping to get some grand sons. Well, it looks like the first one's gonna be a granddaughter. But as long as they're healthy, that's the main thing. - Absolutely, look. I would like to get a grandson in there. - Congratulations. - Thank you. - So let's go back to this idea of trust. That was the other part of the question that I asked you. When you hired someone new, I mean the one guy that you talked about, you already knew him. So there, and he came to work with you. So there had to be a modicum of trust there already or he wouldn't come to work with you. When you hire someone that's brand new, how do you convey that you're safe? They can trust you. How does that happen? - Obviously trust has got to be earned over time. And I think when I show these guys, talk is cheap. I put my money where my mouth is and the one salesman that I hired, he was an operations manager at a machine shop and he wanted to get involved in sales. And I didn't want to hire him away from a customer. So he went and did something else for a little bit. And then he came to me once he got the machine industry for a little bit and said, "Hey, Nick, I've been out now for a little bit when I like to get involved in sales." And I sold him machines. So I think he trusted me from that standpoint, having that trust there. The other salesman that we hired and put in a territory was an open territory. And literally the day before he came on board, I sold a pretty big package of machines in his territory and I gave him the full commission for that. So he got his full commission and I easily could have put that money in my pocket and said, "Hey, I'm gonna keep this as a house account." And I think he was just blown away when he came, you know, walking in. I said, "Hey, you're gonna get a check for X amount and his eyes lit up like, wow." So right out of the gate, you know, I showed, you know, him that, "Hey, you know, I know people in your territory and I'm gonna help you make money." But in the same sense, I need you to be out there working to help me as well. So, but I think it's over time, you know, and all these guys know that like I said, they can call me day, night, weekend. I'm here to help them. So, and I've never given them a reason not to trust me. I mean, I know that they call me and it's something, you know, that's kind of high level corporate. They know I'm gonna take care of it and get them the answers and, you know, things to help them out. Or I'm gonna put them in the direction. You know, I got my one guy that was asking me about, you know, some of our health benefits. And honestly, I didn't know the answer to this question. So I said, "Hey, I go instead of me, I wanna hook you up with the right person to help answer those questions and to get you fully taken care of." And, you know, I made the conference call with them and I was there helping them through it. And, you know, I just could have, you know, said, "Hey, call this person by, you know, I made the call to get him connected and help them out and it's kind of sad they're why they had their conversation." - All right. So I have to ask you because one of the questions that I asked you in preparation for this interview, I asked you about some wins that you and your sales team have had in the past year. And I was very intrigued by one of your answers. I'm just gonna read it. You said, "One of the wins, when a customer told us they were buying a competitor's machine and we got them to cancel the order with the competitor and go with us." So walk me through, walk us all through how that happened. - You know, that's, it's funny because, you know, my sales guy told me, hey, we lost this order, they're going with, you know, brand A because of ABC reason. And I said, "Why know the guy, can you get me in front of him?" And he got me in front of him and, you know, I was talking to this customer and he said, "Yeah, you know, Nick, the price was a little bit better. Yeah, I feel your machine's better." And I said, "Look, if we can, you know, get closer price point, can we get there?" He says, "Well, it's, it's kind of a done deal. We sent the PO in already." And I looked this customer in the eye and I said, "You know what's great about our country?" And he's like, "Well, there's many things great, but you tell me." I said, "We are free to change our mind. We have the freedom to do that." And you can change your mind. There's nothing, no bylaws out there that if you cancel order that, you know, you're going to go to jail or get in trouble. I said, "You know, you might lose a deposit or it might, you know, hit you with your stocking fee." I said, "The professional company's probably going to be frustrated, but you know, if you cancel, I highly doubt there's going to be a penalty." And he said, "Are you sure?" I said, "You know, it's happened to me before. You know, now I haven't lost where somebody else went to buy another machine. You know, I'd done deals where, and you'd love a dollar for that reason, a contract got pulled, you know, or one instance, a guy found out an unfortunate situation with his wife and he was going to get a divorce and just said, "Hey, I can't do this." So, you know, things happen. And, you know, I told this customer, I said, "Hey, it would just, if you feel, you know, we have the better machine, which I do." And he believed that and price wise, we get there, just try it and see, and hold your ground. And that's what he did. And of course, the competitor, you know, wasn't happy, but they told him that, "Yes, he could cancel, and they wouldn't penalize him for it." And that's what he did. He canceled it and bought our machine, and he was very happy to do that. - Okay, so he was buying essentially on the quality, that's what made him change his mind. Is that the sad, how about getting this story? - Yeah, and he thought, you know, he only had a certain budget to work with, what he did granted it was, you know, it was a light deal, but I taught my sales guy, "Hey, never give up." You know, even if, you know, to me, you know, that that machine's not on the floor, don't give up. But don't, you know, don't overdo it, you know, if you see that there's a window, don't shut it. He came back to me, got me involved, and just, you know, being persistent, and I taught him how to work with the factory a little closer on these type of deals, 'cause the factory doesn't, you know, just as much as we don't want to lose, our factories don't want to lose either. So we all came up with a plan, and we were, you know, within this budget and granted, everyone took a hit, but at the end of the day, you know, it was a big win, and we call those orders in our industry on market share orders. So we got a nice little market share order out of that deal. - Okay, so your plan going in was to try and meet his number? - Yeah, it was, it was really close. I think we were within a few percent. And generally, when somebody puts a budget out there, they figure, you know, maybe a five or 10 percent, you know, fluctuation of things. So, you know, we were within that. He just didn't think we could, you know, get that low on our number. So, like I said, with, you know, our team, you know, it was a whole team effort. And what the salesman learned is, you know, don't give up. And that's what I told him, I said, don't have machines there, I said, but, you know, don't burn up bridge, you know, if you lose, lose professionally, you know, walk away to, you know, come back another day. And that's happened to me throughout the years. I mean, you know, we win some, we lose some. Yeah, it's frustrating. I, you know, teach my guys, never show their frustrations in front of the customer, you know, get to your card. If you want to yell, scream, you know, hit the steering wheel. But, you know, lose gracefully, professionally, always wish them, you know, the best of luck and keep tabs on it. 'Cause there's times where, you know, customers have bought competitors machines and they've had issues and just checking in, you know, with them, they see that we're not born anywhere. And, you know, I've gotten future business that way as well. So. So I'm making an assumption here that part of your process, I mean, it sort of sounds like you were training this salesperson and I'm making an assumption that part of your process is that should a similar situation arise in the future, he's now empowered to do some of the things that you did to help meet the number. Would that be an accurate? Absolutely. Yep. Okay. The main thing is, you know, getting us involved, getting management involved, you know, maybe early in the process versus an $11. I know everyone, you know, in sales where most people have the egos and they're proud, they're hard workers, they think they're ways the best way, but even to this day, you know, I always listen to somebody else's advice or what they gotta say. I may not necessarily implement it because I might, you know, but at least listen and I'll hear somebody out. I'm never too old to learn something new and I try to tell these guys that I can be a chameleon in certain situations, you know, and, you know, I tell my guys to, don't, you know, bring value to the table. You know, go in with bringing some type of value and then to be a good listener, you know, people want to talk and tell you about themselves. And I've seen sales guys talk over them and tell them how great they are. And I tell these guys, look, you know, you gotta be a great listener as well. And you gotta, you know, remember, you know, what the customer tells you and take it for what it's worth. - Remember what the customer tells you and put it in your CRM. So you remember six months from now. - Yeah, no, we're very big on that, you know, put notes in the CRM. I've even put notes, one of my little tricks to the trade. You know, and I always tell people, I enjoy this. I look at it as not just slinging iron, but forming partnerships. I became really good friends with many customers out there where, you know, we've gone to dinners on vacations and, you know, each other's houses. And I tell these guys, you know, I'm not here just to sling your iron. I'm here to form a partnership. And I think that's when, you know, they give me an opportunity, that's where the trust, even from the customer's side is built. And one of the things that I try to do, it's funny 'cause even all of the salesmen, you know, sometimes I hate salesmen, you know, you know, when I get to go buy a car, a product or something, you know, I just see the pitch come in, you know, and it's so funny 'cause my wife's like, you know, she goes, you know, our sales guy is real all like that. I said, you know, a lot of them are, but I try to get on, you know, a little bit of a personal level with people 'cause we're all human. And when I walk in somebody's office, this is one of my little secrets. If I ever wrote a book, I'll share a secret with you. When I walk in somebody's office, I try to pick up three things in their office that I can relate to. And if you look around generally, people are proud of their families, their hobbies, things like that. So, here in Ohio sports is really popular. So, and I'm a sports guy. Granted, I'm, you know, I'm not a Browns fan. I won't say who I am, because I don't want anybody to hold it against me. But, you know, I'll, you know, start conversating about the Browns. Or, you know, obviously Ohio State is huge here. So, or, you know, if I see a business owner with their family, I might ask, "Oh, hey, is that your family?" That's a beautiful family. And, and the kicker is is, you know, I've seen gentlemen that's had three four daughters. And when I start talking about my family, tell me how many daughters I have, just the look on their face, expression. They almost feel bad and have to buy something for me. (laughing) - Gotta beat his family. - You will not. - There's seven of them. - Yeah. But then it brings it down to, you know, the reality of, you know, I'm a human too. And then like I said, I try to bring value, you know, to the conversation where it might be, hey, you know, I'm not just here to, you know, try to, you know, sling your iron. I'm here to learn more about your business. And, you know, what are your, your pain and your pleasures. And, you know, and a lot of people, you know, nowadays are having a lot of pain with finding people. And I've done networking where somebody will call me up, hey, Nick, you know, I'm looking, you know, to move on, to get into this shop, do you know anybody. And I made connections that way. And, you know, I don't ask for anything, you know, from it other than, hey, if you're looking at a machine, just keep me in mind to quote, you know, I made connections, you know, that way with helping people out. We have an internal service at our company that, you know, helps with talent acquisition. So, you know, I bring that to the table. And not many companies, you know, have that in their platform of, you know, having a talent acquisition group or having house financing or, you know, things like that. One of my automation partners, we were helping a customer and he helped, you know, look, the customer were finding a building, you know, for his machines and stuff. So, you know, and I'm out there looking at, you know, helping them, you know, hey, you should, you know, look at placing machines here. So, I don't know if, you know, to me, that's just normal, I enjoy it. A lot of people say that's way above the call of duty. And if that's, you know, above the call of duty, I enjoy it, you know, I'm passionate about it. So, to me, that's fun. - Yeah, I think it's always wonderful when you can help someone else. I mean, that's why I do what I do. And so, this has been a great conversation, Nick. Yeah, if people want to get in touch with you, where can they find you? - You can always find me on LinkedIn. I do post a lot of things on LinkedIn. I try to be creative and have fun with the post. You know, I try not to give a lot of wording, technical stuff, whether that's good or bad. I try to have fun. But you can find me on LinkedIn. That's Nick and ICK Swords, SOWARDS. Type it up on my out there. Or if anybody would like to talk, you know, my phone's always open. My number is 216-347-9566. That's 216-347-9566. Or you can always drop me an email at NSOWARDS@elisontechnologies. E-L-L-I-S-O-N-T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. - Okay. And for our listeners, if you didn't have a chance to grab a pen and write that all down, no worries because Nick's LinkedIn profile is in the show notes along with his phone number and his email address. So if you wanna connect with Nick, as soon as you finish listening to this podcast, go to the show notes, click on his LinkedIn profile, give him a call, send him an email. And you have been listening to salesology conversations with sales leaders with my very special guest, Nick Swords. He is a sales manager at Elison Technologies. And if you found value in listening to today's podcast, then please think about one business owner, one sales leader, an entrepreneur, a sales manager, somebody that you know that you think might also find value in listening to this podcast. And please do share the link with them. And until we meet again, visualize yourself surrounded by cash, really large bills. - You've been listening to salesology conversations with sales leaders, the art of faster, easier, more profitable sales. Be sure to follow so that you don't miss a single episode. And while you're at it, please leave a rating and review and be sure to share it with your friends. Tune in every week for more exciting insights and wisdom on transforming sales. And until next time, visualize yourself surrounded by cash, very large bills. (upbeat music)