Ep.207 – Business Blueprints – Relentless Execution & The Elite Advisor Playbook with Brett Smith of Intellys

Josh Lupresto (00:01)
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling technology solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of sales engineering at Telarus and this is Next Level Biz Tech.

Everybody welcome back. We got another business blueprint for you today. We’re talking about relentless execution and the elite advisor playbook. Brett says he has all the secrets Brett Smith of Intellus. Welcome on my man.

Brett Smith (00:28)
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Josh Lupresto (00:31)
Brett, all right, so the people want to know the secrets, but before we can give them the secrets, we got to learn a little bit about you for anybody that is not familiar. So ⁓ walk us through a little bit just before we even get to who Intellus is. How did you get started in the space?

Brett Smith (00:46)
Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually, I’m not going to take the whole podcast on this, but I do want to share a little bit. grew up in a small town, Tarqueo, Missouri, little farming community. And one of the best things about that or a couple of the best things about it is that it kind of had a low barrier of entry to just about anything I wanted to do. I got to play all the different sports. I was part of a band. was in the student council, future business leaders. And I think one of the nice things about not only getting to do a lot of different things is that I got to interact and engage with a lot of different types

people. In addition to that, my parents were small business owners. They were trucking and farming business and ⁓ I learned very quickly about putting in a hard day’s work and doing what you say you’re going to do and treating people the right way and that

your reputation is kind of everything, not just with your close circle of friends, but in a small town that travels really fast. so ⁓ growing up in that environment has a lot to do with who I am today and how I operate as a partner. And so I got into the business ⁓ in Dallas around 2000. I worked on the direct side for eight years. I worked for XO and Sprint. And so I got a little bit of both flavors of a C-Lac and a little bit of mobility on the Sprint side. And then 18 years ago, moved over to the channel.

was one of the best things that’s happened to me. I went from having a relatively small playbook, working with an individual company to having just about an unlimited portfolio and being able to solve a lot of different problems for my customers. And so it’s been a great run for me. I love what I do and real thankful to be where I am.

Josh Lupresto (02:22)
I love the story. It seems like everybody great that has started. There’s so much that I think you can learn and everybody learned in that telco space. A lot of good people I always hear from Exo, from Integra, from Lumen. I think it just teaches you so much. And if you can go through all of that, survive it and go, man, I’ve got some great abilities here. I think you learn a lot probably about yourself during that time. ⁓

Brett Smith (02:48)
Yeah, for sure. Resilience is a pretty key

factor when you’re in that environment, for sure.

Josh Lupresto (02:53)
Yeah. Manager gets changed. Quota gets changed. Products change. All kinds of fun stuff. okay. So then you know, you made it made it from pivot over to channel. so then where does, where does Intel is come in? ⁓ why did you start it? How did you start it? And kind of who is it?

Brett Smith (02:58)
Yep.

Sure, yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, we do have two partners. It’s not my organization. I’m a key contributor for them. I’ve been there for seven years. ⁓ They ⁓ kind of came and pursued me. I was pretty happy about where I was. And ultimately, it turned out to be a real good decision for me to make the leap. had some ⁓ real good peers that advised me that that’d be a good place for me to go. And so it’s worked out really well. The untelus story is that we audit, ⁓

source and or propose, then we contract negotiate, we help with project management and implementation, we have a 24 by 7 knock and field services group all underneath one house and then we all obviously life cycle manage after the install. We like to stay real close to our customers for a long time.

And I know that may not make us entirely unique. I think having that full ⁓ cycle of services puts us in a little bit of a different level. There’s a lot of people that do each of those things really, really well. I don’t think there’s a lot that do all of those things. But what I like to share with my customers is I think we’re the most creative partner out there.

Our organization gets real ⁓ unique about doing things on our customers’ terms rather than on our terms or on the suppliers’ terms. so I really like our go-to market about being flexible for our customers to be able to get them solutions that ultimately they’re looking for.

Josh Lupresto (04:40)
So as you think about, we were talking a little bit before about this kind of the audience that listens, right? We’ve got TAs that are just getting started. We’ve got TAs that have been doing this a while. We got TAs to, even you mentioned earlier that focus on a specific silo ⁓ today. And I think you lend expertise to all of this, right? Today we’re talking about this relentless mindset and this playbook that you operate from to operate at the level that you do. So when you think about an elite advisor, an elite TA,

What separates that elite TA from somebody who is easily forgettable?

Brett Smith (05:15)
Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s two things. The first is building momentum and trust as quickly as you can. You know, you’re not necessarily trying to make a friend when you walk in there. You know, I think a lot of people try and do the social, you know, how can I connect with you based off of where you went to school or what’s on your desk or things like that. You know, my goal is to quickly find out what, you know, what the pain is, what the maybe the low hanging fruit. I’m not trying to use a cliche there, but I really want to find something that’s not working very well.

form and try and solve it as quickly as I can. And the reason why I do that is it proves that I can execute. It typically builds trust pretty early on, ⁓ way faster than just going to the same school or something along those lines. And then it also gives me a cadence. How does this customer or this contact at this organization operate? Some like phone calls, some like emails, some like texts, some want to hear from you every single day or every week with an update, whereas others

would rather not hear from you at all. They just want you to take care of it. And so, you know, by getting in early and finding a project, it doesn’t have to be a big giant one. You know, it does those three things. It proves you can do it, builds the trust, and gets into a cadence. And once you’re done with that first one, it of allows it to be pretty easy for you to move on to the next one. So I think that’s one item. The other is availability and or reliability.

⁓ And I’m not trying to knock like the work-life balance thing, but ⁓ I think most of my customers know that when they need to get a hold of me, they’re going to. And if I don’t answer, I’m going to text them back and let them know that, hey, I can’t handle this right now, but I’ll get right back to you. And ⁓ I think having that ⁓ availability or that relationship with your customer that they know they can depend on you is priceless. I think those are the two things that I would say.

Josh Lupresto (07:05)
Yeah, I

don’t I don’t think our spouses like that answer. ⁓ When we tell them how, how important it is. But really, it’s it’s crazy that when you think about it, like your customers, you’re not you’re not always defined by what you do kind of on the front end, you’re defined when you go through the trenches with somebody or when you take on that project for that customer, it’s not always going to go right. ⁓ But if they know, I can I can trust Brett, Brett responds, I picked him at a weird hour, I wasn’t expecting to respond, he respond like that.

Brett Smith (07:08)
Yeah.

Josh Lupresto (07:34)
They might not remember all those things, but they remember the emotion that was created probably when you helped them through that thing. So if you can help them there, you’re probably going to be able to help them with the easy stuff, right?

Brett Smith (07:44)
Absolutely.

Josh Lupresto (07:47)
⁓ So let’s think about, you know, this is a little theme here about, you know, the relationship sales and the storytelling component. So how do you use this storytelling idea to kind of build trust, you know, and urgency, but just not not be cheesy about it, not sound like a pitch.

Brett Smith (08:06)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. know, number one, I think you got to be genuine. You know, I’m not telling a story to try and get an angle or anything along those lines. It’s, you know, I’m generally in the sharing space, you know, and I think maybe the best way to answer this is potentially with a story. ⁓ Just yesterday, I was on a call with a customer. They’ve been a client of mine for a while. The largest piece of revenue comes from a call center environment and it’s coming up for renewal here in a few months. ⁓

potentially not enough time for them to migrate off of the solution they’re on today, but they kind of wanted to leverage the fact that they, you know, how can they leverage that against their existing provider in order to get a little bit better deal as they move into the next term. And we started off the meeting, I gave them the floor and they wanted me to like, can we go get quotes from competitors, you know.

the whole gamut of things. And my response was, can I just share with you what I did for another customer in this exact same environment? that we have absolutely. And I said, well, why don’t I just tell the supplier that you

inform me that you’ve been shopping without me involved and you’re already way down the list. Now we don’t have to waste suppliers times that you’re not really going to move to. Now we don’t have to get you on calls with three different suppliers and have you walk them through the scenario. We’d be wasting your time, we’d be wasting the suppliers time just to accomplish this same goal that we can by just telling them you’re off on your own doing this ⁓ bidding. And so I think there was a lot of value in that to them. We got to the same end goal without having to waste suppliers times and waste their time.

⁓ And I think having something similar like that in your back pocket, regardless of the scenario, ⁓

it becomes like memorable instead of selling on features and benefits and products and services, you’re telling them about an experience that either happened to them or happened to somebody else or to me. And I think that resonates a little differently than, you know, the shiny feature product that you’re putting in front of them. And so I think having a story or the opportunity to share a story during this sales process adds a lot of value to it.

Josh Lupresto (10:17)
I love it. ⁓ Okay, so I want go back to this theme of the kind of relentless execution, right? I think that’s a good Michael Jordan book title or his trainer’s title, I forget who it is. ⁓ what for you, right, for Brett, what does relentless execution look like for you, just your daily habits?

Brett Smith (10:36)
Yep. Well, I talked about it a little bit earlier. think being available is real important. ⁓ But more importantly, ⁓ acting fast, not being afraid to make mistakes kind of along the way. I think it…

It builds a little bit of give and take with your customer when they know not everything’s gonna have to be perfect right off the bat. And I think if you can share that, like I’m trying to get back with you with an answer as quickly as I can. isn’t a finished, polished solution. ⁓ It is good. I think you gotta act fast. And then the other thing is, ⁓ it’s like the non-negotiable moving a timeline or kicking the can down the road ⁓ or having a plan B mentality. Like, well, if this doesn’t work, I’m gonna go with this.

this is what we’re going to do and this is going to work and not pushing that deadline that the customer and you have agreed on, I think it is really important about delivering consistent execution to your customers.

Josh Lupresto (11:36)
love it. ⁓ Okay, so if you think about this, you know, as we’re going into, it could be CX deal, a ideal security network, whatever. How does how does just doing this differently, we talked a little bit about, like speeds and feeds and not doing that, how does the relationship component, and this may seem really obvious, but I would love to hear your answer.

So, so when we think about talk about the tech stacks now, how do we, how do we incorporate ⁓ this idea of relationship based selling, how it changes the outcome versus like speeds and feeds. I, know, whether you’re doing CX AI security network, whatever, ⁓ how does does it doing it from a relationship driven side change things?

Brett Smith (12:17)
Got it. Yeah, great question. Actually, I was excited to talk about this. ⁓

My background gave me a lot of experience ⁓ and history in the ISP space. So all different flavors of internet and MPLS and even back into the old frame days. I sold a lot of voice services as well. Very familiar with UCAS and CCAS. A little bit of colo. ⁓ As security has become a bigger and bigger piece of the puzzle for all of our customers, I’ve really struggled with it just because I didn’t have the history. I didn’t have the background.

And for a long time, I was hesitant to talk about it with my customers, just because I didn’t have the knowledge myself in order to give them the answers. ⁓ All the suppliers might give you, well, ask this question, and then ask this question. But then the problem is, when they answer that, what do you do with it? And so I really shied away from security discussions with my customers. Unless something just fell in my lap, I really didn’t sell a lot of it. And what I figured out,

last year is that I’m never going to catch up. I’m not going to be at the level from a security standpoint that I am on the ISP side. So I started leveraging the resources that were available to me either from the suppliers or the TSDs for bringing on sales engineers. So I just started inviting them to my customer calls. And it was great. The customer saw them as an extension of the team. Immediately, the same trust that I had earned and developed with the customer was extended to the individual. In one particular case, the customer was always

it’s

like, why did you wait so long to introduce me to him, you know, or her? And so I think leveraging your resources and the knowledge base that’s available to us in this space is critical. I mean, I’ve literally doubled the opportunity that’s available to me just by bringing in, you know, for a 30 minute or an hour call and introduction and somebody that can have that conversation. You get off the call and afterwards that, you know, the engineer says, these are the suppliers that we should look at for these. And then you turn it over to the suppliers and you

you’re still coordinating the conversation and the meetings, but you’re letting somebody else do all that heavy lifting and experience and knowledge base. And so I think that’s a real key for leveraging your relationships, not only with the customer, but also with your suppliers and your TSDs in order to broaden your portfolio and get more revenue out of your customers that way.

Josh Lupresto (14:36)
I love that. ⁓ I love that example, right. And we’ve heard this, this is a great, there’s lots of people going through what you went through. And, you know, I think we’re sitting here saying, hey, let us help you. And I think what’s funny in that is that, you know, I think just speaking from a Teleris perspective, we got a lot of cool things, we got a cool commission backend for you that we think is industry leading. You know, we got a great team, we got a great event, we got a great training, we got a great all these things, everything’s great. That’s the theme today.

But the reality is, you know, we are at the forefront of seeing all of these things, but we’re finding that even our TAs, my gosh, I didn’t know you had that. I didn’t know that this thing could help me. I didn’t know that you had this training and event. So it’s a great, it’s a great call out of just be reminded by the TAs that, if you haven’t explored all of these components that are here to help you, I love that. That’s an awesome example.

Brett Smith (15:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, my first

sale last year in the email security space happened because I brought on Samara from your team, had a call with a customer. We outlined a couple of different vendors to help them out. And it wasn’t a massive sale, but we sold 600 emails, security licenses through you guys with the help of Samara. And she did a fantastic job for me. And so I think just leveraging those resources is so critical. You bet.

Josh Lupresto (15:52)
Awesome. Love it. Love it.

Okay, so so here’s the here’s the touchy one. ⁓ It’s about urgency, you know, like, time kills deals in my mind, right? So enterprises, especially the sales cycles drag out. So what do you do? What’s the this is the elite? This is a glimpse into Brett’s playbook here. ⁓ What do you do to create this movement?

Brett Smith (16:05)
Okay.

Josh Lupresto (16:17)
within those within those customer accounts to help keep this cycle moving without kind of breaking that trust or coming across the wrong way.

Brett Smith (16:24)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓

There’s a couple factors to it. On the front end, think it’s understanding the end value that the customer is going to get from the solution ⁓ that you’re delivering to them and then reinforcing that each and every time through the process. We started this and we’re going down this path because this is the outcome that we want to get. I think being real intentional about sharing that each and every time, not necessarily to be repetitive, but to continue to drive home the

reason why we’re moving down this this process. I think ⁓ simple things you know it’s not like there’s a lot of silver bullets out there but you know having an agenda setting next steps you know moving that thing down the line and and I think that goes not only on the customer side but controlling

I know that’s a little harsh word, making sure the supplier’s on the same timeline and page that you and the customer are on. Sometimes those two things get out of line. A supplier might have a monthly deadline or a quarterly deadline that’s impacting their behavior that doesn’t align with your behavior or the customer’s expectations. And I think making sure that everyone’s on the same page throughout that process actually helps things move smoother and quicker all the way down the line. so, you know, setting real clear expectations, constant communication and

Josh Lupresto (17:22)
Yes.

Brett Smith (17:44)
enforcing the value that you’re bringing to them, think is the best way to keep urgency. know, urgency happens as a result of that, I think is maybe the best way to say that.

Josh Lupresto (17:54)
it’s good. like that. So as you think about as you zoom out a little bit, and we talked about this with kind of the relentless component, and I think you gave some good guidelines there. But as you think about just the discipline, maybe personal standards that you have, I know some people are, hey, I just write it down, I write down my goals, everybody’s thing is different. What’s your advice for just personal standards that you’re thinking about kind of year after year? Is it a systems that you use? Is it a standards just in general? Like, what’s your take?

Brett Smith (18:13)
Yep.

don’t necessarily have systems, so to speak. I do set goals on a yearly basis. Those things have evolved as I’ve gotten older and a little more experience. I’m not so much driven around sales expectations. kind of…

and pretty comfortable in the ability to get there. What I’m really trying to do now is evolve from almost like an influence or sharing standpoint, which is one of the reasons I’m really happy and pleased to be on this call is I want to really elevate the whole market. How can we make the channel as a whole better? How can we make the channel more trusted? One of my favorite things that I did coming out of one of these ⁓ events is there was another partner that had been recognized for their 12 years of success. And I sent him an email

And I said, congratulations, I want to thank you because you opened so many doors for me. If he hadn’t done what he did and created the trust and the value that he did in the channel, ⁓ it would have made my job a lot more difficult. And I think as long as we all keep doing the right thing and delivering value to the customers, it gets a lot easier for us to open doors across the board. And so really that’s one of the things I’m trying to work on and evolve to now is not only ⁓ deliver success ⁓ in my own little world, but to try and help others.

get there too. And so ⁓ thanks for having me on here. Hopefully this does help some of the other folks out there. And ⁓ you know, if somebody wants to reach out to me on LinkedIn or what have you, I’m more than happy to do a little brainstorming or figure out what challenges others have. And so from a a maybe a discipline or system standpoint, that’s kind of where I’ve evolved now is, you know, I want to get into a routine of, of trying to help, you know, help others and hopefully grow personally from that experience.

Josh Lupresto (19:59)
⁓

Yeah, I love that. It’s awesome answer. And you think about, I’m forgetting who said this, if it was a Bill Gates-ism or what it was, but it was that we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in the short term, but we underestimate what our ability is in the long term, right? The five year plus. And so if you think about this, you I was just, you made me think of, I remember the first deal that I ever did, got on with the TA, we’re trying to convince this customer to move off of their Avaya.

Hosted is a big thing. You get a lot of features. It’s amazing. And the customer said, wait a minute, you want me to pay every month for this? You’re out of your mind. Nobody’s going to buy that. Right. And the good thing here, we did sell that deal. We did sell it with a UC provider. And now to your point, you look at like 12 years later, whatever, 15 years later, we’re now selling AI. We’re talking about robots. We’re looking, I mean, it’s crazy where this has come and

that didn’t that seemed so far off. But now in hindsight, it was like, that really wasn’t that long ago. And so I love elevating the whole channel. I love that.

Brett Smith (21:14)
Thank you.

Josh Lupresto (21:16)
⁓ Okay, so last couple thoughts here. ⁓ We like to call out mistakes. So I’m a new advisor, I’m coming in, I’m ramping up, I’m ready to go, I got a million things coming at me. What’s a new ⁓ advisor mistake you either have seen them make or you think they’re going to make? Just one that you would maybe call out that they would avoid, should avoid.

Brett Smith (21:41)
Sure, I’ll give two. ⁓ One is ⁓ make sure you solve the problem, don’t just ease the pain, ⁓ which is something I see pretty frequently. ⁓ Let’s say ⁓ there’s some sort of network issue or challenge there. The way to ease the pain is to just throw more bandwidth at it. well, let’s just upgrade your circuits. But it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of why the network

congestion is occurring. Maybe it’s something within their land type of thing. And so I know that’s kind of a little bit of a poor example, but think about making sure you’re solving the full problem, not just delaying the pain until another time when it escalates to a new level. And so I think that’s something to really keep in your mind as you’re going to market and presenting solutions is that you’re really solving the problem, not just delaying it for another time. ⁓ And then

The one other item that I had that’s now slipped my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. ⁓ the other one. Customers make decisions and take actions based off of their needs and their goals.

Josh Lupresto (22:48)
I love, I love the first. Yeah. I love the first one, right? It’s the do hard work, right? Like don’t take the easy road.

Brett Smith (23:05)
Sometimes sales reps think they’re going to make it for them. It’s like, help me out. When in actuality, one of my favorite phrases to use with the customer is to say, hey, I need your help. And it’s not to benefit me. It’s I need your help to help me understand this. What’s important? Or what’s going on behind the scenes in your organization? Can you tell me?

Josh Lupresto (23:19)
Mm.

Brett Smith (23:28)
you know, how I can better interact with so-and-so at your organization, you know? It’s like, it gives them the opportunity to, it’s like, well, let me tell you about this, you know, or let me, you know, it kind of opens, yeah.

Josh Lupresto (23:39)
They’ll always tell. Yeah,

they’ll always tell you think they won’t you’re afraid to ask but that’s a great call out. They’ll always tell won’t they?

Brett Smith (23:46)
Yeah, So those would be my two. I’m sorry, I kind of slipped there in the middle, yeah. Solve the problem, don’t just ease the pain, and then make sure that the reason why you’re helping them take action is to benefit them, not necessarily to benefit you.

Josh Lupresto (23:51)
No, no, no, no, no, no, those are gold. Those are gold. Those are gold. ⁓

I like it. Okay. Final thought here then. So we’re wrapping up the playbook. We’re in the final chapter here. So I’m taking all of this in. This is kind of what I aspire to do, right? To use some of these pieces of advice. So if I want to build, I want to think long-term. I’m thinking not two years. I’m thinking 10 to 15, right? I’m in this. So if I want to build this career at a high level, what’s the mindset? What’s your closing tips? What do they need to do?

Brett Smith (24:32)
Yeah, absolutely. Number one, you really need to enjoy what you do. You you got to love it. You got to be in a good spot with the right organization. And I think that’s one of my go to market. I’ll sit down with a customer and we’ll have the meeting. But before that first meeting is over.

I’ll say I just want to share one thing with you. I want you to know how much I enjoy what I do and how much I appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you and get the opportunity to learn about your business and figure out how I can help you. I say I’m gonna be here for the long term. I’m not going anywhere. I’m really happy in the environment that I’m in and if we don’t find the right decision for you today

that’s okay, I’m gonna do the best I can, but what I want you to know is that I’m always gonna be here and there’ll be an opportunity down the road. So it’s kinda like you don’t lose the sale, you just win it a little bit later in time. And I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve had some really fun opportunities to where just a couple months ago, ⁓ one of my customers acquired an organization that I used to sell Potslines to a long, long time ago. And we get on the first call and John Owens from the company

company

15 years ago is on the call and I was gone and it’s so great. It’s like, yes, it’s like the long term relationship is still there. He remembered how we work together and the benefits that we have. know, shame on me for not like keeping that going when I transitioned into a different role, but how great it was to see him on the call and have, you know, his excitement match my excitement to see him there. And so I think having a long term mindset and sharing that with

Josh Lupresto (25:52)
Done deal.

Brett Smith (26:14)
customer up front, lets them know that you’re not here for the quick win or the quick sale that you’re not going anywhere and I’m gonna be by here, be here by your side and I’m gonna try and find the best solution. It may not always be the right one for you. I think in our environment today we get the opportunity to find the right one a lot of the times but every once in a while we’ll miss and I think if you just tell them listen I did the best I could I’m sorry I didn’t have the right one for you but I’m not going

And so ⁓ I think that’s the long-term mindset and bringing that to the customer and sharing it consistently over and over and then demonstrating it. You always got to back it up. ⁓

I think a lot of things that we talked and walked through today about consistency and trust and follow up and availability, I think just resonates over and over. if you, if you can put that into your repertoire, I think you’re going to be real successful, you know, you know, don’t get frustrated, stick with it, be resilient. And, ⁓ you know, we’re all going to be here for a long time. The customers and the opportunities are only growing, you know, they’re not going away. so that’s my long-term message, I think.

Josh Lupresto (27:18)
I love it. Well, that’s a good spot to wrap it, man. I’m out of questions, I appreciate you coming on, man. There’s a lot of, this is a good advisor playbook. There’s some really good core things in here that you dropped that I think sometimes people take for granted or just think, ⁓ nah, nah, that’s that. I don’t need to that, but I think you, you you built a great career and it’s worked. So we got to trust the playbook, man. So awesome stuff.

Brett Smith (27:41)
Thanks so much for having me on, I really enjoyed it.

Josh Lupresto (27:44)
All right, everybody, that wraps us up for today. As always, every Wednesday, catch these on Spotify, Apple Music, you know, get them before anybody else does and get those little sneak peek on some of these pro tips like from folks like Brent. So until next time, I’m your host, Josh Lupresto SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus, Brett Smith of Intellys Business Blueprints, Relentless Execution, and the Elite Advisor Playbook. Until next time.