Ep.163 Tech Stack Mastery: Secrets to Sell across Cloud, Connectivity, and Security- Steve Davis
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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 BizTech.
Everybody, welcome back. We are wrapping up a track today with nobody better than Mr. Steve Davis of Network Data Solutions. Steve, welcome on, man. How are you? I’m good. I’m better that you’re here. We got a lot of cool stuff. I won’t spoil it yet, but for everybody listening out there, we’re talking about tech stack mastery, secrets to sell across cloud, colo, connectivity, security, all the things. So, Steve, maybe just kick us off. I’ve known you for a while, but let’s hear your story. How did you get into this field? Where did the path start? Windy, crazy stories. Fill us in. All
right. So I fell backwards into this, which is I constantly reflect on it and see how I got to this point in this wonderful field that we’re in. But, you know, did not have any sort of background in technology whatsoever. And, but was fascinated with it and, you know, wrestled, played football all my life, typical job type scenario, you know,
got a small offer coming out of high school from middle Tennessee and just my passion wasn’t there for it. And I felt like that it was just going to potentially be a waste of my time, you know, and wasn’t at that maturity level. I went to school for about six months and realized that, hey, I’m not ready for this college life yet. And my family had pretty much been in a military type background for the most part, not everybody, but a good bit of them and was looking for that sports type challenge and was like, hey, I’m going to go join the Marine Corps, you know, which branch am I going to join? I’m going to join the Marine Corps because I was looking for that challenge, right? Well, I got the challenge.
And dove had first into it, went to the recruiting station, talked to him about it a little bit, told him that, you know, I was looking to do some sort of, you know, special forces type experience. You know, that was my goal to get to that level, right? And then you take an ASVAB test and the recruiter starts trying to talk you out of going into the infancy. You know,
the only way you can get to that is going to the to the infantry and then, you know, that kind of dictates where they’re going to place you if you even get to that. And they tried to talk me out of it. You know, they were, you know, they were like, hey, you can do anything you want in the military. You’re sure you want to do this. And I was like, absolutely, you know, this is this is where I’m going with it. So when went down that path, it did its job in the fact that it grew me up very fast. And I was not at that point in my life. You know, the maturity wasn’t there when I reflect back on it, but it did what it was supposed to do and got me to that level of maturity very fast. And so on that path, I got pulled out and and was able to go through a certain lane that they had and ended up getting a top secret security clearance and put at Camp David, which was was very, very interesting. Not this is really the first time even being in the channel for what is it 15, 16 years, 17 years, I think that I’ve never really talked about it. Never never really thought to talk about it.
I kept the cover well. I respect it.
And so but but after that, you know, I went as far as I could go. I felt like in that and I had this entrepreneurial bone in me and it was just I’ve needed something more, you know, and there is love our military love America, love our armed forces and all that. But there is a thumb on you.
So I felt like there was more out there for me to accomplish. And so once I got out of that, I started a person I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur of some kind. And my first passion was was fitness. And when I got out of the Marine Corps, I started a personal training business, borrowed $7000 because you’re not making any money in the military. I promise you. And borrowed $7000 from my parents started a personal training business to where I would go into homes and do, you know, top to bottom programs for them and really enjoyed it.
And one of the only thing about that was I couldn’t duplicate it. I couldn’t duplicate my efforts. I just wasn’t I felt like there was a better way to get scale of a business and I’m not scaling my time because it was a 16 hour grind to where I was going into homes and all that good stuff. And it just took a lot of time. And I’ve always been very interested in technology, even though I did not know a lot about it. And I had a customer. It’s weird how things lead to other things. And I had a customer that was like, you know what you need to do? You need to come sell technology for me. And and I thought about it. And I’d always had that interest in technology.
And so I spoke to him about it, told him I really didn’t know anything about technology. And he was talking more about the infrastructure side. So that’s not what I’m not gonna say it wasn’t that hard to learn. But, you know, easier to learn and I could go into businesses and try to get pretty much cabling jobs, right? Cabling, moves, ads, changes, things of that nature. And ran into a larger banks, VP of IT operations, and he was into triathlons. And so I started talking with him about potentially being able to come in and do infrastructure for Compass Bank, is the bank it was for. And that led me down the path of getting into doing triathlons and being able to kind of co-mingle my passion with fitness along with the technology space. And we became close in that process. And we had probably at the end of that little run, we ended up having about 50 technicians all over the southeast from Texas to Georgia and Florida. Everywhere they had a branch, pretty much. And we were doing moves, ads, changes. You know, back then it was it was taking two pair and swapping two pair to another thing on the 66 block, you know, I mean it. And so after that, I started really diving into the knowledge behind technology. And then it just got really even more interesting on that front. And so with that,
Bobby Fabry, I’ve got to mention this too. So Bobby Fabry comes to our office and he comes in and he was working for Paytech at the time. And he’s like, hey, you know, you guys are already out here in the infrastructure space. Why don’t you start selling services? Why don’t you sell some connectivity to these customers? Well, the light kind of clicked. I’m like, okay, explain this to me. And then I started working as a bar with Bobby at Paytech just on the side. Just as we ran into opportunities, I would ask the customer, hey, we make and get you some internet connectivity for a better price than you’re getting today. And continue down that path.
Winstream purchased Paytech, and I don’t want to say anything bad. This is one thing, you know, it is what it is. But Winstream purchased Paytech and I was missing a good bit of commissions after that happened. That’s what we’ll say. And I knew that the model behind what I was doing, even as a bar and those low commissions, the model made sense.
And, you know, I can go out here and put forth effort and get paid on that effort in perpetuity as long as this customer’s happy, right? And that math made sense to me. And then, you know, fast forward to today and, you know, found Telarus through a search and Telarus put me with a larger, larger group, telco management group. And I worked under Marilyn Dooley for a while and really started seeing all the services, not just internet connectivity, but all the services that could be sold out there. And when you put a pencil to paper or a pen to paper and you start doing the math, it’s a pretty powerful model. Probably the most powerful model I’ve ever seen in my life. And so I jumped head first into it and started devouring information. I mean devouring it. I wanted to be able to sell every single thing that TSDs had to offer. And so that knowledge is what led me to where we are today.
So as you go through that and the customers come to you and talk about, all right, tell us,
give me the – you’re at the door, you’ve got 30 seconds. Give me the NDS elevator pitch. Where do you see – how do you explain how NDS stands out?
How do we see how NDS stands out? So usually,
I’m now anyway – and this has been a progression for sure throughout the years. But now we’re getting that initial discovery presentation done.
This is today.
Early on, it was vomiting on people and not – Oh, yeah, yeah. You figured out – Early on, it was just a vomiting on individuals and saying, “Hey, we can save you money on internet.” And so now we’re putting together presentations that allow us to come in. And the number one thing I do today is we follow a Challenger sales model, which was introduced to us through the TSDs. And I let them know that I’m not a salesperson. I’m a consultant for you. And I’m not a yes man. We’re going to show you what it looks – what it should look like. And then you can get these oligarch services, but we’re going to show you what it should look like. If someone asked us for internet today, we’re going to show them a DIA – a direct internet access. We’re going to show them a coax. We’re going to show them a 5G wireless backup or 4G wireless backup, whatever – along with Starlink that is going to get connected into some sort of SD-WAN managed firewall device for that redundancy. And it doesn’t matter if they just ask for internet connectivity. That’s the quote they’re seeing from us. And then when we go in, we’re saying, “This is what it should look like if it makes economical sense to the business.”
We can sell a dollar cart, but I do let them know that we’re there to show them what it should look like, man. And regardless if they’re needing those services or not.
And then the technology solutions map really lets them see, because these people that you’re in front of, or businesses that you’re in front of, they really can’t grasp all that we can do without knowing that.
Exactly. I love it. I think that is the funny thing about this business is surely everybody knows all the things that we can help them with. And you put yourself empathetically in their shoes, and we are just a sliver. We are 30 minutes in their 12-hour day, depending on how much time we get. So they only know what… So I love the approach of, “Hey, you asked for this. This is how we look at things.” And I think that’s why we wanted you on this session, because this whole story is about how do you go? Your story is about transitioning in a windy path and just constant progression, progression, progression.
And I think that we’re going to get to some more of the evolving role in the cross-selling things here in a second. Maybe one final thought on this. I always love asking this question.
Hard-won wisdom over the last 15-plus years. Something that you learned really hard yourself. Great lesson from a mentor. What’s been your standout?
Get rid of your ego.
Immediately. Like when you come into this, there’s no way to be just a top-level expert on all of it. So listen. Listen. Go to these events. Get rid of your ego. Understand that there’s a lot that you do not know in this industry. And constantly be listening to others, because their path is giving them wisdom that you may not have.
Another hard-won wisdom, don’t have all of your eggs in one basket. We mentioned Compass Bank earlier.
BBVA, a Brazilian company, came over and bought Compass Bank. So I went from a 50-technician business to, “Hey, we don’t have our one major customer anymore.” And it was the first really hard kick in the gut that I had to get myself up off the floor from, truthfully.
Because it was devastating at the time. It was.
So don’t have all your eggs in one basket, for sure. And then as far as other, like a mentor-type wisdom that was given was Dan Henderson, who was also, as I was making the transition over from in-house personal trainer-fitness guru to
the technology world, I was explaining, you know, I developed relationships with all of my fitness customers. And he was a, you know, the people that could afford it were usually CEO-type individuals that were bringing me into their home. And so we would have deep personal conversations a lot of the time while we were doing what we were doing. And he just, you know, he had mentioned to me and he saw my drive and he just said, you know, no matter what happens to you in life, your word is all that you have. You know, your word is all that you have and stay true to that. And I kind of added some stuff, you know, since then, it’s just, you know, say what you mean and mean what you say.
You know, always try to make that person in front of you feel better than when they first approached you in any situation.
And then, you know, another thing is just always do the right thing when nobody’s looking, you know, no matter what. This industry, it seems like to me,
there’s room for not so good activities, right? I mean, there’s room for that. And as long as you can stick with that, no matter what, do the right thing when nobody’s looking, you’re always going to be in the clear and good to go.
I love it.
Those are great.
All right. Let’s get into this idea of, you know, you’ve got some secrets here. We’re talking about selling cross-platform, cross-technology stack.
So from your perspective, what’s the right, what’s the effective strategy if I start with cloud and I move to security or I start with network and I want to move to cloud? How are you positioning that overall conversation? Walk us through some more of that.
So usually when we come in, there is a need. We do a lot of referral based relationships, right? If we go into a customer and they’re happy with what we’ve done, I ask for five referrals every single time. You know, hey, if you liked what you saw here and we brought value to the table, pick out five of your peers that you would like us to come in front of and do the same exact thing we did for you over here with them. And so as far as the transition for me, it’s all about listening to that customer and finding out those needs, asking the questions, making sure they know all that you can do. And then the flow, the information flow will go with that. You know, if it’s a budget issue, usually we’re coming in saying, hey, you know, if we’re looking at cybersecurity, you don’t have the budget for what’s needed on cybersecurity. Let us look at the network piece, the UCAS piece. Let’s create some budget so that you can spend on the cybersecurity needs and or cloud needs that are there that you know you have to have, but there’s a budget issue. So, you know, let us create that budget for you or at least look into it and potentially take that, you know, the budget savings and spend it over here where your must haves are.
When you do that, I mean, to me, it seems so simplistic, but I don’t think a lot of customers think like this. I mean, what’s the reaction when you think like when you get the customer thinking down that path?
The reaction? I would say that there’s not a whole lot of businesses out there that truly understand what we do. You know, I mean, it’s we come in, we explain to them, hey, they’re looking at you as that salesperson.
And I constantly reiterate to those customers, not a salesperson. I’m not here selling widgets. Okay, this is a non transactional experience. This is us coming in and sitting on your side of the table and helping you navigate this humongous knowledge gap that’s out there. And this is, you know, seasoned CIO, CTOs, doesn’t matter. They’re busy running their business.
And so we’re there to stay on that bleeding edge so that they don’t have to. And so once they see that we’re coming in and bringing value and we’re sitting on their side of the table, to me, the trick is to get them to realize that we are a partner with them.
We are not that salesperson trying to get them to buy everything under the sun. We want to find out what it is the needs are. And then once we find out those needs, we can navigate with them, not for them, but with them down that path.
I love it.
So when I talk about, you know, your story is about growth and kind of where you’ve come from, where you started.
When we got together a while back a couple years ago,
we were talking, you know, obviously we talk a lot about certifications. We love certifications at Telarus. You know, we think it’s helpful in staying in tune with what’s happening in the industry as we get into discovery calls, all those reasons that we talk about. You recently, I found out, picked up a pretty interesting certification. And I love hearing this and kind of hearing what your plan is. But walk us through maybe why you set your sights on that. And now really talk about, you know, what drove that and how you plan on leveraging that and what is this cert?
So I did. And it was, it was a very fun, brutal path. I will tell you that. And what made me, it’s kind of along the lines with that, that military experience, right? I went and I was like, okay, I’m going to do, I’m going to go into the military. And immediately my mindset is which one is supposedly, I don’t want to offend anyone in other branches, but which one is supposedly the hardest, right? And, and for, you know, the, the opinion is usually that the Marine Corps is the hardest. And that’s where I’ve been. I’m going to the Marine Corps. Same situation with this. You know, what’s the hardest subject that we deal with being a trusted advisor? To me, it seems to be cybersecurity. And then immediately asked myself, what’s the hardest certification in cybersecurity to get?
And the, from what I’ve seen, the opinion is, is the CISSP, or certified information security services professional, is the toughest one. And so I just decided that that’s the one that I was going to go after. Why not?
Why not?
Yeah, why not? And so when I decided that,
of course I was on Telarus University and trying to take as much free knowledge that’s out there like that as I could before I decided to go after the CISSP. Well, I had done a couple of courses on there and thought, man, I’m pretty good. You know, I feel pretty good about this. So I sign up to take this test and I go in and I’m sitting down, palm scans, you know, they’re just all, you know, very strict on this test. And sat down and after that three hours, actually about 30 minutes in, I thought I had signed up for the wrong test.
And so once I realized that it is that hard and there’s so much more knowledge involved behind the aspects of the CISSP, I was hooked. I was hooked. So then after that experience, I went and then knew I needed to dive in pretty hard and started getting up at four 30 in the morning, studying from five to eight a little bit every single day, going to bed, reading about it. Where was I? Where were the gaps in my knowledge? I would stick strictly on that until I could talk to my wife or others about it and teach them about it. And if I couldn’t do that, I’ve read that common book of knowledge four times now. That’s what it took for me. Yeah. But it’s an interesting read. If there’s one thing I suggest to all the partners out there is go grab a copy of that book and read it. Because if you’re in this industry, if you never want to try to get that certification,
that common book of knowledge goes over the enterprise complex circulatory system, right? From start to finish. And it really opened my eyes up to how much more I needed to learn, not only about cybersecurity, not only about the inner workings of the enterprise, but just as a whole, how it all fits together. And so that would be a suggestion for all partners is, hey, go grab a copy of that, go to Amazon and read that cover to cover one time. And it will help further everything you do with your business discussions.
Love it. Big, big congratulations. I was super excited to hear that you knocked that one out. And I think it will, it will pay dividends. And I, you know, I, I guess I don’t put words in your mouth, but I’m curious, because I’ve seen how this can be effective in conversations. But what’s your plan? Like when you, you, you’ve mastered this body of knowledge, you feel that you, you know, I like your example, the circuit enterprise circulatory system. What’s how does that change when you go into a discovery conversation with a customer before? And how do you go into a, maybe a security conversation after? What does that change in your frame up?
So before,
and a lot of this and that path to get that was about my confidence.
My confidence in that I deserve to be sitting at that table. I didn’t have that. I will be very, I’ll get vulnerable about it. I didn’t have that. And just not having the background of technology, right? I was always questioning myself, did I know enough to go have an enterprise level conversation with C-suite executives? And one of the main reasons why I was so dedicated to getting that is that allowed me to have the confidence to know that I deserve to have a seat at any table.
And so that was the biggest boost for me.
And I think it will transition over to the business conversations being had with, with C-suite executives. You know, there’s no more jockeying for, you know, hey, who knows more about this? Who knows more about that? Which I see a lot in this industry. And it’s, hey, here, I’ve got this. It also allows those C-suite executives to believe in you. And so that belief helps and just piles onto that confidence. And it shows in the conversations you have with these guys. Awesome.
Let’s go, let’s go do an example here. So walk us through a customer that you got brought into, maybe what was the tech stack? I mean, this is about kind of cross selling, you know, going different paths. What was the, what was the environment before? And then what were the problems and kind of how did it look after?
Yep.
Am I allowed to mention names, I guess.
If you want, it’s up to you.
Yeah. So, so we’ve got a large customer,
Sarah Automotive Dealership, one of the top 10 dealerships in the country.
And, and when we first went in, you know, it was a internet connectivity, right? Internet connectivity, they needed this. Well, they are running a very lean IT center, I will say, and simply asking the questions, you know,
going in with internet connectivity, we ended up, they hadn’t, they hadn’t looked at their internet connectivity in years. And we ended up saving them mass amounts of money, which gave them competent confidence in us to be able to look at other services.
And truthfully, the cross selling is, is, is every single time we go into a customer, not only Sarah Automotive, but every single one, we’re asking, you know, hey, let us look at all of your services, not just this internet connectivity. Doesn’t matter what it is, you’re, you know, where, where do you stand today? Where are you having issues in your knowledge today on the services that you have? And most people are just, you know, minus the, minus the large enterprise, they don’t have the money to spend on the IT services side, and especially for, for labor. And so us going in, we are looking, we, and we tell people when we first come in, we want to see the entire stack, the more you give us, the more we can put on a spreadsheet for you, the more we can compare pricing, even if you don’t get it from us, right? At least you’ll have an idea of what it is that’s out there. And when you do need it, you’re going to come back to us. So that’s, that’s really, I think the most important thing to me was, was once we realized, and once I realized that, that all of these services, services can and should be facilitated. Facilitated, I get away from the sales word, people are so against sales, right? And so I just tell them, I’m not a sales, I’m an expert facilitator. I’m going to help you down this path. And, and so asking those questions each and every time, no matter if it’s a one phone doctor’s office or a healthcare organization with 10,000 people, ask the question. Can I, you know, you like what we’ve done here, you know, let us look at your, your other services, whether it’s cyber security. What are you doing for your, you know, your access points? Let us take a look at that, make sure they’re secured properly. What are you doing? Have you, have you migrated to the cloud yet? Are you looking to do so? The AI question now, of course, you know, how are you integrating AI?
Have you integrated AI into your customer experience model or your, your contact center? You know, just, just question after question, you need to have these questions imprinted into your mind so that you are asking them every single time.
I love it.
That’s the, I was going to talk about kind of some of the roadblocks that I see out there, but I think you kind of called it out in that it, the only time where we’ve seen advisors not be successful is just because they didn’t ask or they didn’t think that, maybe they didn’t know that that was in the portfolio to have at their, at their, you know, at their back end call. They didn’t know that that arrow was in the quiver. And so I love that you’ve got this programatized to just ask every single time. And, and I think if you run that discipline process and you’ve got your CRM, I think the, the worst thing that happens out of all of this is they go, Hey, Steve, you know, that’s great. I love that you’re asking us about that. I think we’re stuck in contract for about six or nine months. Great. Put it in the CRM, ping them back in six months before anybody else does just keep asking, keep asking, keep asking. I love it. You mentioned the checklist, right? I, I’d envisioned that in, you know, door knocking days, like that checklist would be plastered on my cubicle. Um, and just, just ask, cause if they don’t, if they don’t know that you do it, they’re never going to bring it up to you.
And, and that’s one thing being that, that when I jumped into this, I had zero knowledge, right? Zero knowledge, scared to death. And I think that’s what happens to partners that aren’t asking the questions. If you ask a question about contact center, right? And the partner themselves or me at least, I was scared that they were going to ask a question back that I wouldn’t know. You know, I’m not going to know this, but in reality, we’ve got so many people that are experts in this ask the question. And if they ask you something, simply say, Hey, I don’t know this, but I do have a team of people that do.
And, and bring them to the table to help, help you out and sell those complex systems.
Um, final couple of thoughts here as we get towards the end. I mean, if I’m a, if I’m a partner, you, you, I think you covered this pretty good, but if, if I’m a partner and I’m going, all right, I’m bought in. Steve’s got me hyped up. I’m ready. I’m not afraid. What’s the, um, what’s the best advice for partners to, to continue to identify these and position themselves in that correctly? I would you put a bow on kind of some of these thoughts we’ve talked about.
Uh, I’m gonna be funny for a minute, but I think about this and I think that the majority of partners have that fear of rejection. I did as well, right? And, and one of the best things I can tell you to do is start singing karaoke.
So you can start singing karaoke and you’re not a good singer. And this is something that I did because I was deathly afraid to speak publicly.
I was, I was deathly afraid of it. I don’t know why I was just deathly afraid of it. And I was talking to somebody and, and, and just said, you know what, I’m going to start singing karaoke and we would go out and I would sing karaoke and was horrible at it. And if you can make it through that, then you can, you know, you cannot be afraid to ask those questions every single time. But, but on a more serious note, for partners themselves, they need to get engaged with every piece of knowledge aspect out there. And they don’t have that fear. Everything to Laris has to offer there’s a, I mean, I would love to know the value, the quantitative value of that to Laris University. That is a free source of knowledge, and there’s so much on there in every aspect of what we sell, you know, I don’t know the quantitative amount that that would be worth but it’s a lot.
Every event you can go to that you can afford to go to go to every single virtual event that you can go to go to, you have to know the technology or the theory behind the technology as well as know what’s in the portfolio so that you can translate to your customer of where to go.
So you need to know that that portfolio backwards and forwards and get with your, you know, your channel managers that should know that portfolio backwards and forwards and simply ask don’t be afraid to ask the questions and don’t be afraid to jump in and snag all of that, that free knowledge that’s out there as much as you can retain as much as you physically can do.
So, all right. Final thoughts. So let’s look into Steve’s crystal wall. You got the next 12 to 24 months. What are the innovations in the market you’re looking the most forward to that are just out there products or just innovations in general?
Innovations in general quantum computing. Quantum computing has is fascinating to me, you know, when, when Google came out with that willow chip and did what frontier, it would take them what I believe it was 10 septillion years and it does it in five minutes, you know, and being that I dove head first into the cyber security realm. Where does that leave us in the cyber security realm with the with the cryptographic, you know, analysis and everything else. I mean, it’s I’m very interested to see where that takes us and the evolution of AI, you know, how far will it go? I can’t wait to see the the robots that are helping us do our everyday tasks, laundry and cooking and everything else because it’s coming, you know, it’s coming and it’s coming at a very fast pace.
Yeah, fair points. I love it. Well, man, a lot of good stuff. Lots of lots of good stuff. I appreciate you coming on. It’s been a blast, man.
It’s been a blast. Thank you very much. I’m honored to be on here. And, you know, we watching this industry grow has been fascinating.
It’s taken me a little while longer to ramp up than I would have liked. But it’s it’s it’s happening and it’s fun. And I enjoy it and thank all you guys.
And oh, by the way, too, thank you for your service. We appreciate it.
Absolutely.
So yes.
All right, everybody, that wraps us up for this week. As always, remember, wherever you’re coming to us from Apple Music, Spotify, follow, subscribe. So you get these as they drop every Wednesday and don’t miss any of them. It has been tech stack mastery secrets to sell across cloud connectivity and security. Steve Davis Network Data Solutions. I’m your host, Josh Lupresto, SVP of Sales Engineering at Telarus. Until next time.
Thank you.