 | David Stillman on Executive Leaders Radio |  |
We’re back and you’re listening to Executive Leaders Radio. This is your host Herb Cohen.
Herb (10:50): Now we'd like to introduce David Stillman. David’s the President and CEO of the organization known as Vorsight. David what is Vorsight? What do you guys do?
David (10:54): Vorsight is an outsource meeting scheduling company and inside sales effectiveness organization. We either partner with sales executives and basically do their intro calling, setting up meetings on their behalf, or if they have their own sales teams that are on the phones trying to get in front of decision makers, we actually go onsite and teach them how to do a better job of doing it by themselves, taking the tactics and techniques that we use internally, and showing them how to do it themselves.
Herb (11:21): So, How did you get a job with this company, Vorsight?
David (11:25): I actually founded it with my business partner roughly six years ago.
Herb (11:29): So you founded the business six years ago with a partner and did you guys have like a 75 page shareholders agreement to protect your selves when you got started?
David (11:37): At that point we didn’t really know what we were doing or what we were getting into, so it was really a good faith proposition with a good friend and we wanted to see where it went, so we decided that we were going to split it 50-50. We each put $100 in the bank and started and that was it. Obviously six years later we have one now but it’s still not 75 pages long.
Herb (11:57): So this business Vorsight, do you enjoy what you do for a living?
David (12:01): I love it.
Herb (12:03): What about it do you enjoy?
David (12:05): I love things that people wouldn’t think I love about the business. Obviously I love selling and I love running a business, but honestly I love employing people. The thing that gets me out of bed every morning is our employees and the fact that I can look to my wife and say, “Hey, I pay the salaries of almost thirty people”, and that’s pretty exciting in an economy that’s not always doing that well and that’s rebounding. The fact that we’re hiring and we’re constantly adding people and being able to pay salaries and never had to lay anybody off…
Herb (12:34): And how many brothers and sisters do you have?
David (12:36): I have one older brother who lives in New Zealand.
Herb (12:38): Older brother, and what was the affect of being the youngest of two brothers?
David (12:42): I learned resilience; I got tortured as a child…
Herb (12:45): How much older is your brother?
David (12:47): Five years, and he was a lot bigger and a lot stronger than me.
Herb (12:52): So what was the affect of growing up with a bigger brother that would beat you up occasionally and torture you?
David (12:57): It taught me how to fight back, how to get my way, maybe how to position myself to get out of trouble, how to deflect things so that he was the one getting the brunt of the trouble even if we were both getting in trouble and I learned how to get him to sort of step in the way of the bullet from my mom.
Herb (13:16): So this business you started, which is fundamentally generating sales leads and its sales training, how’d you get involved with this? How’d you get exposed to this? I guess actually the real question that I’ve got for you is, since you can do what you want, the way that the business is today is exactly how it started right?
David (13:37): Not quite, its growing, what we’ve decided is that we’ve specialized in one part of the sales process and we’ve made a concerted effort to not go outside of our comfort zone or our specialty, but what were are doing is adding products and services and technology wrapped around what we know best, to provide more value to our clients.
Herb (13:59): Tell me a little bit more about that, what do you mean?
David (14:02): So when we first started we were a meeting scheduling company and then our clients asked us how do we actually do what we do? So we created a training curriculum and then they said ok well, you’ve left, what’s next? So we created an ongoing coaching and follow-up workshop and they said “Ok that’s great, well we’ve got managers in place who don’t exactly know how to maintain the momentum from your training and coaching follow-up”, so we created management training. They said, “Great so now the managers know how to do it, but still the reps numbers go up, they go down, they dip, it’s mixed”. And that got us to thinking; can we put a technology in place, a new learning solution that will foster ongoing learning while we’re not there? So we’re actually in the process of developing that as well.
Herb (14:45): David, you have a partner, right?
David (14:47): I do.
Herb (14:48): Do you guys do the same thing? Or do you do something different?
David (14:51): No, luckily we are very different people. We have the same vision, but how we go about it is very different. We have different strengths and weaknesses which complement each other very nicely.
Herb (14:59): Do you knock heads?
David (15:01): I think so. Yeah absolutely, I think if you have two people that are constantly on the same page, nothing is going to change, so we challenge each other to get better. I liken it to, if Vorsight is a train going down the tracks, I’m the conductor, directing the ship, and he’s the mad scientist in the lab trying to create jet rocket fuel that will get the train from point A to point B 150 times faster, so he is like Mr. Wizard.
Herb (15:26): So you’re the salesman?
David (15:28): He is too. He has a knack for sales, but he’s even better creatively.
Herb (15:34): But you are a salesman,
David (15:35): I am, yes.
Herb (15:37): But you’re also a CEO.
David (15:39): Yes, its two tough hats to balance, but what’s nice is that they’re both process jobs. Sales is a very process, process, process, job. You need to do steps A, B, C and D in order to accomplish the outcome expected which is closing a deal.
Herb (15:55): And getting to that outcome, I assume you develop some trust with that potential client?
David (16:00): Yeah, you know it’s funny, I think our best clients that keep coming back to us.. I actually had a conversation with one of them about a month ago, he said “David, we’ve been working together for five years now and I don’t think you’ve ever sold me. I can’t remember ever being sold by you. What our mission is in the sales process is to act as strategic advisors. We are industry leaders in this part of the sales process, so what my goal is to advise sales leaders and CEO’s of small businesses how to better their sales organization, whether or not they use us, or not
Herb (16:28): So you have repeat customers?
David (16:30): Yeah absolutely, but we’ve only been a business for six years, so when we started obviously we didn’t have any repeat business, so 100% of net new business was coming through just cold outreach. We’ve really ramped up our marketing efforts so stuff is starting to come in. Our clients refer us to other clients, but most importantly our clients are starting to come back as well. As opposed to being 100-10 we’re more like 50-50 at this point.
Herb (16:51): I would expect in your business that if you don’t get it done for your client then they will drop you like a hot potato.
David (16:55): That’s it. Our results are into business, so if we can’t get you a meeting, and we can’t get meetings for you, than we have clauses in our contract that say, “Hey, we don’t have to work with you anymore”, so the onus is on us every day to provide value to our client.
Herb (17:09): Sounds stressful.
David (17:10): Not really, it’s great! I think that if you love what you do, than stress is part of it and it’s how you deal with the stress and I try to not let it affect me and our business is growing because of it.
Herb (17:21): Is there more opportunity yesterday or tomorrow? I mean we’re coming out of a recession and I know things are looking slightly better, but I mean things are tough and you’ve been in business for a number of years now, is there more opportunity tomorrow or is there more opportunity yesterday?
David (17:36): For us, there is definitely more opportunity tomorrow than there was yesterday.
Herb (17:39): Why is that?
David (17:41): Luckily we picked a business by accident that is recession proof. What ended up happening because of slashed budgets and reducing the workforce, two things happened for us. One, our clients need to get more business, so they need to do more cold-calling. The amount of inbound leads were drying up and the amount of people spending money with them were drying up, so they need even more people to meet their SIM revenue goals and on the flip side, we hire recent college graduates pretty much entirely, and the great thing about it is that in a down economy, the talent pool goes up so where with one position we were getting 100 applicants, now were getting 500 applicants that are all as qualified if not more qualified, so from a talent perspective and a client perspective it’s actually been more helpful for us while building our brand.
Herb (18:28): Since you are really selling sales, your sales people must be very good.
David (18:32): We’d like to think so.
Herb (18:34): How do you keep them happy? You’ve got top performers.
David (18:37): Perks, were a sales organization so we have weekly perks, we have monthly perks. We do corporate sponsored events, we do twice yearly trips to the Caribbean for the top performers, so our job is to keep everybody happy so that they’ll keep producing, but frankly we are trying to create an environment where people love coming to work. Our employees are all friends with each other and they’ll tell you that’s part of the reason why they love coming into work every day, because they get to see their friends while doing their job.
Herb (19:05): We heard that there’s some pride in the fact that you have created these jobs, probably well paying jobs for thirty or more people, so I’m sure there’s something paternalistic there isn’t there?
David (19:14): Absolutely, it’s a family, we’ve never laid anyone off, and we haven’t fired anyone in a year and a half, probably two years. We haven’t had anybody quit in at least nine or twelve months, but when one of those things happens it’s really sad. It’s similar to a kid going off to college, I mean I don’t have kids, but I assume that it is probably what it’s like or what my parents would tell you that it’s like.
Herb (19:34): What’s the website address for this organization known as Vorsight?
David (19:37): It’s www.vorsight, V as in Victor, O, R, S as in Sam, I, G, H, T.com
We’ve been speaking with David Stillman, President and CEO of Vorsight here on Executive Leaders Radio.
