Feb 24, 2019
Steven Benson is the Founder and CEO of Badger Maps, the #1 route planner for field salespeople. After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Steve’s career has been in field sales with companies like IBM, Autonomy, and Google – becoming Google Enterprise’s Top Performing Salesperson in the World in 2009. In 2012 Steve founded Badger Maps to help field salespeople be more successful. He has also been named one of the Top 40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:
SHOW NOTES
[00:11] Intro
[01:09] Welcome Steve
[01:31] Business success stories that inspire him
[01:40] Jason Lemkin : creating SaaStr
[04:00] GPS analogy
[04:50] Sales experience
[05:20] How Steve got into sales
[06:45] IBM training program
[07:20] Sales roles at Google
[08:10] Challenges faced while switching career path
[09:01] Failures
[09:20] Badger maps
[09:50] Lacking vision
[10:07] Choice of Technology industry
[10:45] Dynamic nature of the technology industry
[12:34] Competing in software/app world
[13:37] Stories that excite his customers
[13:44] Application of Badger maps in sales
[14:38] Field sales
[18:05] Being efficient with time
[19:00] Having success stories with statistical details
[20:05] Leadership circle
[21:25] Identify a problem and find a solution
[22:00] Objection handling
[23:20] Challenges facing today’s sales leaders
[25:21] The art of storytelling
[26:17] Contact info
[27:40] Outro
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
There's so much
information and so much to do and so little time today in a way
that there hasn't been before, and I think it takes people's focus
off things. It makes it harder to accomplish
things.
Speaker 2:
00:14
This is the storytelling for sales podcast, a show about leveraging
the power of storytelling to ignite your sales performance and grow
your business.
Ed
Bilat:
00:25
Hello, this is Ed Bilat, we have a very cool guest for you today.
Steve Benson, the founder, and CEO of Badger maps, the number one
route planner for field salespeople joining us today after
receiving his MBA from Stanford. Steve's career has been in the
field sales with companies like IBM, our autonomy, and Google. And
actually, he became Google's enterprise top performing salesperson
in the world in 2009. In 2012 Steve founded Badger maps to
help field salespeople to be more successful. Steve has been named
one of the top 40 most inspiring leaders in sales lead management.
Steve Benson, welcome to the show.
Steve Benson:
01:11
Hey Ed, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be
here.
Ed
Bilat:
01:13
Oh, absolutely. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have you on
the show! I listen to your podcast and I watch your videos all the
time, so I can't wait to hear your story all the way from San
Francisco. But before we do this, let me ask you a traditional
question, which is “what business success story inspires you and
why?”
Steve Benson:
01:35
Well, um, you know, I guess one of my big inspirations, uh, running
Badger is Jason Lemkin. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him,
but he's the guy that started EchoSign, which is kind of very
select DocuSign if you're familiar with that
company.
Ed
Bilat:
01:50
Oh yeah. Yeah. We use DocuSign all the time.
Steve Benson:
01:53
Okay. He started EchoSign, which, uh, is a very similar product I
guess, but they sold it. They didn't take it public as DocuSign
did. They sold earlier too. Adobe, he was one of the early people
that made a SAAS business and built it up from scratch and took it
all the way to a very nice exit. That's what he's first known for.
But then after that he started just writing blogs and kind of
communicating with the world of people that start software
businesses and just writing down and created some really great
thoughts and content around how to do every element of running a
software company like his challenges that he faced, ways he'd
overcome things, and he talked to other people about how they were
overcoming things in very clear, simple explanations. Yeah,
two-page articles would create vast value if, from my perspective,
they taught me a ton of things, and that content strategy then grew
into now a huge business that's called SaaStr. Yeah, when it was
just all started, he wasn't even monetizing in the beginning. He
was just kind of writing about his experiences and be like, Hey, I
know a lot about this and I'm just going to share my thoughts. He's
a really humble guy, a really inspirational guy for me. The company
that I run is based on ideas that I learned from
him,
Ed
Bilat:
03:11
So this was a blueprint for SAAS companies with no expectations to
monetize this whatsoever and it turned out into something really,
really big.
Steve Benson:
03:19
Right, which works out sometimes. I don't actually know if he had
the plan to build the whole SaaStr Fund staying on top of what he
was starting off with. I actually suspect he just had a blog and
was creating content and then so many people were following it. He
was like, oh, I should have a conference. I should. All of them.
They do it now. But really it just started out creating great
content for what ultimately came to his user software
executives.
Ed
Bilat:
03:49
We're gonna circle back to that. Let's turn the spotlight on you.
Now our podcast listeners know, and I think today this will be
particularly relevant. I like to use the GPS analogy. Then I'm, you
know, you and my guests, right? You are in this world. I know
Badger maps is for sure using GPS and, as you know, in order for
the application to locate you, you need at least three towers. So
each tower makes a circle, triangulation technique, and it'd been
able to pinpoint yourself or precisely. So then I looked at your
awesome experience. I see those three circles, right? I see the
sales circle, right? I see the true passion for technology in this
tree, which is your circle two. And I also see your leadership
drive, which is circle number three. So let's talk about all three
of them. Shall We?
Steve Benson:
04:48
Sounds great.
Ed
Bilat:
04:49
All right, excellent. Circle one is sales experience. I look in,
you've been in sales roles for many, many years. IBM, HP, Google,
and currently you are founder and CEO of Badger maps and which is
very unusual for a CEO. You actually host your own podcast outside
of sales talk, which I think is awesome, but not many CEOs are
actually doing this. And look, not many CEOs actually record sales
training videos for their reps. And you do. So how did you even get
into the sales world?
Steve Benson:
05:22
Well, you know, originally it was because of a friend slash mentor
of mine. I was in business school at Stanford looking at a bunch of
more traditional roles for students coming out of business school
types of things that most of them do, you know, consulting and
finance, jobs like that. And I was looking at them and interviewing
with them and kind of exploring the different roles that are
there's, you know, tried two years away from graduation, still
figuring out, you know what? Early in my time there and trying to
figure out what path I would take, this guy I know it was a friend
and a mentor was like, you know, you could be a consultant and he
had been a consultant before. He was like, you should be a
consultant in finance. We can do any of these things, but ask
yourself, “are you going to be the best guy in the room? Best guy
or girl in the room at this job?” And because I don't think you'll
be the best finance person, I don't think you'd be the best
consultant. You might go into sales and you might be the best
salesperson in the room and that's kind of a natural fit for you.
And everyone always focuses on showing up their weaknesses. But
really in a career, you kind of want to play to your
strengths.
Steve Benson:
06:32
I think your strength might be the interpersonal side, the
leadership side, the sales side of the business. I was like, oh,
that really makes a ton of sense to me.
Ed
Bilat:
06:43
Okay.
Steve Benson:
06:44
So I started looking at the jobs of that nature and I ended up
entering IBM that has this program where they, uh, which is like a
year-long training program.
Ed
Bilat:
06:54
Yes.
Steve Benson:
06:55
Pretty cool. It was like, so right after business school I went
into a year-long sales training program and they're kind of
grooming people to be at their company for the long term, I think
is what they're looking for. And they stay, invest a ton up front
trying to make you a great salesperson. I didn't end up staying
there after the year was over. I ended up, uh, with a software
company called Autonomy, which subsequently was purchased by HP.
And then I ended up, uh, moving into a sales role at Google because
they're kind of on the cutting edge of SAAS. I'd seen some
SAAS that, so software as a service to shift to doing software on
the cloud as opposed to traditional software. It's downloaded or
solo CD, it changes the whole business model and stuff. And I, and
I saw that at Autonomy a bit. We were dabbling in that model. Okay.
One of the companies leading the space, Salesforce, Workday, a few
others, but a Salesforce is where Google is in a really great job
at that point. And so I went to them and it was kind of a part of
growing very early SAAS businesses out. And so I was there for
years and then I started Badger.
Ed
Bilat:
08:02
And what was a major challenge early on like for sales specifically
when you were rolling through the training at
IBM?
Steve Benson:
08:18
Well, I think some of the biggest shots, it's really not. It's been
taught to you before like everyone has the natural sales abilities
that you learned from when you're a small kid, you try to sell your
mom on buying you some sugar. But you learned to sell and learning
to influence and learn to educate others. I was fairly highly
educated, but I hadn't been educated in this at all. I felt like it
was a natural fit for me, but that being said, I had to kind of
build all these skills from the ground up and the types of things
that really differentiate great salesperson from other types of
business leadership.
Ed
Bilat:
08:59
Sales suddenly going to be challenging and can be stressful. Do you
have a favorite failure of yours? Like, anything will happen, which
was a good lesson in the retrospective?
Steve Benson:
09:14
Yeah, I'd say the biggest failure of my biggest successes, the
company that I run now,
Ed
Bilat:
09:22
I love it.
Steve Benson:
09:25
Long term, it was successful, but in the short term there were a
million failures that I overcame building the business. I'd say
that one of my biggest failures was not realizing how long and hard
it was to get a business of this nature off the ground and going.
Everything took three times longer than I thought it would
and was three times harder than I thought it would be. The failure
there is, I mismanaged how long and difficult things would be and
so that, that causes all kinds of problems. But then long term it
did end up being a successful company here, but it was very good.
But harder to get going than I thought it would have been. And that
was definitely a failure of oversight.
Ed
Bilat:
10:06
Let's talk about the Second circle: The technology this is your
passion and commitments. Again, IBM, Google, HP and you stayed with
technology for many years and yet your undergraduate degree is
actually in geography. Right?
Steve Benson:
10:31
I was actually looking at a bunch of industries that would be
interesting. I figured out, oh, I shouldn't be on the sales side of
things. There were other industries that I was also looking at the
reason. So that to me was because of how fast it's changing and how
dynamic it is and how it's compared to most industries. It's just
having an outsized impact on the world. That's changing how things
are done in business and in people's lives all the time. I mean, if
you think about even 15 years ago, people didn't have cell phones
or they had very basic, wasn't even have cell phones. People are
just living differently. Technology has changed, business has
changed people's lives a ton in the last 15 years, and it's
happening really fast and quick change tends to create opportunity,
my opportunity to disrupt incumbents and it's just exciting and
interesting. So I think, yeah, that's how I ended up in technology,
right? It's less that I've always been interested in speeds and
feeds the computers or something, but more that I'm interested in
the change that technology enables, and I'm interested in being a
part of exciting, dynamic things.
Ed
Bilat:
11:42
Uber is The largest Taxi Company in the world and they do not own
any taxis. That's right. Yeah. The largest media company in the
world does not write any content. I am talking about Facebook.
Hospitality provider does not only new hotels, right? So like 10
years ago, if you would tell somebody, let it, a business like that
would exist. They will just laugh at you saying like this is not
possible. it's just physically not possible. But that didn't
happen. So specifically for the mobile APP World that isn't it like
really hard to compete in this space today?
Steve Benson:
12:23
Yes. The bar for creating new technology is relatively low today.
16 year old can code up an APP but to build enterprise-class
software is very hard if you're building something that a business
is going to be using for business critical things. And if you're
making that kind of application, there's a lot to it and you've
gotta be able to integrate with their existing systems. You've got
to be able to work perfectly solve their problems. There are a lot
of apps, there are a million flashlight apps and those are easy to
build, right? There are far fewer companies that are building
applications successfully and software successfully that's used in
business. There's a lot more today than, there used to be. There's
got to be 5,000 companies that make marketing technology and 5,080
sales technology. But really it's hard to compete because there is
so much going on and changes so fast. But it's easy in that if you
solve a key problem that a large group of people has, you can
really create a lot of value with technology very quickly. And so
even if it's hard to compete and you've gotta be on your game and
you can unlock a ton of value of people and therefore create a
great business.
Ed
Bilat:
13:36
So for your customers, like what type of stories excites them? ,
what do they do with the application?
Steve Benson:
13:44
What Badger does is we have an application for field sales teams.
We take their territories, their customers, and we put them on a
map for them. We allowed them to use our tools to figure out which
customers they should focus on. We give them the capability to
build routes and schedule out their time when they're in the field
and meeting with customers, we provide them with new leads. So we
showed them where businesses are, so if you want to make this a
real example, think about a company that sells something to
dentists and their 800,000 dentists or whatever in America. And
this company's goal is to let all these dentists know, hey, we have
a cool new way of cleaning people a little bit better. We have a
new thing that does that. Exactly. And then they already have a, a
very large sales team. That's their business, right? So that's a
field sales is a sale that occurs in the fields, right? You could
also just sell it online. I mean, what if you were a new dental
company and you just, you created a really nice website, put your
new tool online. Maybe no dentist would show up and look at your
finding new tools. So how would you get them to do it while you
send out field salespeople
Steve Benson:
14:51
could also use inside sales where you're calling them on the phone,
but with certain types of buyers, the best way to get in front of
them is by actually going and meeting with them and explaining why
your new way of doing something is better or why what you have is
this and that they should start using instead of something else. It
could be selling wine to restaurants or something, you know, it
could be medical devices to doctors or pharmaceutical drugs,
pharmaceuticals are sold this way. But the point is that we help
that kind of salesperson who goes and meets their customers face to
face, uh, we helped them do a whole bunch of things and they're a
very mobile group of people. Obviously, they're out in the field
and so our software works on, it's an application on their phone.
It also works in their computer. We enabled them to do a bunch of
things. We just solve a bunch of problems that they
face.
Ed
Bilat:
15:44
They would drive us to downtown and just dump final seven people on
the street. Right. Then you have three streets that way and the
fourth streets that way. And um, you know, I would take the
elevator to the top of the building and then be just walking down
the stairs until securities you will run out, uh, cell phones.
Yeah. So it was basically finding anybody who would be interested
in cellular technology, in the wireless. Right. And remember, once
you have an appointments, we'll always do a T- call means that you
go to the left, you go to the right and you go to the back of the
business, which you just visited and say like, Hey, I was just
talking JNK right next door to you. So would you be interested in
this as well? Right? So like, I'm sure your software is way
smarter, uh right now. So, because that was like very, very basic
instincts and they actually based a lot on psychology. How, how
would they feel after that appointment? Right. As if it wasn't like
stressful. If they told me to go, I would be very hesitant to go to
another location, you know, I would need a cup of coffee or
lunch.
Steve
Benson:
16:57
. Most of the people that we sell cell phones, especially tricky
because everybody could use those. It's very hard to filter, but
like if you're selling heart stents to cardiologists, that's much
more specific. Or if you're selling, you know, organic beer to
organic restaurants are, and Vegan restaurants, that's much more
specific. Our customers tend to be not trying to sell something to
everyone, but they're selling a specific high-value thing to
specific people. And so it's more about, okay, I come up with my
territory, there are 800,000 dentists in the country, but my
territory is just, you know, Manhattan north of you know this
street. And so there are 500 dentists, this area, those are the 500
that I've got to talk to. Or they'll cover like western Kansas or
something and there are 500 dentists there. And so they cover a
specific group of people in a specific area.
Steve Benson:
18:02
So a lot of it is about focus and knowing when to follow up with
them... when it's a good time setting meetings and then being
efficient with your time to kind of create value for those
customers and not, not just kind of walk in and not many of our
customers are kind of that early in the sales process where they're
just kind of walking in and saying hi. Sometimes we see that though
we do see that some, but it's especially in my experience, a hard
job. If you're selling something that kind of anyone can buy like
water's hard or cell phones or anything, insurance, business
insurance that every business could buy. So it's like if you walk
up and down Main Street USA and every single company on the street
could buy your thing. It's nice because you have lots of customers,
but it's also harder because you have lots of prospective
customers,
Steve Benson:
18:52
Well, you're having a great story that communicates how you help
your customers is one of the most important things that you can do.
People remember stories. You want to have those success stories
about your customers. Like this customer got 50% more meetings, you
know, a month because they started being organized with our
product. This customer was able to sell 20% more because of the
focus they were able to use in the new leads they were able to get
with our product. A key thing is having statistics in your stories
if you're in the business like have real numbers and the real
people if I can tell another dental company that they know and
compete with is using our product. I use them, she has an example
because they have a bunch of customers there. It's uh, we got our
first big customer there a long time ago, but then I was able to go
and tell that story to other companies in that industry that don't
necessarily sell the same exact thing as them, but also sell things
to dentists or doctors. If you can give a very specific example of
a specific company unlocking a ton of value because of your product
or service. That's really one of the keys to sales is having that
story.
Ed
Bilat:
20:06
So let's talk about the last circle. The Leadership circle, cause
obviously is the CEO of the company. All right, so you're not just
a leader, you also coach and the teammate. You transition to that
role and being the leader. What stories come to mind that actually
helps you grow as a leader?
Steve Benson:
20:26
I think great leadership. It's easier for most people that
understand that great athletic coach versus a crappy, crappy
athletic coach. We'll tell their basketball team, for example, you
got to score more points. That's not being a good coach to yell at
you and say you guys aren't scoring enough points. You've got to
score more points, more baskets. A great coach is someone who is
able to pull a player aside and say, Hey, I noticed on your
crossover dribble on your left hand that you're leading with your
foot like this. If we were to switch it to leading with your foot
like this, you'd get an extra half step on the defender and that
would allow you to get around them and make the layup. Here's a
drill that you can practice, you know, 20 times tomorrow and really
engrain doing it this way instead of that way and you'll be able to
feel it. That extra step that you're going to be able to get a
great coach identifies problems like that and then brings a
solution and helps the person learn and uplevel their game. And
that's really what I try to do. I don't just set goals and say,
hey, I want know numbers to increase x percent by x date. I try to
work with all the different teams and have ideas with them and
listened to them and figure out where they can get that extra half
step.
Ed
Bilat:
22:01
When you take a specific objection when the customer says I don't
have any money, like how do you deal with this? Like do you just
freeze? When do you ignore it? What do you do? Because objections
will come like whether we like it or not with objections will come
and if you're not prepared, well guess what? Like it was going to
be very awkward.
Steve Benson:
22:23
Right, exactly. Yeah. I have a whole series of videos on sales
skills and they just, if they're available for free on Youtube,
Youtube Channel, Badger maps, it's the sales tips and tricks
playlist and there's like 10 videos. They're all 10 minutes long or
so, so you can, we'll get there. I'm pretty fast, but it's, it
covers things like objection handling. I think we have three or
four videos on that and that's everything from the way you should
anticipate objections, the different types of objections you're
going to run into and how to head them off and how to handle them
and uh, if you're interested in that sort of
thing.
Steve
Benson:
23:24
I think the biggest challenge is what a noisy world. It's
everyone's so busy, you know, their attention being told a million
different directions and it makes it harder to get things done.
Makes it hard to take the next steps, getting people's attention
right originally and letting them know, hey, I do x, Y, z. It
creates value for people like you by doing B. C is that interesting
to you? To learn more about or and getting them aware that you are
a solution like you even exists is one problem. Because people have
so much going on, and this is for a lot of reasons. I mean, one we
productivity per employee is, has raised a ton over the last 30
years. Pay hasn't really grown for a, for most people that
productivity has. And so we're basically, we're doing a lot more
with less. That makes people a lot busier. I do also blend
technology, right? The frantic nature of today's world. 17 hoses of
information coming at you. Like I remember when I was a kid, my
dad, you'd get the Chicago Tribune and read it. That was like his
one hose of information. But if you, if you look at, you know,
someone today, they have three social media sites and you know, 14
news aggregators and you have TV and Netflix and their phone
blowing up, you know, there are eight communication applications on
my phone, each one can have messages flowing into it from different
types of things. And Yeah, I think it makes it a very noisy world.
And I think that's the biggest challenge for selling to new people.
I guess the biggest challenge to leading a team is that they're all
attracted. I think it's the, it's the, it's the hardest thing about
managing yourself is that you're distracted. There's so much
information and so much to do and so little time today in a way
that there hasn't been before. And I think it takes people's focus
off things and makes it harder to accomplish things. You really
have to actively combat that.
Steve Benson:
25:24
The Art of storytelling is the art of communicating with whoever
you want to communicate with. Doing it through stories is doing it
with examples. It's about connecting to people, to connecting to
the person that you're trying to communicate with. Giving rich
examples, whether it's yourself or people like them, it just makes
the message that you're trying to get across through the story a
lot more effective and a lot stickier in people's minds. And so
that's what the art of storytelling is to me. It's really the art
of great communication. And I think that in general, in the modern
world with low attention spans and all the distractions of the
world, it's harder to have truly great
communication.
Ed
Bilat:
26:16
I appreciate your time. So for our listeners, what's the best way
to connect with you over your brand?
Steve Benson:
26:21
Um, best way to get ahold of me for your listeners, probably
Linkedin search, Steve Benson at Badger I'll come right up. My
podcast is outside sales talk and you've got to listen to that. If
you were in hearing new sales strategies and learning new things
about how to be a great salesperson, it's less me talking and more,
I been on best sales leaders from around the world, thought leaders
and that sort of, those sorts of people.
New
Speaker:
26:53
We'll make sure to include all those links on sources. Um, again,
thank you so much for coming to the show, is an absolute
pleasure.
Steve Benson:
27:00
Yeah, I think what I can offer your listeners is, if they are
interested in sales, you get in touch with Badge.r Just let people
know that you, that you heard about podcasts here, we'll give you
two months free of Badger. So if you're in sales and you want to
check it out, that's a reward for listening to all my, uh, my
blathering here.
Steve Benson:
27:38
Thanks for having me, Ed!