IAM345- Founder Helps Sales Leaders Acquire and Retain Top Tier Sales Talent

Fred Diamond is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. The Institute helps sales leaders around the globe acquire, motivate, retain and elevate top tier sales talent. He's also the host of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast.

He's interviewed thousands of sales professionals about their career always seeking tips from them to pass on to IES members and leaders to help them get better at the art and science of professional sales.

• CEO Hack: (1) Waking up at 5 am  (2) Book- Miracle morning (3) Exercise
• CEO Nugget: Start soon
• CEO Defined: Letting go off the things that put you in the comfort zone and letting other people do it

Website: http://www.salesgamechangerspodcast.com/

https://i4esbd.com/

Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Fred Diamond of the Institute for Excellence and Sales. Fred, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Fred Diamond 0:40

Hey, Gresham, glad to be here. It's exciting and congratulations on your success, and I look forward to the conversation.

Gresham Harkless 0:47

Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely looking forward to it because sales are something that everybody needs. So I wanted to introduce Fred first before we jumped right in. And Fred is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. The Institute helps sales leaders around the globe acquire, motivate, retain and elevate top-tier sales talent. He's also the host of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast. He's interviewed thousands of sales professionals about their careers always seeking tips from them to pass on to IES members and leaders to help them get better at the art and science of professional sales. Fred, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Fred Diamond 1:25

I am thrilled.

Gresham Harkless 1:26

Awesome. Let's do it. So they kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

Fred Diamond 1:34

Yeah, so I had worked for great companies such as Apple Computer and Compaq Computer. I had worked for a couple of startups, pretty much on the marketing side as a chief marketing officer or VP of marketing. I went to work for myself in 2002. As a solopreneur, an outsourced chief marketing officer, product marketing strategy, we created the Institute for Excellence in Sales to help us get more leads for our consulting business. And then it became its own, it became its own entity, and people started enjoying what we're doing. People ask us for more services. And I've been running the Institute for Excellence in Sales full-time as the CEO. I like to say sometimes I'm the president and co-founder, I did have another guy who I founded with. And we've been running it as an enterprise for about the last three to four years.

Gresham Harkless 2:24

Nice. That's awesome to hear how it organically grew from there. And I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper here a little bit more about the Institute and tell us what you're doing to serve the clients you're working with.

Fred Diamond 2:36

Well, we basically do three things. We're a member organisation for sales leaders and teams, and we have members ranging from as large as Amazon Web Services, and Red Hat software, I know we're both in the DC area, J. K. Moving is a great member of the Institute, Intel Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, they're all members of the Institute for excellence in sales. So we do programmes for sales leaders, we do programmes for sales teams.

And we also do programmes for women in sales and millennials in sales. We have a sales speaker bureau. And you mentioned I'm the host of the sales game changers podcast, we also produce reports based on the content that we gathered through the podcast. On the podcast, I interview sales VPS, about their career journey, and we seek tips for people who want to become sales leaders.

Gresham Harkless 3:26

Nice. And I feel like that's something that in the very beginning, I felt like sales always say is the lifeblood of business. And I've always heard a quote, businesses don't really go out of business for anything other than the reason that they don't have enough sales. So a lot of times you can cross paths, a lot of those things, but usually, it's just so important to be able to get sales. And sometimes, businesses just aren't successful because they don't have enough of those.

Fred Diamond 3:48

Yeah, I get people who come up to me and say, Well, I'm really not in sales. And they say, Well if you have a spouse or a child, you're definitely in sales. If you're running a business it's, especially for some of the people who are listening who are solopreneurs, or for early-stage sales, CEOs. It's all about sales, you may have the greatest product or the best service, or you may be the smartest guy in your niche. And if you're not selling to people, if you're not bringing in more business, you don't have a business.

Gresham Harkless 4:15

Absolutely, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for your unique selling proposition or a differentiator, but it could be for you or your organisation, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart?

Fred Diamond 4:29

Well, again, our mission from the Institute for Excellence in Sales is we help sales leaders acquire, retain, motivate and elevate top-tier sales talent. And the real differentiation is that we bring this couple of things that we say we bring sales thought leaders to sales leaders, so we do programmes where we bring authors speakers, some of the best sales minds in the industry, to sales leaders at a much more reduced cost than they would typically spend on their own. We've also built a really strong network We've had a couple of 1000 people come through our programmes. And from the secret sauce side, we spend so much time and energy on the details.

And when people come to like a three-hour workshop that we do, they show up, it looks great, we have great signage, we always have at least 100 people for every programme we do. So there's a breadth to it if you will. But we spend a lot of time on the details, I have this fear that what have you done for me lately. So you need to constantly focus on the details so that people want to be part of what you're doing. And they want to be a customer, they want to be a participant in your programmes.

Gresham Harkless 5:37

That makes perfect sense, I feel like and correct me if I'm wrong, that a lot of times when you have events are usually like any products or services in general, a lot of people don't pay attention to those small details and those details while it might seem small to maybe the founder or the person that created it could be mean the world to somebody else. So paying attention to all those different facets sometimes can be the world to somebody else.

Fred Diamond 5:57

Yeah, me, for example. So one of the things that people know us for is once a month, we have what we call our big stage programme, where we bring a sales author, a sales thought leader, to do a three-hour mini workshop for our members. So we'll have 150 people in the room, I have it down to the second when things need to happen. And I have some great people who help us with the programmes. And that's important for three reasons. It's important for our members who come to our programmes, they know that breakfast is going to be served from 7:15-8, they know at 8:02, we're going to give the two-minute announcement, they know that at 8:05, we're going to do a couple of bits of introductions, and they know the speaker is going to go on at 8:20. And the speaker is going to come off the stage at 10.

And then we have a raffle, then we have some networking. So we have it down to the second when I need the speaker to be there. When we need to have our table set with name tags. This way we avoid problems. This way we avoid scurrying around as people were coming there. And it just has led us to create a flaw in was programme. Second thing, we do a lot of programmes at venues. So we're in charge, we know exactly when we expect things to happen, which makes our job so much easier. And third, again, the people who are speaking or doing the programme, we know them exactly where they need to be when and the reason I'm saying this Gresh is we do that every single time.

And we've made some adjustments and modifications, but not that day, maybe we'll do a new process or someone suggests we do something differently. Our customers, our partners, and our participants know exactly what our programme is going to be.

So we don't have a chance where the speaker is not going to show up, or the projector is not going to work. Or the food's not going to be there on time, or the parking lots not going to be empty. Everything is thought through to the excruciating detail. So that from a customer perspective, it looks flawless. So I recommend to people all that, you can't wing things. Yeah, sometimes you got to be creative. But all that planning and preparation needs to go in. So it looks like it's flawless to your customers.

Gresham Harkless 8:10

Absolutely, definitely sounds like that's exactly what I was gonna say, how important it sounds like preparation is because I think in business and life and sales, whatever that might be. There are always things that will happen that you don't necessarily expect to happen. But always say control what you can control, if you can prepare down to a minute what's going to be at this specific time, or the projectors working or things like that those minute details that you touched on, then you can worry about the other things that might pop up here and there.

Fred Diamond 8:39

Yeah, and you got to take him seriously, your customers, want to be given an experience, they want to be given a product that's going to work. It's been, as I mentioned in the bio, I worked for Apple Computer for seven years in the late 80s, and early 90s. And I had the opportunity to sit in a couple of product design meetings and to the excruciating detail that the engineers went to. And the GY the graphical interface people had gone through all the way down to the box person. Apple was such a great place with such minute detail. But there were reasons why these minute details were part of the solutions. And it's helped me to remember that it really gets deep into the details so you can provide something flawless for your customers.

Gresham Harkless 9:26

Absolutely. As you said, it always goes back to the experience, the customer experience specifically. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Fred Diamond 9:42

I get up at five o'clock every morning, religiously. I read a book a couple of years ago and it was about a year and a half two years ago. Are you familiar with The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod?

Gresham Harkless 9:52

I have not.

Fred Diamond 9:53

So it's called the Miracle Morning. This guy's name is Hal Elrod. He was a Cutco knife salesman. He was there too, up sales professional. And he had a history of Life series of experiences. Most reassured he came up with a book called The Miracle Morning, which sold millions of copies. He's one of the top podcasters out there. He's created this huge community of people who get up before everybody else does.

And there are six things that he prescribes that you do. And I've adjusted some of these, I don't do them all between five and six in the morning. But there are six things he calls savers. S is silence or meditation. A is affirmations. Just reminding yourself why you and your company have such an advantage. This visualization of where you want to go is exercise, I do an hour of yoga every day or read good articles, things like that. And the final saver is the scribe. So I typically journal at least for five minutes every day in a book. And it could be anything, just repeating your affirmations.

Gresham Harkless 11:10

Nice. Yeah, definitely check that out. And I think that anytime you can get a jump on the day, and a lot of times, if you are starting at, especially like 5 am where you know, there's not a lot of people that are sending emails or giving you phone calls, you can get a job and you can take care of those foundational things in the very beginning of the day. So what your day is gonna look like you've done the exercise, and you've done so many of these different foundational aspects that it just propels your day for it. So I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self,

Fred Diamond 11:46

I would tell my younger business sells to start sooner. So I held corporate jobs. I was lucky I had a chance to work for Apple Computer when I was there from 87 to 93. That was one of the best companies in the world. Steve Jobs wasn't there at that time. But it was still a tremendous company to work for. And then I went to work for Compaq Computer and I went to work for a company called Compuware, I did a lot of international product marketing. But to tell my younger self, I would say if you have any inkling that you want to be a CEO, or you want to start your own business, start making the preparations, start planning it and thinking about what that might look like. It's a lot easier to do in your 30s than it is in your 40s and it is in your 50s.

Gresham Harkless 12:31

Absolutely, yeah, I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And I think the part that I love too, is that getting started doesn't necessarily mean like necessarily jumping in and getting starting the business. It could be like you mentioned the preparation, just like you do before an event where you're getting and making sure the projector is in place, you're doing that for your business, as well. That doesn't necessarily mean starting it and putting out your shingle. But it can be a lot of things that build up to that. So I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now, I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Fred, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Fred Diamond 13:07

So it really goes to leadership, it's interesting, I'll tell you one of my struggles, as a CEO, I still do things that CEO shouldn't be doing. For example, we send a lot of emails out. So I still draft the emails. And those are things Gresh that I shouldn't be doing at this point. There are better people in my community who can draft my emails for me, they can draft or they can send them to me for approval. And I've done that, and I've had people come and go over the years. But as a CEO, you need to let go of those things that are comfort things that you really shouldn't be doing that there are people who are better at you for doing. And it depends on the business that you're on.

But for me, I mean, there are probably a million people on the planet who are better at administrating events. But we do a lot of events. So I can do a good event. But there are a million people in DC, you and I live in, besides New York and Chicago, maybe one of the top three cities in the country for events while we were doing a Spring Boot. But most people traveled to Orlando. And we got so many great people here in DC, who can run events. So I've outsourced a lot of that to them. Even the minutia of creating name tags, but basically get rid of the stuff that people can do better than you outsource that. And really focus on the important stuff, which is vision, building teams, creating great products, partnerships, and generating revenue.

Gresham Harkless 14:47

Absolutely. I think there's an incredible perspective and I think a lot of times especially when you're growing something, sometimes your baby so you want to be able to make sure that it goes and walks and runs and does all the things that you envision and doing. But in order to grow, you have to make sure you're in your zone of genius, you can get people that are in their zone of genius as well. And that allows you to really be a force to reckon with, so to speak. So, Fred, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get out of you.

Fred Diamond 15:23

Sure. Well, I think you're doing a great job. By the way, the podcast was great. You ask great questions. People can find me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. Just go search Fred Diamond on LinkedIn. You can go to the Institute for Excellence in Sales website, which is the letter, The number four Esbd.com. And we also have podcast salesgamechangerspodcast.com.

Gresham Harkless 15:48

Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well. But I appreciate your time, Fred, and appreciate all the awesome things you're doing especially for this DC Maryland, Virginia area. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Fred Diamond 16:00

Thanks, Gresh. This is a lot of fun. Good job.

Outro 16:02

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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