IAM794- Founder and Global Executive Helps Grow Sales For SMEs

Henning is a creative, adaptable, and results-driven global executive with extensive domestic and international experience in Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, and General Management, both in a corporate and entrepreneurial setting. In his career he has been a global nomad, spending the last 20 years building, transforming, and leading sales teams around the world. This experience led him to start Vendux and become the chief evangelist for interim and fractional c, helping to grow sales for SMEs.

• CEO Hack: Calender to record every appointment, conversation, and event and schedule the events I have
• CEO Nugget: Consistently planning everything you want to do, takes longer
• CEO Defined: Being an enabler

Website: https://www.vendux.org

https://www.linkedin.com/in/henning-schwinum/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/vendux-interim/
https://twitter.co/Vendux2
https://www.instagram.com/venduxinterim/
https://www.facebook.com/VenduxInterim/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

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 Harkness 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.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

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 Henning Spindam of Vindux. Henning, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – Henning Schwinum

Thank you, Gresh. Thank you for having me. Wonderful to be here.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the show, I want to read a little bit more about Henning so you hear about all these awesome things that he's doing. Henning is a creative, adaptable, and results-driven global executive with extensive domestic and international experience in sales, marketing, supply chain, and general management, both in a corporate and entrepreneurial setting. In his career, he has been a global nomad, spending the last 20 years building, transforming, and leading sales teams all around the world. This experience led him to start Vindux and become the chief evangelist for interim and fractional sales leadership, helping to grow sales for small to medium-sized enterprises. Henning, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:23 – Henning Schwinum

I am totally ready for the I AM CEO community.

01:26 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, well let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you guys started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story and we'll let you get started with the business?

01:36 – Henning Schwinum

Absolutely. You already mentioned that I spent over 20 years leading, building, and transforming sales teams. And that's my passion, my background. I didn't grow up to go into sales. I actually started in jobs like product management or supply chain. Then I did some e-business stuff when e-business became a thing in the late 90s. Building sales teams has become my passion over the last 20 years. I started with sales teams that were just myself, adding a first person to it and a second, and then eventually teams between 50 and 100 people around the world. And I fell in love with high-quality sales leadership and the value it brings to business because I also saw the flip side. Teams that were badly led, leaders that didn't, that weren't really leaders, they were just managers. They were just administering something, they weren't leading a team.

And so I decided last year that I wanted to start a business that provides this great sales leadership in every company because there are a lot of folks like me out there, with a little gray hair, a few years of experience, and ready to put this to work in an organization, not to administer, but to solve a problem that they're having. And that's the premise of Vendax. I have a roster of experienced sales executives, people who've led sales teams with an average of about 20 years of just sales leadership experience. And on the other side, then there are businesses, most of them small and medium size, who need help, who have a problem. And if the problem is sales leadership, then I can place someone on an interval fractional basis into the organization.

03:46 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that. I think so many times as you spoke to, I think you don't realize that leadership aspect, especially related to sales and the sales team on that level. Because I think so many times you think if you just hire somebody, you kind of plug them into a hole and they'll do everything they need to do and bring revenue, bring opportunities, solve all these problems for clients. But I imagine that that is not how it happens at all.

04:11 – Henning Schwinum

Gresh, you're 100% on target here because there are, I've met so many entrepreneurs, people with a technology background who've built great companies and great products, but they don't understand the dynamics of sales and the dynamics of selling. All they know is I hire somebody with the title sales and they'll do the selling and I, you know, I pay them commission only or a large share of their compensation is commission and they'll do the job only to find that that isn't everything. It takes a process, it takes a target customer definition, it takes the right collateral, it takes the right messaging, it takes the right pricing, then it takes the right leadership.

Because salespeople are humans, everyone needs guidance and needs somebody to turn to with questions, expecting answers. Somebody, everybody needs someone to look up to as a leader to take them to the next level. And that's often a missing piece. And that's why I feel so strongly about the value of leadership, especially in sales because I always say that sales is underrated. How many companies have a CFO and a COO and maybe a CIO, but they don't have a chief sales officer or chief revenue officer? What they have is a VP of sales somewhere below the C-level organization. And guess who brings in the revenue? It's not the product. I mean, every single product doesn't sell itself because it's such a great product. It requires an active sales team to actually bring it to market.

06:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And that's a valid thing. And as you said that is I don't see that a lot. As you said, the chief sales officer or chief revenues officer, do you think that's just kind of like an awareness? Cause I know there's so much kind of misinformation, I guess you can say, or maybe not accurate information is a better way to say it around like the business and the aspects of a business. Do you think that maybe getting more awareness and knowledge to these leaders to understand how vital and important it is to have that leadership from a sales perspective would be so pivotal as far as increasing the likelihood of these organizations being successful?

06:46 – Henning Schwinum

I absolutely think there is a need for an educational element and you already quoted that I call myself this chief evangelist. Now I'm a single person shouting out into the world. So my impact is probably very, very small. But I find myself over and over and over again in conversations where I am not selling my services or my business, I'm selling the concept and the value. And I'd like to, I believe in this concept of strength and numbers and Vendax is not the only business out there providing a matchmaking service for this function. There are a few others out there. And I aim to network with all of them because I think collectively we can have an impact. Certainly an impact in pushing the GIC solution, the Interim Fractional Contractual outsourcing solution for sales leadership. Maybe beyond that, even elevating the role of sales within an organization so that there's always a chief sales officer in the C-suite of every company.

08:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think even being 1 person and shouting it out, it starts to create that movement and people start to create that awareness and understanding. And then it's not necessarily you have to knock on, knock over all the dominoes at the exact same time, you just have to knock over that 1. And then it starts to repel all those things forward. So I appreciate you doing that for us today. So I know you touched a little bit on how you serve the clients you work with. Do you have anything more on like how exactly that fractional kind of process works? What exactly does that look like and what do you feel kind of

08:45 – Henning Schwinum

What sets you apart from those other organizations? Yes. Let's start with the first part of the question. what is fractional in this concept? A lot of CEOs are familiar with the concept of a fractional CFO because if you run an organization of 10, 20, 50, or even a hundred people, you don't need a full-time CFO. You only need that skill set 2 days a week or last week of the month or it's very specific times during the year. So a lot of CEOs turn to fractional CFOs to bring them into the organization. They get great skills at a lower cost than if they were hiring a full-time CFO. Now the same thing applies to other functions, including the sales leader. And let's call him the VP of sales in an organization. If you have 5 salespeople, your VP of sales is very likely spending over 50% of his time calling directly on clients and being an individual contributor.

You have this player-coach combination, and then there's always this conflict for the person, how much time and effort do I spend on being a coach and how much on a player? From a business owner, from a CEO perspective, That means that you're paying somebody a really big salary, a really big paycheck for just pounding the pavement and being a regular salesperson. You don't need that full-time. And that's where fractional comes in. If you contract a fractional sales leader, you only pay for what you need because the leadership aspect of sales may only be required 2 days a week. And what it does, is it frees payroll or paycheck money up to be invested into another person that pounds the pavement. And there are other benefits to a fractional concept. There is immediate availability because there is a roster of available executives. You don't have to go through a 6-month or 9-month executive recruiting process.

Those people are highly qualified. They are at a point in their career where they've done and accomplished already at least once, often multiple times over what you as a CEO with your new business are trying to accomplish. And will you be able, if you were to permanently recruit this sales leader, would you be able to acquire this same talent into your organization? The answer is likely not. So you're getting high-quality individuals who've been there, done that in your industry with your products. They come in on short notice, 1 to 2 weeks max is what it takes. You can hire them fractional and only pay for what you need. And that's the beauty of this concept. And CEOs, as I said at the beginning, have realized this for the fractional CFO, but not so much for the sales leader.

As said earlier, we're not the only organization, so what sets us apart is that we focus solely on that 1 role, the sales leader or commercial leader. Most other organizations focus on all the different C-suites and because the CFO or fractional CFO, interim CEO is more prevalent, guess where their focus is? It's not on the sales leader. And I and my business partner And the people we have as advisors in the background are all sales leadership practitioners. They all are or have worked in these roles before. We don't come with a background in HR recruiting or consulting. We have worked on those roles. And I believe in the matchmaking of bringing together the perfect match between an available executive and a company with a need, that plays in our favor.

13:18 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

13:30 – Henning Schwinum

My most important tool is a calendar. You know to record every appointment, every conversation, every scheduled event that I have, whether it's business or personal in 1 place is really important.

13:49 – Gresham Harkless

I love that hack. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It could be around sales or it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self.

14:02 – Henning Schwinum

Consistently, I find that everything you plan then ends up taking longer, right? If you wanna reach a certain milestone in revenue, it always takes longer than you originally planned.

14:16 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, So now I wanted 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 this show. So Henning, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:26 – Henning Schwinum

To me, being a CEO means being an enabler. If I'm a solopreneur, I have a business and it's just me, then it's just me. If I have a team of people working with me in an organization, then my role as CEO is to enable them, to enable each 1 of them to do the jobs that they were hired to do to achieve or overachieve their goals. As an enabler, I remove roadblocks, and I provide answers in a quick, direct, responsive fashion so that they can move on.

15:07 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Henning, I truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and your team and find out about all the awesome things you're doing.

15:23 – Henning Schwinum

Yeah well, and to answer the last part just go to vendax.org All the contact details are on the website. Check it out and contact us if we can help you or your team in meeting or achieving sales goals. And Gresh, I appreciate you and the show that you're putting together. And I look forward to listening to a lot of other extremely interesting CEOs that you have as guests on your show.

15:59 – Gresham Harkless

Thank you. I truly appreciate that, Henning. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well so that people can follow up with you. And I appreciate you for all you're doing as well too, and leading the march. And I feel like there should be campaign signs up. We need more CSOs in our organizations. I appreciate you leading that charge and getting that going because it's definitely something that's needed and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

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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