IAM2571 – 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 shares his journey from corporate marketing roles at Apple and Compaq to launching IES as a lead-generation effort that evolved into a full-scale organization serving global sales leaders.

Fred highlights how the Institute supports sales professionals through membership programs, leadership development events, and its award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Fred explains the critical role of sales in business success and notes that even the best product won’t survive without effective selling.

Fred also shares his productivity system, inspired by Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning, which includes daily early rising, exercise, journaling, and goal visualization.

He emphasizes the importance of delegating tasks that others can do better, so leaders can focus on vision, growth, and team-building.

Website: Institute for Excellence in Sales
LinkedIn: Fred Diamond

Previous Episode: iam345-founder-helps-sales-leaders-acquire-and-retain-top-tier-sales-talent

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Transcription:

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Fred Diamond Teaser 00:00

So, we do programs for sales leaders, we do programs for sales teams, and we also do programs 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 gather 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.

Intro 00:28

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:55

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

Fred Diamond 01:05

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

Gresham Harkless 01:12

Yeah, absolutely. I'm definitely looking forward to it, because sales is 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 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?

Fred Diamond 01:49

I am. I'm thrilled. I am thrilled.

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Gresham Harkless 01:51

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 01:59

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 in the marketing side as a Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Marketing.

I went to work for myself in 2002 as a solopreneur, as 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. People started enjoying what we're doing.

People asked 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 it with, and we've been running it as an enterprise for about the last three to four years.

Gresham Harkless 02:48

Nice. That's awesome to kind of hear kind of how it organically kind of grew from there.

And, I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper here, a little bit more about the Institute. Tell us what you're doing to serve the clients you're working with.

Fred Diamond 03:00

Well, we basically do three things. We're a member organization for sales leaders and teams.

We have members ranging from as large as Amazon Web Services, Red Hat Software. I know we're both in the D.C. 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 programs for sales leaders. We do programs for sales teams. And we also do programs 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 gather 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 03:49

Nice. And I feel like that's something that, like I mentioned, in the very beginning, I feel like sales always says like, kind of like the life, but a business.

And I've always heard like a quote, like businesses don't really go out of business for anything other than reason that they don't have enough sales.

So, a lot of times you can gloss pass a lot of those things, but usually it's just so important to be able to get sales.

And sometimes, you know, businesses just aren't successful because they don't have enough of those.

Fred Diamond 04:11

Yeah. I get people that come up to me and say, well, I'm really not in sales. And I say, well, if you have a spouse or a child, you're definitely in sales.

If you're running a business, 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, the best service, you may be the smartest guy in your niche, but if you're not selling to people, if you're not bringing in more business, you don't have a business.

Gresham Harkless 04:38

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 your differentiator, but it could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart?

Fred Diamond 04:51

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, is that we bring, there's a couple of things that we say, we bring sales thought leaders to sales leaders.

So, we do programs 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 real strong network, and we've had a couple thousand people come through our programs, 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 a hundred people for every program we do.

So, there's like a breath to it, if you will. But we spend a lot of time on the details.

I have this fear that, kind of what have you done for me lately? So, you need to constantly focus on the details.

So, the 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 programs.

Gresham Harkless 05:58

That makes perfect sense. And I feel like in correct me if I'm wrong, that a lot of times when you have events, are you 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 see small to maybe the founder, the person that created it, it could be in the world to somebody else.

So, paying attention to all those different facets sometimes can be the world to somebody else.

Fred Diamond 06:19

Yeah, I mean, for example, so one of the things that people know us for is once a month, we have what we call our big stage program, 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 programs. And that's important for three reasons.

It's important for our members who come to our programs. They know that breakfast is going to be served from 7:15 to 8. They know at 8:02, we're going to give the two-minute announcement.

They know that 8:05, we're going to do a couple 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 are coming there. And it just has led us to create a flawless program. Second thing, we do a lot of programs 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 program, 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, 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 they know exactly what our program is going to be.

So, we don't have a chance where the speaker is not going to show up. or the projector's not going to work, or the food's not going to be there on time, or the parking lot's not going to be empty.

Everything is thought through to the excruciating detail so that from our customer perspective, it looks flawless.

So, I recommend to people all that. You can't wing things. Sometimes you've 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 08:30

Absolutely. It definitely sounds like that's exactly what I was going to say, how important it sounds like preparation is because I think, in business and life and sales, whatever that might be, there's always things that will happen that you don't necessarily expect to happen, but I 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 mining details that you touched on, then you can worry about the other things that might pop up here and there. So.

Fred Diamond 08:59

Yeah. And you got to take them seriously. Your customers, they want to be given an experience.

They want to be given a product that's going to work. As I mentioned, or you mentioned, or I mentioned, the bio, I worked for Apple Computer for seven years in the late eighties, early nineties.

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 09:46

Absolutely. Like you said, it always goes back to the experience, the customer experience specifically.

So, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And this might be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Fred Diamond 10:02

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

Gresham Harkless 10:12

I am not.

Fred Diamond 10:12

So, it's called the miracle morning. This guy's name is Hal Elrod. He was a Cutco knife salesman.

He was their top sales professional, and he had a history, a life series of experiences. Long story short, he came up with a book called the Miracle Morning, 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's six things that he prescribes that you do. And I've kind of adjusted some of these. I don't do them all between five and six in the morning, but there's six things. He calls them savers, S A V E R S.

S is silence or meditation. A is affirmations. Just reminding yourself of why yourself and your company is such a, has such an advantage. V is visualization, visualizing where you want to go.

E is exercise. I do an hour of hot yoga every day, or is read, reading good articles, you know, things like that. And the final S in savers is scribe.

So, I typically journal at least for five minutes every day into a book. And it could be anything, just repeating your affirmations.

Gresham Harkless 11:30

Nice. I 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 like, especially like 5 am, where there's not a lot of people that are sending emails or giving you phone calls, you can get a jump and you can take care of those foundational things in the very beginning of the day.

So, you know what your day is going to look like. You've done the exercise, you've done so many of these different foundational aspects that it just propels your day forward.

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 hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Fred Diamond 12:06

I would tell my younger business self to start sooner. So, I held corporate jobs. I was lucky. I had a chance to work for Apple Computer, which, when I was there from 87 to 93, it 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 Computers, and I went to work for a company called Compuwear, where 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, start thinking about what that might look like. It's a lot easier to do in your 30s than it is in your 40s than it is in your 50s.

Gresham Harkless 12:50

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 started and starting the business.

It could be like you mentioned the preparation, like just like you do before an event, where you're getting and make sure the projectors 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 could 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 13:25

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 CEOs 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 them, they can send them to me for approval. And I've done that. And then 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's probably a million people on the planet who are better at administrating events, but we do a lot of events.

I can do a good event, but there's a million people in D.C., you and I live in, besides New York and Chicago, maybe, one of the top three cities in the country for events.

Well, Orlando, I guess, is pretty big. But most people travel to Orlando. And we've got so many great people here in D.C. who can run events, so I've outsourced a lot of that to them.

Even the minutiae 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 15:03

Absolutely. I think that's an incredible perspective. I think a lot of times, especially when you're growing something, this is 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 it 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.

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 a hold of you.

Fred Diamond 15:38

Sure. Well, I think you're doing a great job, by the way. The podcast is great. You ask great questions.

People can find me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. Just go search Fred Diamond at LinkedIn.

You can go to the Institute for Excellence in Sales website, which is the letter I, the number four, ESBD.com. And we also have the podcast, SalesGameChangersPodcast.com.

Gresham Harkless 16:04

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well.

But I appreciate your time, Fred. Appreciate all the awesome things you're doing, especially for this DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Fred Diamond 16:15

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

Outro 16:17

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and 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 Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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