004: Bouncing from Basketball to Tech Sales with Brendan Dodge
[SS Podcast] 004 - Bouncing from Basketball to Tech Sales with Brendan Dodge
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[00:00:00] Intro
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Mike Bird: Something that's hopefully going to become very apparent as this show evolves is the hypothesis that just about anyone, from any walk of life, can enter sales and be successful.
Today, you're going to hear from Brendan Dodge, who was originally focused on a career in collegiate basketball coaching, and how he eventually made his way into tech sales and is now an Account Executive at VC3.
Before we get going, my name is Mike Bird and I run a sales career coaching company called Sales Seekers. You can go to saleseekers.ca, if you want to learn more or get access to more content like this. You can subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, et cetera.
Something I really loved about our conversation is how Brendan focuses on the parts of sales success that aren't often talked about as much as they should be, and he makes a fantastic comparison between success in coaching and team sports, and success as a sales pro, and it's probably not what you think.
We're going to get a lot of folks with interesting backgrounds on the show. This is a great first interview episode, and it won't be the last. Apologies in advance for my sound. I didn't input my mic properly when we went to record. But other than that, enjoy the show and here's Brendan.
Brendan Dodge, welcome to Sales Seekers. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you. How's it going?
Brendan Dodge: It's going quite well, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on. I believe I may or may not be the very first guest on this podcast.
Mike Bird: You are. Yeah. People are going to get to see all of the bloopers and funky scripting that I came up with for this show. I appreciate you being open to the being the guinea pig in a way.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah thank you very much for thinking of me. It's a pleasure being on here and and honestly reconnecting with you. I know it's been quite some time since last time we spoke before this whole process, so yeah, appreciate you thinking of me.
Mike Bird: Yeah. Yeah. Knowing your story a little bit made it an easy thing for me to say, Hey, yeah, this is someone who I think people who are thinking about transitioning into sales would really appreciate hearing from you. I want to start all these shows off with a fun rapid fire icebreaker. It's not always all about sales in our life.
[00:02:04] If you really know Brendan...
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Mike Bird: Complete this sentence in one phrase or less. If you really know me, you know that I am blank. Okay
Brendan Dodge: I'm pretty lazy.'Now that may, if for my wife, my immediate family, they would totally agree. My employer may not like that answer, but I actually think it's to my benefit. Me being a lazy person at heart, I try to find the most efficient way from point A to point B and I try to really maximize my time there.
If it's from making dials, I want to find the most efficient way to make the most amount of dials in a very short amount of time. If there's an inefficient process, that bothers the hell out of me. So I just want to be being lazy at heart. I just, just being simply efficient with anything that I'm doing.
So yeah I'm a bit lazy.
Mike Bird: The positive spin I feel like on that is you are a work smart, not so much work hard. If you can work smart, you're going to do that. And I think that's huge. That's a big part of sales. We could chase people all day. There's only so many hours. So in a way I can see how laziness is a huge asset for you. It's cool actually.
[00:03:18] Brendan's career journey into sales
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Mike Bird: Can you break down your journey into tech sales for people who don't know you into no more than three big steps and we'll go from there.
Brendan Dodge: I actually started in as a case manager for a financial service firm. There's step one. I'm extremely passionate about basketball. I actually went to school for sport management. My dream job since I was like a little kid was to be a general manager of a professional basketball team. That didn't happen. Just surprise, surprise.
But I ended up coaching four years of collegiate men's basketball through a mutual colleague of mine coached two years or two seasons at Cornell men's basketball, two seasons at D2. So I'm just going to bundle that up into collegiate men's basketball. Then I got into copier sales for a bit, and then I got into IT sales or tech sales. Now the tech sales parts there's three different companies, but they encompass the same thing. Currently with a IT sales company. I did a little bit of sales consulting, sales enablement for tech companies sandwiched in between. So yeah, so financial services, college men's basketball, copier sales, tech sales.
Mike Bird: The step that's most interesting to me for sure is the college basketball piece and how you turned that into, more of a kind of corporate sales life later on.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah. So the college men's basketball piece, what most people don't see is that a vast majority of collegiate sports and collegiate men's basketball don't make a whole lot of money. So with Cornell men's basketball, most of my money that I made was during was summer camps. And then at the D2 level, you have to have a variety of different jobs to like piecemeal together a sustainable, not even really sustainable financial life. But yeah, you got a piece, you just got to grit and grind your way to making it work out.
So I did that for four years and then, every year it's just, you're looking for the next job and new job and I was, taking my relationship to the next level with my then girlfriend, now wife. In basketball, you could be working in New York one year, and the next season you're working in California, and next year you're working in, like, all over the place. I got a buddy who went from Ithaca, New York, to Boston, Massachusetts. Now he's in New Mexico. It's, you just never know where your next job's gonna land, and I wanted a little bit more stability for my family.
So it was like a two part thing. So I was researching jobs and I guess because of my experience in recruiting and I have to go to these basketball recruiting events, scouting events, find players. Interact with the family, interact with the player, the coaches, so on and so forth. And then do onsite visits, talk about the program, talk about the coaching style, talk about how they would fit. There was a natural transition from recruiting to sales. Now there's a whole lot more nuances with sales and everything like that.
But I saw that, but I really wanted to be in ops. I did team travel for men's basketball. So scheduling. Oh my God, shoot around time, scheduling, team travel, meals, like everything like that. It was, that was fell under me. So I really enjoyed the back end of everything. Film was another one, video. So I really looked into operations, but you're stuck at whatever your salary was.
And I was looking, I was 28 when I left basketball. So I was looking to recoup some of the lost potential income earnings that I should have been making. So I saw I had a good work ethic. So I saw sales as a way to make up lost income from prior years. And I like to think I've done a pretty good job in my sales career to make up that money.
So yeah, so that's my path. There's a ton of hard work, long hours with collegiate men's basketball, you gotta be punctual. You gotta be friendly and, know how to communicate. And then it's, you got to be passionate about what you're doing and networking to like who, is so important.
So I was able to translate a lot of those learnings, qualities, you name it in basketball over to sales. And I feel like it's, that was a great foundation for me to get into sales and be fairly successful in sales.
Mike Bird: I appreciate you unpacking all of that. There is a ton of overlap between recruiting and being in a team sport environment and being in a tech sales environment. And I think that's a lot more than just what people might think of as, oh, hey, we got to go out and find a sales force full of former collegiate athletes who were really competitive and, you didn't talk about that at all.
What I heard that was really striking and I think super, super important to this topic is you understand from your time in basketball, the value of what happens behind the scenes, the preparation that precedes success. I think a lot of people just see what's on the surface in sales and they don't catch the other 98 percent of the iceberg that's beneath the surface of the water.
The sort of stick-to-itiveness, right? There's a persistence that has to come from someone who's in sales to make it, make a career in this space. Frankly it's not a great space for people who want to be in, want to be out. It gets usually better the longer you're in it, the more relationships that you have.
And so it's neat. The how you've turned a lot of those different things that people don't think of when it comes to sales, those other experiences that you've had in your career, how you've turned that into your sales, sort of tool set, is really cool. So thanks for sharing.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah. Before we go to the next question here, the, When you watch a game, the game's quite possibly the easiest part, right? It's the preparation, getting to the game. It's the practices. It's the film sessions. It's the recruiting for players. It's the player management, crisis management, like all that comes into play the day in, day out stuff.
That is so much harder than actually being on the bench in a game and just, being a part of that game, managing that game. Game's the easiest part. Like whenever I sat down on a bench, I was like, all right, let's enjoy basketball, and in a very work minded way, but that's how it was.
Sales, if you think of actually getting on the phone with someone, like connecting with them being on a sales call. That's the easy stuff. If you think about the grand scheme of, that's a very small percentage of what your job actually is.
It's the preparation. It's the list building. It's the messaging. It's the the market insights with what you know about particular industry. It's persona insights. It's like everything going in before you make the call, before you hop on a, discovery call, before you present a proposal, like those are just very small microcosms of your overall job and responsibilities as a sales professional.
Mike Bird: Yeah. Huge add, that the iceberg is bigger than people think for sure when it comes to sales.
Brendan Dodge: Very much
[00:10:08] What Brendan's learned and should have known before making the jump
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Mike Bird: I'm curious to know what's one thing that you learned you have learned since being in sales that "basketball you" "coach you" back in the day should have known before making the jump into tech sales.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah, I think I've been in sales for almost four years and I, and in IT sales along, with two in the sales enablement spot, but for me, It's more important to focus on the person across the table, across the phone call, across the screen, whatever it may be, whatever channel it is you're communicating with, the other person, it's more important to focus on them and what's important to them rather than focusing on what's most important to yourself and to your company. That is quite possibly in my opinion, the biggest now there's times where you need to be a little bit selfish at times, but especially early on in the sales cycle, it's so much more important to focus on the other person in the conversation versus yourself.
Mike Bird: Yeah that's a huge point. And I think another thing that is often missed when people think about sales and salespeople in general is that it's seen as this very self-centered kind of role. People can get commission breath. People can get very self-absorbed. And, really, my experience has been that no success really happens in sales without putting the buyer really before you, basically in almost all situations.
I agree with you. There are going to be some points where you have to lean on them a little bit for something to get something done, but the empathy that it takes to have a good understanding of their business problem, of what the real pain they're trying to solve for is, that's If you are stuck on yourself, you're never going to uncover those things on their end that are what actually drive a deal at the end of the day.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah, a thousand percent if you can't tie in some relevant
challenges, pains, problems that the other person across the table is experiencing that you could potentially solve and make their life a little bit better it's just like why fit a square peg into a circle hole? Now, if they share some, two, three things that you know that you can make their life a lot easier or whatever it may be absolutely.
I would definitely tie in those things to what your solution does or service or whatever it may be and shed light into how you've been able to make that particular area better for other clients. A thousand percent.
Mike Bird: Yeah.
There's one more thing that you're saying there that I think is important for folks who are listening to understand is the communications piece, right? Sales is really, it's a bit of an art and a bit of a science, but the communication piece is like the bedrock skill, right? Beyond understanding, can you add something to the conversation that is valuable once you have an understanding of the person on the other side of the screen, the phone, the table, and to do that in a way where they are able to understand, right?
It's like the difference between presenting and teaching. Like you actually need to get them taught and get them to learn about something about you for them to be able to make a positive decision. on the product or service that you're selling. So you talked about that a little bit in your background, right?
Being in coaching, there's a ton of communication that goes into that. But I think that is another skill that people don't lean into enough when they think about what it takes to be successful in transitioning into this space.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah, yeah it's a very important skill and when I was at Altisales, the sales consulting firm, like I reviewed over 600 plus sales calls just through call recording technology that we had with, and the interaction we have with our clients.
The top sales professionals that I saw in the most impressive on sales calls were when they focused where they made their service solution more relatable to the person that they were speaking with. Like they, they did a very good discovery, understanding of their world. They shed some insights into what they were seeing in the market. And then they discussed in a way where they were connecting the dots, I think as a sales professional, it's important for you to be able to connect the dots and not leave it up to the prospect to connect the dots for them. Help them out.
Mike Bird: Yeah, totally. Don't let them assume and assume the worst because that's usually what happens.
[00:14:27] Strengths that have made Brendan an effective seller
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Mike Bird: We've already touched on this a little bit more, but what else in terms of your strengths do you feel allow you to be an effective salesperson?
Brendan Dodge: I rely on these two strengths the most, it's humor and it's empathy. I just keep it very, if you know me, you know that I'm the type of person that likes to be humorous and, not in a bad way, but being able to be a little self deprecating on myself, acknowledging maybe an awkward moment, acknowledging something that is just funny, whatever it may be.
But I like humor. I like to laugh and there's some conversations and sales that can get pretty tense. So if you can make a very tense moment, a little bit lighter with whether it's some humor very light humor, I must say I think it could really ease potential tension. It could make yourself more relatable and more human. It really helps. I find it helps me connect more with the person than anything else.
Mike Bird: Yeah. I love this combo of we know you're lazy and funny at the same time. Or I think what I'm hearing is a little bit of you take work seriously, but you don't necessarily take yourself too seriously. And that makes you an easier, more approachable person, more trustworthy, or the people who are buying from you can open up maybe a little bit more easily knowing that you're not just some salesperson on the other side of a screen.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah, I find it especially with the humor piece and the empathy piece, understanding, especially in sales, cause there's a lot of like things in sales that are just like not fun things to do, but they're part of the job. So, following up with a deal or following up to set next steps.
Like that kind of, it stinks being the sales professional doing that. While it is necessary. Sometimes you just got to shed light on it and like, Hey, like I really hate being that type of guy. And I know that you don't like that either. So let's just get that out in the open. Even like on a cold call, if you just be funny about it Hey, I don't take cold calls. Hey, man, you probably, I probably hate making this call just as much as you hate receiving it. Like just a simple laugh. Like I said, I literally said something today on a call. I said some AI workflow automation.
And the guy was like, what does that mean? I'm like, yeah, "that was very generic of me to say." And he chuckled, but yeah, I didn't have a real life use case for his industry, but I knew of, I spoke with another person in his shoes for a different company. And I shed light into that, but I didn't have a really concrete example.
And he called that out and I was like, yeah, "that was really generic, wasn't it?" So just something like that really helped lighten the mood and turn from a cold call turned out to be a seven minute, seven-and-a-half minute cold call, like, something as easy as that. So yeah, if you know me, I like to add a little humor.
I'm empathetic and I'm a bit lazy.
[00:17:01] Anyone can succeed in sales, with two caveats
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Mike Bird: As we were preparing for this recording about a week or so ago, you mentioned that you felt that anyone could be in tech sales. Can you expand a bit more on that?
Brendan Dodge: Yes, now there's a few caveats and variables that I do have here, right? But I believe whether you're an introvert, whether you're an extrovert, whether you're someone who's outgoing and very personable and, just loves to attend events versus someone who may not be overly communicative versus someone who's technical versus non-technical.
I believe any type of personality, backgrounds, they can all be successful. With the asterisks: in the right situation, with the right manager. Those are two massive variables that I come into play. I can't tell you how many people that I think would be great in sales because of their personality, but they were just in a bad situation that forced them to do things that didn't really highlight their strengths. There was a coworker of mine. He was the best relationship person I think I've ever worked with. He hated making cold calls. But every single week, and his manager knew that of him, so he would, you know, "Hey, get out to these events", whatever it was, but there would still be a heavy focus on the activity and the dials.
He was a rep that would hit, 80 percent of his sales quota every single year. You definitely need reps like that on your team. But he wasn't gonna make a hundred calls a week. He would go out to a bunch of networking events. He would network on the golf course. He would hit his number. But like that type of activity and focus on cold outreach, like just eventually wore him down and he ended up making a move elsewhere. Maybe in the right situation, you know, they really leaned into his network and connections and like he could have been there and, he was there for five years, but he could have been there forever.
So like I see, you know the environment the culture that they're in I see the manager there, you know if they are micromanaging they're not really trying to connect with the their reps as a, as an individual, a person, that can really go a long way, but I do believe in the right situation with the right culture and the right team around them that anyone, and now that's a lot easier said than done, but it's definitely possible to be extremely successful, maybe not extremely, just being successful in sales regardless of your personality or background.
Mike Bird: Yeah. And I would just generally agree with everything you said there. There's got to be the right environment, right? Who we are as people just outside of our professional lives depends a lot on the environment that we grew up in, the environment we live in now. So, totally aligned there.
Brendan Dodge: Mike, I'll end on this. Our top seller at VC3, she started off being a consultant, a strategic advisor, like a person that clients would rely on to for guidance on their tech or IT. Top seller. She was there was an opening for sales and because of her strong relationships that she had with her clients and the, the deep network that she had within her region was offered an opportunity to be a part of the sales team and she's our top rep. She doesn't make a cold call, she networks, she always keeps people top of mind. She's always looking to connect people.
I spoke with her yesterday. She's you'd have no idea that she's the top rep. She's the most down to earth person you'd ever meet. She's very humorous. She wants to have a good time. And she didn't want to be in sales, but now she's the top rep. So it's it's crazy how that works out.
Mike Bird: Yeah. We've got to see a road for ourselves to evolve into that position for sure. But that's a great example of just how anyone with any kind of a background and in their own way of selling. And I think that's a whole series of episodes unto itself. But, how you can sell. But it's neat to hear that success story.
Great to hear that she's doing so well.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah.
Yeah, no, it is.
[00:21:00] What to know when considering a sales career change
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Mike Bird: I want to ask this of all of the salespeople who come onto the show, which is, what's the one thing that people who are considering a career in sales should know either about the transition or about the work itself.
Brendan Dodge: First things first, if you are considering a move into sales, especially tech sales, go to Repvue.com. I'm not sponsored by them by any means, but it is a phenomenal source to look at the health of a sales department. How many reps are hitting quota? What's the average OTE, on-target earnings. What's the average salary of that team and that position?
That is such a great resource for people looking to get into sales. There's job postings on there. That's step one. Step two is, if you see red flags in the interviewing process, there's probably a red flag about what's going on there. So come prepared with questions for your interviewing process. I think, the transition all starts about the very beginning part of the process here, not about actually getting into it.
It's like going back to what I just said, you want to make sure that you're in a part of a strong team or a healthy team with a healthy culture and being led by the right person and the right manager. So regardless of your personality or background, it's extremely important to find that company and that team that align with your morals, your personality, your fit, whatever it may be, checks all those boxes. That, that's honestly step one. If you're considering a transition to tech sales.
Mike Bird: Yeah, totally agree. And I think maybe one day, RepVue I'm going to come for you to sponsor this show, but in the meantime, we will just have to go without sponsorship. I'm just kidding.
Brendan Dodge: We're planting seeds, Mike, we're planting seeds.
Mike Bird: Right. That's right. We'll start manifesting right after we stop the recording on this. I love it.
[00:22:51] Professional development that's impacted Brendan's career
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Mike Bird: What professional development opportunities have you pursued? Whether that's courses, sales communities, conferences, things that you've done that have made a positive difference in your sales career.
Brendan Dodge: So I think I think like most people starting out, I actually purchased one of Grant Cardone's courses to start out. Going back to the personality thing, that personality and that way of selling did not align with the way my personality and the way that I like to sell. I ended up finding mutual colleague of ours, Jason Bay on a Jeffrey Gitomer podcast.
One of my first couple of weeks at my new job, my last IT company. I got was just not impressed with our email templates on hand. They were very generic, just think about every generic email that you send that's what we had. And I was just like, these, there's gotta be a better way to write an email. So sure enough, Jeffrey Gitomer's podcast, that episode was "how to write a cold email." So I was like, great. And it was Jason Bay and they, he had him on because of Jason's cold email to Jeffrey. So I listened to it, followed the R.E.P.L.Y. Method. It was different, took some time getting used to, but I found it to be pretty effective and aligned with kind of my moral compass and my own personality.
So over time, I ended up joining an outbound squad and that was the best career decision that I've ever made. I was there for, I've been there for a couple of years, but in six months, I like almost 2Xed my sales. So it was like pretty, pretty astonishing. If I look at the months of my quota and the sales that I had, I was like well over a hundred percent by a long shot.
But it's important to note about the courses and communities. It's one thing to invest the money into them. It's another thing to invest your time. So Whether that's a hundred dollars a month here two hundred dollars a month there, five hundred bucks, fifteen hundred dollars for whatever it may be. Invest the time to do the work to hop on coaching calls to do whatever it is. Show up do the work, ask questions.
That is so much more important than actually putting money or investing in that type of solution. You're only going to be as good as the time that you invest into it. And I believe Mike, cause you showed up to a ton of Outbound Squad calls, and I heard a lot of your wins too, that we're like on the same wavelength here.
Mike Bird: Yeah, totally. Huge appreciation for J Bay, Outbound Squad. It had a big impact. It still has a big impact on my life and my sales career. And I think anyone who has the chance to learn from Jason should try and take advantage of it. The point that you alluded to is that, personal and professional development shouldn't just be like a box-checking exercise where you fork out money and you say you're going to do this.
There is an actual bit of you that is, not getting literal skin in the game, but it's going to be committed to this process of self-transformation. And I think you can really lean into that and commit the time. Like you said, yeah, sales is one of those things, it's a very skill-based career and the better your skills are, the more you'll sell, the more money you'll make, et cetera.
So yeah, totally aligned with you there. And a shoutout to J Bay, our mutual connection and great training friend.
Brendan Dodge: Yeah, a thousand percent. If there's a, especially with a community or course like that, if there's a call to hop on, I would put that call on your calendar. I would do it as a non-negotiable. I would not schedule anything on top of that. Being in sales, you do have the luxury of scheduling and making your own calendars as best as possible compared to other industries, but don't schedule over that time and stick to it, show up to a majority, if not all of those calls and you'll see tremendous gains and improvements with your sales career, your sales in general whatever it may be, but really invest that. It's way more important to invest the time into something like that versus the actual money and finances associated with it.
[00:26:52] Connecting with Brendan
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Mike Bird: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. We are almost out of time. And this has been a lot of fun and I know really valuable for folks who are either early on in a sales career or about to transition into one, which is great. Where can people go to connect with or learn more about you and what you're doing?
Brendan Dodge: Yeah. I don't post a whole bunch on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is definitely the easiest, fastest way to connect with me. I posted like a quick tech tip that I noticed just from my conversations over the past quarter. So I might be posting tech tips occasionally on LinkedIn.
I do like to talk sales. I obviously love to talk basketball. Feel free to hit me up. I cover Maryland, Delaware, Philadelphia, New Jersey, parts of New York. So if you're in that area and you're looking to connect with a kind of a like-minded sales professional, who's a bit outgoing, likes to network and connect people, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. I'd be more than happy to grab a, lunch, coffee, if you're relatively in the area.
Mike Bird: Love that. Yeah. I'll drop a link to your LinkedIn profile down in the show notes for sure of the episode. Appreciate you coming on the show again. We didn't break the internet. We didn't break the podcasting software. So far, so good. I'm excited for what's to come. J Bay, maybe we'll get on, get you on the show at some point, but no Brendan, appreciate it again. Thanks so much for your time.
Brendan Dodge: Thanks for having me Mike, this was fun.
Mike Bird: There we go. Have you enjoyed today's conversation with Brendan. If you're like, "dang, this show is for me," then go ahead and subscribe and you'll hear from me every couple of weeks. I've got several more interviews like this one planned for 2024, so stay tuned. Bye for now.
