FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!
The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.
Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!
Read more about the Institute for Excellence in Sales Premier Women in Sales Employer (PWISE) designation and program here.
Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!
Find out more about the 15th Annual Sales Excellence Awards here.
Today’s show featured an interview with Greg Clifton, General Manager – Defense & National Security Group at Intel.
Find Greg on LinkedIn.
GREG’S TIP: “Show up, add value, and meet somebody new every day. The relationships you build and the trust you establish by being present, engaging in meaningful conversations, and contributing to your industry will set you apart in sales.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We have Greg Clifton on the show, general manager of federal sales at Intel. It’s good to have you here, Greg. This is a very interesting time. We’re doing today’s interview in February of 2025. For people who just woke up, there’s a lot of things going on in the federal government marketplace. I’m interested in hearing what’s going on at Intel, how you’ve progressed as a sales leader. We have a lot of sales professionals listening around the globe, a lot of them who are in the business to government space in the public sector markets. I know this show is going to get a lot of attention. I’m excited to get started.
Tell us a little bit about your journey into sales and what led you to your current role as the GM for federal sales at Intel?
Greg Clifton: Like most people in sales, that’s not what I dreamed of when I was a kid. I wanted to be a fighter pilot or something like that. I actually went to school as a finance major, thinking that’s where all the money is. Oddly enough, they don’t tell you that the finance people that make the money, it’s skewed by Wall Street, and then you’ve got a lot of other people that don’t. But anyways, I started my career in finance. I was a stockbroker. I was making 300 cold calls a day. Anybody that’s made a lot of cold calls knows that’s not easy business. I did that for a while and then realized, “Well, I want to do something a little bit different.” Then took an interesting turn and actually got into corporate real estate, commercial real estate.
At that time, in Northern Virginia, the Reston/Herndon market was just starting to grow. I spent a number of years there, and I was actually helping a small business run the business. I was doing finance and the books, and when it snowed, I have to shovel the parking lot and the sidewalk at the building. But I started doing leasing of office space, and that really got me excited about working with people and just the art of the deal. Because it wasn’t just selling a widget, it was you really had to go understand the customer’s needs, what they were trying to do, and then how office space would fit into that, how it fit into their culture and their people. It got me really excited. I kept doing that for a number of years.
Then I’m sure some salespeople got in this position. I was given the offer by my company to continue on and to grow. But they said, “You’re a hundred percent on commission.” I was like, “Ooh, wow.” That’s tough in that game, because it can be six months to three-year sales cycles. But about that time the internet was really kicking off. This was in the mid-late ‘90s and had some good friends over at UUNET Technologies, one of the large internet service providers at the time. I made that jump and got into technology. At the time we were doing web hosting. If you remember years ago, those of us old enough, when you hear on the news, “Marriott has a website,” we were hosting those websites for them. They were putting that in our data centers and on our servers.
Did that for a number of years. We really grew that business. Went through the application service provider world, and Intel started deciding, “Well, hey, we should be in this business as well.” They recruited me over. I went to work for Intel Online Services in 2000. It was a great startup business at a big established company. We had a lot of fun. We grew a team, grew the business. But Intel decided, “Well, let’s get back to our core. Maybe we don’t want to do that long term.” Then I transitioned over and moved to Intel’s core business of microprocessors on our federal team. This was late 2002.
I had never, quite frankly, Fred, talked about microprocessors at that level of detail. I was all about systems and capabilities and meeting customers’ needs. But it’s funny, it turned out that even though you’re talking about microprocessors, CPUs, those kind of things, it still is about what does the customer need to solve a business or a mission challenge, and then how do we help them do that? That was really fun and the market changed so quick in technology that even though I was doing what I would call the same thing for a number of years, every year or two, the job completely changed because technology changed so quickly.
It kept it really exciting. You got to meet a lot of interesting folks in the government, and then obviously the ecosystem of our partners from really established companies to startups. That’s what got me into it and here you go, geez, 25, almost 30 years later, still doing it. But it’s been a really interesting time and been able to meet a lot of really cool people.
Fred Diamond: That’s great. I didn’t know all that. I’ve been to your LinkedIn profile, but I didn’t know about UUNET. I moved here in 2000 to work for a couple of pre-IPO eCommerce related companies. Obviously, for the people who are listening to our show who don’t really know the Northern Virginia DC area, of course, AOL was founded here, which led to a lot of the starts for a lot of the pre-IPO and the whole internet, if you will, and of course, now all the data centers that are in Northern Virginia. I’ll harken back to that. I remember spending a lot of time talking to various people at UUNET and seeing what they had grown. It’s interesting.
Greg Clifton: Well, funny story. AOL was one of the tenants in one of the buildings we managed, which started me getting in that whole technology mindset.
Fred Diamond: That’s pretty incredible. Obviously, for people who are listening as well, who don’t know this area, the commercial real estate, Northern Virginia has been historically one of the fastest growing areas in the country. I like to tell people all the time that the Washington DC area is the fifth largest MSA in the country. People think of DC as like the White House and maybe the museums. Where I’m sitting right now, there’s 5 of the top 10 companies in the world have their headquarters, because everybody wants to do business with public sector. That’s great. Thanks for that background there.
Greg Clifton: It’s funny, Fred. I joke with some people that have been around for a long time, we all should have gotten in the crane business years ago with all the construction that’s going on in this area. But I’ve been pretty happy in the technology space.
Fred Diamond: It’s also interesting too, in the commercial real estate space, and also the financial markets. When you said you were doing 300 phone calls a day, that’s the kind of stuff that really gets you hardened and focused on some of the things that are required and for sales success, dealing with rejection, pounding the phones, learning how to make those calls. I still tell people all the time that the number one sales tool is the phone and engaging in conversations. That’s great to know that background. I’m sure more of this will come up through the course of the conversation.
Let’s talk about some of those lessons. Again, reflecting on your early sales experiences, pounding the phones, et cetera, what key lessons have been instrumental in shaping your approach to sales leadership?
Greg Clifton: It’s a good question. I don’t know that I’m going to say anything profound here, but I tell my team and I learned it early on in sales, to me, the number one thing, show up. Be there. Be out in the market, be in front of your customers, be in front of your partners. I think even more so as we went through COVID and people got used to doing virtual work, it never changed, of being there, showing up. Then the second part of showing up is add value. What is it that I can do to add value to this transaction? You and I, having this conversation, both of us need to get value out of it. I think that was key.
The other part, we all know we don’t do this alone. We have to work with others, we have to work with partners. It goes back to the golden rule there, be a good partner, do unto others like you want them to do unto you. I think those were really three key things. Show up, add value, be a good partner, and treat people the way you want to be treated. From there, that’s 90% of it. Then obviously you have to have a good solution and a good technology in those. But I think those have certainly helped me and I try to instill that in some of my team and others that I work with. Quite frankly, it’s the same thing, even when I’m coaching sports. I’ve aged out of that with my kids, but it’s the same thing. Show up, work hard, bring value to the team, and be a good teammate.
Fred Diamond: What sport did you coach?
Greg Clifton: I coached a little bit of everything, but mostly baseball was the sport. I ended up managing a travel team here in Northern Virginia with my middle son. I actually miss it. Since he aged out, I feel like I just work more. I need to go and get back into some coaching.
Fred Diamond: I remember the moment when I realized that my kids weren’t going to be playing sports with balls anymore. It was a traumatic moment for myself. I want to go back to something you said though. I want to focus on this, where you talked about showing up. We’re doing the interview in the middle of February of 2025. A lot of the younger, more junior sales professionals have spent the last three and a half, four years working from their homes. Not every company, some have said you got to come back full time, but most haven’t. I know companies have said, “You need to come back Mondays,” or something like that. They haven’t gone to events. They haven’t gone to networking things. They’ve been home, and even still, when they come to the office, I can see for some of these people, it’s a traumatic experience.
Tell someone who’s let’s say a junior sales professional, two to five years, why you need to get out of the house, why you need to put on the clothes. Again, we’re doing the interview in 2025, some’s coming back, but not nearly as much. I don’t think that grouping appreciates what happens when you’re amongst human beings and the possibility that can happen.
Greg Clifton: From my experience, if I look at all of the really strong relationships I’ve developed over the years, particularly with my partner community, it’s been, when we’ve been out at events, or in particular, we’re all out at a conference somewhere. We’re all in a town that’s not our hometown. We’re all getting together, we’re spending the day on a trade show floor and meetings, but then we’re out socializing afterwards. You just don’t develop relationships like that on the phone. Even, quite frankly, just going to business lunches. It’s that joint experience, and those that have been to trade shows, they’re fun, but it’s a struggle at times. You’re really having to work hard, it’s tiring, and those things, but it gives you that common bond with people.
Even going to the office, I tell folks, they’re like, “Well, I can’t get as much done at the office. I need the privacy.” That’s true at times. We all start to talk and maybe aren’t quite as productive. But if I look at what we do at the office, we do a lot of whiteboarding, we do a lot of strategy sessions, we do a lot of talk, and we do a lot of group learning. That’s critical too. Learn from others, get a chance to talk through your ideas, get a chance to talk through your pitch, what you want to say. What’s my executive 30-second pitch to somebody? Well, the best way to work on that is to practice it. None of us like to practice. We’re all like, “No, I got it. I’ll wing it.” But it’s important.
I think that in those particularly face-to-face environments, most of us, you’re more of an expert than me on this, but you learn and you communicate not just by voice, but even as we’re doing, talking with my hands or facial cues, eye cues, and you just don’t get that, even on video, you don’t get that like you do if we’re standing face to face or sitting face to face and that kind of environment. I tell everybody, it’s hard. It’s hard to do a lot of times these after hour business development efforts, but it matters. The other part is, if you are showing up at those events, the other people start to recognize you. All of a sudden, even if you’re not talking to everybody in the room, people are like, “I’ve seen that person. They’re involved in this community and it helps.” Because inevitably, you’ll run across them in a business environment and you already have that warm connection just because you were at an event and you’ve seen each other.
Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, have you had any mentors in your career? I’m sure you have. Working for a company like Intel, you just don’t show up one day and say, “I want to become a GM at Intel.” You got to go through a process and meet some amazing people and have them take interest. We talk about mentors a lot on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, particularly in our Women in Sales shows. But you want to talk about a mentor who had an impact on your career?
Greg Clifton: I’ve had a couple. I mentioned being in the real estate world. One of the first guys, and I was 23, 24 years old, the one gentleman, I’ll never forget, his name was Tim Allen, and he was a Vietnam era Navy SEAL. One of the first SEALs. A tough guy. He played football at the University of Miami. He was a big guy, but he was also one of those teddy bear guys. But he just was the king of customer service and support. One of the things he did, he did a lot of Northrop Grumman’s office space. He was always just about, how do I serve my customer? But he also was the one who beat into me, show up, be on time, look the part.
In sales, the whole presentation is part of what you do. Show up, be professional, be on time. Same thing with him is be prepared and add value. I worked with Tim for a number of years. He was really good. It was good to have a mentor and somebody you’re working with that held you accountable as well. Not just coaching from the sides, but if you didn’t do it the right way, he lets you know about it, and it wasn’t going to happen again if you were going to join him on those calls. I appreciate Tim.
The other one I started at Intel was Rick Jones. You may know Rick, but he was a 20-some-odd-year veteran at Intel when I started. He really showed me the ropes around the Department of Defense, the intelligence community as I got started there. Rick was one of the original Intel architecture managers. We called him Evangelist because he was really just talking about the goodness of technology and how that could solve problems. But Rick had that same approach, just knew everybody, showed up everywhere, always brought interesting, valuable contribution, but wasn’t over the top. I’ve tried to emulate we’re not over the top, but it was just, let’s have a consultative type of a conversation and really get to the heart of what you’re trying to do. I’ve had plenty of other great leaders, sales leaders and others throughout the year, but those two guys stick out. It was earlier in my career and they really helped set the stage.
Fred Diamond: Wow. A Vietnam war era Navy SEAL, man. Those guys, man, they did some hard stuff. It’s interesting too, as you’re talking here, for the people who are listening, you’re telling some great stories. You made a point before, you’re not going to say, “Hey, remember that Zoom call we did in March of 2023? You turned your head,” we’re not going to be talking about that. But we remember, I’m thinking, as we’re talking here, about the trade shows, the customer calls, the team being together, and those things take hours. Also too, you mentioned being in front of a whiteboard. Go to the office, you’re in front of the whiteboard, and then it’s like, “Let’s go to lunch and let’s keep talking about this.” You can’t do that as much over Zoom. You’re contracted to a certain period of time because you’re in your house and you got to do things. We’re not knocking Zoom. We’re not knocking that.
Greg Clifton: It’s a great tool.
Fred Diamond: You could talk to people around the globe and you could just get on the call, et cetera, but there’s so much missing from the in-person type things.
Greg Clifton: Particularly for those first engagements. I think Zoom and all that, it’s great particularly for follow ups and for being able to connect. But as you’re meeting people, developing relationships for the first time, I think it’s funny you say that. Nobody ever remembers the Zoom call, but I certainly remember that DISA conference from 2006 with a bunch of my partners. Same thing, you have all those memories of just some of them, because it was crazy weather, or whatever went on, but it was that shared experience that I talked about that you just don’t forget and you develop not only partnerships, but friendships.
Fred Diamond: It’s interesting. You’ve been in the public sector space once you got into tech for the last 25 some odd years. I tell this to young sales professionals all the time, it’s that for you to progress your career, it’s usually going to be in an industry. Now, of course, you understand technology, you could probably, if you chose to, you could move into financial services or you had experience in real estate. But most of the people, as they progress, it’s in an industry and a lot of times you’re talking to customers who are also invested in being in that industry.
I’m just curious, speaking about that, is there a sales success or a project from your career you’re particularly proud of? Being at Intel for 24 years, there has to be many of them, but you want to focus on one and share why it stood out?
Greg Clifton: I’ll hit two sides of it. I think for most salespeople, the things that stick out the most to them are not necessarily their wins, but their losses. Then in particular, when you can win back a loss. There’s a number of those, I won’t get into too much detail, but I think most people can appreciate that. You remember those big losses. Makes you hungrier, makes you work harder, and it’s that much more satisfying when you win. But one of the ones that I thought was really interesting, this probably started six, seven years ago, working with one of our government customers. We were partners. We provided them information, they received information, but neither of us could really figure out how to move it to the next level.
As we continued to talk, we continued to bring in some of our technology partners on both sides. Because the ultimate goal is we were trying to help deliver technology and capabilities to get at mission problems. We ended up creating a brand-new way of engaging. We copied and borrowed from some of the spiral development models where it wasn’t a skunk works kind of thing, but similar, where we would get in and we would look at a hard problem. We study it real quick and say, “Hey, can we do something about it? Great, let’s go do it. Let’s go do some engineering or some prototyping.” Then if that worked, “Let’s go take it to production and make it happen.”
What was interesting about it is it was a new way for Intel to do business with our government partners. It was a new way for the government to actually do business with industry. We did some unique things from contracting. Obviously, we followed all the rules and regulations, but gave us some flexibility in how we engaged. Once we got that going, it just kept blossoming into new opportunities, small, little projects that would then move into bigger things as we kept helping to solve problems.
To me, that was an example of we went out, we saw a need, we shaped actually what a solution would look like. We did the contracting capability and then we executed on it. It’s funny, after I even use that, I ask people when I interview them, “Now, give me an example of something that you actually went out, you created something to solve a problem, and then managed it through the lifecycle end to end.” Because you hit all aspects of sales, relationship building, government contracting in that case. It’s something that I’m proud of we’re still doing. It’s been really successful and worthwhile for both parties.
Fred Diamond: To speak about that, the tech landscape is rapidly evolving. How do you stay up-to-date on industry trends and what strategies do you employ to keep your team at the forefront of innovation?
Greg Clifton: I actually think that’s one of the hardest things to do from a leadership perspective, because we’re all busy and everybody has limited budgets. One of the easiest things to cut is training and development for people. One of the things I tell people is don’t rely on your company. Don’t rely on it. Go and do it yourself. Go make sure you prioritize your development, your learning, and not just learning about technology, but developing your sales skills, your personality skills, your presentation skills, your writing skills, all those types of things. But it’s hard. It’s just trying to find the time to do that. As we keep evolving, I’ll send you tips, or I’m open to tips on how other people are doing it, but it’s a little bit of that. We try to have formalized trainings and then it’s really try to encourage our people to take the time to spend. You don’t have to be every minute of every day in a meeting or following up. You got to really focus on yourself.
Fred Diamond: One thing we like to talk about is the fact that, yeah, you may be a sales rep at a particular company, but you’re the CEO of your career. What should you be doing to continue to grow your career? Just curious. Looking ahead, what are some of the major initiatives you’re focusing on to ensure your continued success for Intel?
Greg Clifton: That’s a good question, and certainly we started this talking about what’s going on in the government, what’s going on in the news. I’m sure many folks have been following that in terms of supply chain around the world and the investment by the government in domestic supply. Particularly for critical infrastructure like semiconductors and microelectronics. Hopefully folks understand what the CHIPS Act is, where the government was investing to get domestic manufacturing. It’s not just to get chips, but also, when you invest in that state-of-the-art manufacturing, it helps bring and build that innovation skillset in the American workforce.
One of the things Intel are very focused on is helping to deliver domestic silicon semiconductors to the federal government. Semiconductors are critical, obviously for national defense, for the citizen services we provide for our economy, our competitiveness as a nation. Intel is very much focused on that and delivering that capability. That’s one thing. We’re obviously building the factories. We have US factories today and we make our products here in the US. We have a global footprint as well, but we’re really invested here. Then it’s also helping the government and our partner ecosystem understand how to consume that.
As you know, Fred, and particularly in the federal government, having the capability is just the first part. Then there has to be acquisition requirements and policies and those kinds of things. A big part of what we’re doing is bring that domestic supply chain for microelectronics. Then like most companies, we’re also trying to help our government be more productive, workforce productivity, efficiency, saving money, leveraging AI, and in particular, leveraging AI on a PC. You and I are both sitting in front of a PC. Most of our government customers and our partner ecosystem, the way they access their business systems or their mission environment is through a PC on their desk or out in the field or in a vehicle, but it still is the PC. Bringing AI capability to that, bringing efficiency to that is a huge focus of ours and of our partner ecosystem. Those two things are critical for Intel’s success, but also for the success we think of our government and commercial partners.
Fred Diamond: Again, we’re doing today’s interview in February of 2025. There’s a lot of work being done in the government with efficiency, et cetera. It’ll be curious to see what’s going to happen in two, three months and what new things might be coming out. But it’s good to see that Intel’s playing a role there.
Before I ask you for your final bit of advice for the sales professionals listening to today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast, one final question. In your view, how does enhancing the customer experience contribute to this modernization within the federal government?
Greg Clifton: If I think about it, and think about customer experience, it bows down to trust. If we’re building trust with our government partners, with our other ecosystem partners, it gives them the, I use the word trust again, but it gives them the ability to look at new ways of doing things, modernizing and transforming, and say, “Hey, I think we can do this. I trust you. I trust the technology. I know you’re going to be here with me. I know you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do in this.” It just makes that getting over the hump that much easier to enablement. It all starts with relationships. No matter what technology you’re dealing with, it’s all people working with people. Building the trust then gives everybody the confidence and comfort to move faster around change and modernization and transformation.
Fred Diamond: Once again, I want to thank Greg Clifton for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. Greg, we like to end the show with an action step. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas, but give us one specific thing that people listening to the show or reading the transcript should do to take their sales career to the next level.
Greg Clifton: I’ll go back to what we started with, show up. Show up, add value, and meet somebody new every day.
Fred Diamond: That’s great advice. Once again, my name is Fred Diamond. I want to thank Greg Clifton for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast.