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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the SALES GAME CHANGERS Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Fred Diamond on October 21, 2020. It featured Business Development leader at the Cooley Law Firm Carl Grant.]

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EPISODE 281: Law Firm Business Development Star Carl Grant Details His Strategies for Success for Growing Impactful Relationships Right Now

CARL’S ‘ TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Do good to yourself and do good to others and when I say do good to yourself, take care of yourself. I don’t look as old as I perhaps am because I take care of myself. Feed yourself well, exercise, have healthy habits and then you’ve got to have healthy relationships. Go out and do good things for others and good things will happen to you.”

Fred Diamond: Carl, it’s great to see you. I tell people that you are one of the top business development guys that I’ve ever come across, you get a lot of people who believe that as well. We’re going to be talking about some things that you’re doing in the current environment to continue building your networks, building your relationships and growing. First of all, it’s great to see you. You’re now down in Austin, Texas, I’m still here in Northern Virginia. How are things going in Austin, Texas?

Carl Grant: Things are going great in Austin, Texas. Traffic is back up to 80% of where it was pre-COVID and people are getting back out, at least they are here in the suburbs. You go to the gym and other than a few masks, you wouldn’t even know there was a pandemic going on.

Fred Diamond: Be well and stay safe anyway. Carl is a fountainhead of knowledge on relationship building and business development and we’re going to get deep into some of the things that he’s doing today and also recommending for his teams. Carl, let’s get right to it. How are things going for the business? And again, just tell a little bit about what you do. I mentioned Cooley but tell people what Cooley is, tell people what you do specifically and then tell people how the pandemic has affected your efforts.

Carl Grant: Cooley is a global law firm, it was just a west coast law firm when I joined. Since then we’ve added many offices around the world and around the country and we’ve added a billion dollars’ worth of revenue to the company. I lead the business development team that helps to bring in that revenue, it’s a 13-person team, we’re growing to 16 and we’re starting to move towards more of an industry-focused than a geography-focused, that’s a new thing. We’re doing it gradually over time as people move on, rather than replace geographic positions we’re placing those with industry-focused positions and they may be in specific geographies, but does it even matter where we are today? I’m dealing with people in the UK, in the Middle East, all over the place. I literally go from country to country by Zoom and it really doesn’t matter where I am.

Fred Diamond: That’s true, I was on two conference calls today with people in the UK and with people all over the country. Actually, they weren’t conference calls, they were Zoom calls. Explain business development as well, you said you’re leading a business development team, Cooley is a law firm so just to give us a little bit of context, what exactly does business development mean? You’ve been doing it for 20 somewhat years, you mentioned, you now lead a team of 13 people but what is it? What do you get judged on? Then we’ll go from there.

Carl Grant: Fred, it’s nuanced. As we talked about back when we spoke before, I’m essentially doing sales but it’s different in professional services. I’ve actually – partly by your inspiration, Fred – started a podcast about business development, it’s called Rainmakers. I think but there’s people out there who also have other ways of doing business development, attracting customers without selling. That’s the key right there and I find it fascinating to interview some of these individuals who are top in their game, I have them referred into me by other guests or other people who are listening to the podcast as I’m sure you do and I get to know these people. This is one way I’m expanding my network is I’m getting to know these individuals and I’m learning about how they do what they do. It’s fascinating, not everybody is wired to go out to a networking event and exchange business cards like we used to or go into a virtual event and befriend people. Other people have different approaches and if you’re interested in hearing some of those approaches, I encourage you to listen there as well.

Fred Diamond: We’ll put a link into your podcast in the show notes. Let’s talk about your priorities right now, it’s October 21st, we’re in Q4 and you mentioned that you’re on the phone with people all over the world so what are your priorities? Tell us who you try to spend time with as a world-class business development expert and tell us right now, October-ish, who are you trying to meet with? How are you trying to meet with them? What does your daily roster of important things to get done look like?

Carl Grant: If you go through Cooley’s client base, we represent all of the big tech companies out there but all those big tech companies started out as startups. I want to meet those companies while they’re on their way to becoming the Facebooks of the world, I want to meet them when they’re nascent, when they’re perhaps pursuing a series A round. Now that I’m able to move around from geography to geography with quite a bit of ease using technology if we’re not doing that many physical meetings, I’m really focused personally on more of the middle of the country. I have a team that is very capable on the east coast and a team that is very capable on the west coast and our only guy in the middle of the country was a Colorado business development person. He moved on so I’m pretty much covering everything that’s not on one of those coasts so a lot in Chicago, a lot in Austin and then some of the other secondary markets.

Fred Diamond: How do you find your targets? Austin of course has a very rich technology, Northern Virginia, Boston, Atlanta, there are so many places now where there are emerging technology companies. How do you find your prospect list? I’m just curious how you figure out who you want to be talking to.

Carl Grant: Fred, to be honest with you, I have almost 15,000 LinkedIn connections at this point, I could literally never meet another person and probably still do my job just by staying in contact with people I already know. That’s the challenge, how do you keep in contact with 15,000 people? It’s hard so I try to touch each of them once a year. Either wish them a happy birthday or congratulate them on a new position or like a post that they’ve put up. In some way, I interact with every one of those individuals in my LinkedIn each year and then in terms of meeting new people, I found it almost overwhelming. When things shut down and people stopped going out, it took us about a week to figure out what we were going to do but I already had a running head start because I had been working from home 2 days a week. I find that my schedule works best when I take Mondays and Fridays as follow-up days, it’s primarily email, some calls, some Zooms but mainly emails. Then I take the Tuesdays through Thursdays and do in-person meetings. Well, it’s not in-person now, it’s via Zoom now although some in-person. I’m heading to Dallas this evening and we have a whole schedule of in-person meetings starting tonight over dinner all through tomorrow. People are starting to get back out again, as a matter of fact, people shake my hand, I’ve had people hug me. I think we actually want human interaction and I think we can only stay locked up so long.

Fred Diamond: Questions are coming in, a question here comes from Eugene and Eugene is in Reston, Virginia. Gene, good to see you again, buddy. He wants to know, “Carl mentioned LinkedIn. How does he optimize LinkedIn with 15,000 contacts?” Let’s just talk about LinkedIn for a little bit, you mentioned 15,000 contacts, you post things, I know I see that as well. Tell us a little bit about how you have optimized LinkedIn as a business development channel.

Carl Grant: I get a lot of information sent to me, I get hundreds of emails every day and a lot of it has really good information about the venture industry, about deals getting done, just about trends and business things. When I have a sense that something is of interest to my contacts – which is primarily made up of CEOs and investors and then the rest of the ecosystem that services those individuals – if I read something that I think is going to be of value to my network, I just post it. Sometimes I’ve read it, sometimes I’ve read the headline but I know that if I have the time to read the whole article, that’s an interesting article to me. I get a lot of good feedback on the things that I post, people tell me that I’m their best news source for things in this industry so that’s primarily what I do. I try to answer all the messages I get, I’ve set it up so somebody has to have my email address to invite me to connect because when they do, it’s like a snowball. Once you have so many contacts you start getting random people coming at you and I don’t like being connected to a bunch of random people even though it sounds like it’s probably random at 15,000. I’m trying to keep it as a quality network that I want to interact with each year, not some random person that I never met or never had a reason to meet.

Fred Diamond: We have another question here that’s coming in, a question from Louise in New York City. Louise wants to know, “What’s a win? Is it getting a new client or is it meeting a great referral source?” That’s an interesting question. You mentioned you like to meet the Facebooks of the world when they’re startup, a couple guys in a garage or wherever they might be, people still develop things in garages, I guess. For you, does the firm look at you as being successful when that startup is now going for its A round or something or something they need, some documents created? Do firms use one law firm? Is that how it works? Give us a little bit of context, you mentioned you’re in sales, what is the sale and what does that look like?

Carl Grant: While the goal is to bring in the new clients, I don’t focus on that. If I were meeting with you, if you were the founder of a company what I’d be doing, Fred is I’d be finding out about you and about your needs and your challenges and how I can help you. It’s not about what they can do for me so I think that’s a key differentiator especially during this pandemic when people are trying to figure out how to do what they need to do and when people are hurting for business call-up and try to harangue you for referrals or business, that’s not what people want to hear. I’m reaching out and seeing what I can do to help you. If I’m introducing you to investments or if I’m introducing a potential employee to a company – and usually these employees are C-suite employees that have the ability to hire outside counsel – usually there’s something to do there. If not right away, it follows later on and if they’re not a fit to hire our firm because of whatever political forces are against us there, that person still feels good about you and they want to reciprocate. It’s human nature to want to reciprocate when somebody does something good for you. One of my podcast guests said, “Think of your life as a bank account, you can either make deposits or withdrawals.” So I like to keep deposits [laughs] and do very few withdrawal. If I need to make a withdrawal then I do but my deposits are 10 to 1 on the withdrawals.

Fred Diamond: We have people listening around the globe, Carl, you and I got to know each other in the DC area, we both lived and worked in Reston. You’ve been doing this for 20 years, you’d be on the Mount Rushmore of business development, if you will, if there were such a thing. What do you think it was about you? What are some of the traits that you have that has led you to being so successful in business development in the space that you’re dealing with? I’m asking the question not to build your ego or anything but I’m asking the question for people to think about that.

Carl Grant: [Laughs] there’s a bible verse that says a man is tested by the praise he receives. I listen to that and it’s really nice that you said that but I’m not going to believe that, it’s good that you believe that but I’m not going to believe that because I don’t want to be full of myself. You and I have talked in the past and you know, Fred, you’ve been to the prayer breakfast. Early on when I was getting my MBA – I might have said this on your last podcast – I was taking classes like power persuasion and ethics to figure out what my approach to business was going to be and halfway through getting my MBA, I became a Christian. I was an atheist previously and I realized that I had a world view that I now turned away from so this newfound faith, I had to figure out, “How do I incorporate this into this business journey that I’m about to take?” We all know the bible verse, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, I think if you just take some of these verses and put them into practice they actually work so if you do unto others as you would have  them do unto you, eventually it’s done unto you. If you just simply follow that advice, also other biblical idea is you reap what you sow. If you go and do a bunch of nasty things to people, nasty things are going to happen back to you, try not to do that. I’m not perfect, we’re all a work in progress but I try the best I can.

Fred Diamond: We have a couple more questions coming in and we’re going to get specific about things you’re doing today. We’re still technically in the shutdown world at some level, a lot of the corporate members of the IES have told their people, “You can’t go into hotels, you can’t go to networking events where there’s more than a certain number of people” so we’re still in that space. We’re going to get deep into some of the things you recommend people do in this virtual world to build their network but talk about some of your habits. You mentioned on LinkedIn you send a lot of emails with articles, if you don’t mind, give us your top two or three habits that you do to help maintain your high level of performance. I appreciate you not accepting my praise but Cooley is one of the top three or four firms in this space, you’ve been a big part in growing it and getting the reputation for the firm to attract some of the world-class tech companies with their whole process. Tell us two or three of your habits that have led to your continued success.

Carl Grant: Fred, I’m trying to pace myself. If I wasn’t disciplined about what I did, I literally could be on Zoom calls or meetings 24/7. I have the job that never ends so I shut my work email completely off on the weekends, I don’t look at it. In order to get back into the frantic pace that I operate in Monday through Friday, I need to get decompressed, I need to work on other things so I have interests outside of my work. This is not my life, if we were hanging out on the weekend you might not even know what I did so that’s important, I take vacations and when I take a vacation I shut it off. It helps me to be better when I’m on and when I’m on, I try to prioritize meetings. When you do the kind of stuff that I do, there’s a lot of people that want to meet with you and I really try to grade the individuals that I’m meeting with so I don’t waste a lot of the time that my firm is paying me to be working for them.

If there’s a near term revenue opportunity for Cooley, I prioritize that over a nice-to-have meeting with a venture capitalist. The VC meetings are important but they can wait and if it’s a service provider that just wants to get together, I’m booking meetings in December right now. I’m not trying to insult anyone but as a revenue generator, I need to prioritize the revenue. I grade those meetings, I have color-coding. I’ve got my assistant, that’s another thing, having a scheduling assistant is key. Not everybody can afford it and I know there’s outsource models, having somebody that can just keep your schedule in order and scheduling all those meetings, all the emails that go back and forth, it’s very hard. I try to take care of those people that take good care of me, Sabrina Morales, she’s fabulous, she was my assistant for many years. She’s promoted as a manager now and she doesn’t support me anymore but I have a new assistant, Candice Johnson and she’s a Sabrina in the making. I appreciate all she does for me and Candice is the key to my calendar and the key to my sanity just keeping everything straight. I don’t know if that fully answers your question.

The other thing I try to do is set boundaries, you have to set boundaries because people say, “I want to meet you for an hour.” An hour meeting doesn’t really work on my schedule, I can spend a half hour or 15 minutes with you, otherwise this meeting might not happen. You’re only in charge of your own calendar, you can’t let other people control your calendar so in order to be effective and touch as many people as possible within a nice way, you’ve got to pace yourself.

Fred Diamond: Let’s get deep on that because we have a couple more questions coming in about that. We’re still shut down at some level, how do you balance your schedule? How do you know that you’re meeting with the right people? Again, you’ve been doing this for 20 years so you probably have gotten to the point now where you can just meet with CEOs and you could push off the virtual VCs and the service providers off to December because they’ll…

Carl Grant: …The VCs don’t wait till December [laughs]. VCs are pretty high on the food chain, don’t get me wrong, they’re kind of top of the food chain so I make time for them but if it’s just a nice, “Let’s get together and hear what you’re seeing in the market” that might be able to wait a few weeks whereas if there’s a CEO who’s closing around a financing right now and wants to talk, I’ve got to be on that.

I just got introduced to a guy who raised $25 million dollars and he wants to meet, he gave me some dates so I’m going to go with his dates, and if there’s somebody that I don’t need to meet with, they can be moved out. It’s just prioritizing.

Fred Diamond: Have you gotten rigorous about that over the years? You mentioned you have an assistant but is that something that you’ve learned or did you know that from the beginning 20 years ago? Just as you built the reputation and you grew.

Carl Grant: Fred, I think we talked about this last time. When I started out doing this I was earning myself out running ragged. All the things I’m telling you I do now, I didn’t do then. I would go to an evening event, be there until 9 o’clock at night, I’d go to my office and stay there past midnight doing emails and then I’d be at a 7:30 morning breakfast meeting the next morning and that was day after day. Over time what I started to do was say, “Alright, no more evening events up against morning events.” That gave me some quality of life, I started to take those vacations and decompress, I started to play around with when my follow up time was, is it in the afternoon, the morning? Now I do two full days, Fred, because if you don’t follow up, all this activity is worthless. If I meet with you and I say, “Fred, I’m going to do this favor for you…” I’ve got lists of things that I promised to do. I was working feverously on a list when we were getting ready for this, it’s a follow up that I’d promise somebody I would do and I try to use every second I have to get caught up with all these things because there’s always more things.

Fred Diamond: We have a question here coming in from Geraldine and Geraldine is also in New York City. Geraldine wants to know, “Who are your most trusted referral partners?” That’s an interesting question, I’m actually reflecting back, you and I first met in a “lead share group” back in 2003-2004 and we would meet once a month Tuesday from 4 to 6. Eventually that group got up to 30 somewhat people, that group is long gone. But just curiously from the referral side, now the firm has grown so much, your reputation has grown so much. Back to the service provider referrals, who do you try to spend as much time as possible with and who have you decided to deal those relationships with?

Carl Grant: Fred, I don’t want to call them out by name.

Fred Diamond: Generically.

Carl Grant: There are certain individuals in like positions at other firms, accounting and insurance, banks, even VCs and some of them I introduced to their jobs, I can think of two business development people I introduced to their positions. They’re pretty good referral sources, that’s how it works because you helped them get their job so some of my best referral sources are people I helped get jobs, to be honest with you. Also, there’s people that I genuinely become friends with. Not everybody is going to fall into that category but if I’m hanging out with you on the weekend, you’re a friend of mine. I can think of a person I met here when I got to Austin, Texas and he had an important influential position here. He took me out to do a meeting on his boat, that was the coolest idea ever, I’m going to copy that. One thing I do is I copy good ideas and that was a good one. I enjoyed so much going out on his boat that I wanted to introduce him to an entrepreneur I know who did really well and we did a triple double day [laughs] I don’t know how you say that. We all took our wives, went out on a boat, went out for dinner and just had a blast. These guys are my friends, we may do business together but it’s beyond and that individual has sent me a ton of referrals since I’ve been here.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that for a second because we talked about that in one of your first Sales Game Changers podcast episodes. Let’s talk about relationship and you just mentioned a couple times you got people jobs. You and I have traded those kinds of things over the years, somebody who’s looking for a marketing position or somebody’s looking for a sales position and I know a lot of people reach out to you. If you think about it, 20 years, a guy or lady who was a COO, she may be on her third or fourth company.

Carl Grant: Are you still doing outsourced marketing?

Fred Diamond: Not really [laughs].

Carl Grant: Because I just got a request for a referral yesterday and I didn’t write it down, I’m talking to you now thinking about what you were doing when we met and I’m like, “Maybe I have a referral for Fred” but I guess I don’t.

Fred Diamond: That’s funny, we’re always looking for sales VPs, that’s who we’re looking for these days to build relationships with. But let’s talk about the concept of relationship from the BD perspective. If you’re in sales, we talk about that a lot, relationships but at the same time salespeople have quotas and a salesperson is not going to keep their job if they don’t reach their quota on a continual basis so their viewpoint on relationships, even though they might be valuable over time, a lot of times it’s focused on, “What do I need now? How do I need to grow my accounts?” etcetera. Give us some examples of value that you see in relationships. You mentioned found people jobs, it might not always be about getting the person a gig at Cooley to help run their funding rounds or to get them to the IPO or a sale, an acquisition, whatever it might be. What are some things that you have found to be the most valuable relationship points along the way that we could throw out here to the people listening to the podcast and watching today’s webinar?

Carl Grant: No matter what you’re selling, people want to buy from people they like. You can call somebody up and sell them software and it’s a transaction, I’m relation, not transactional. That’s the kind of work that comes into a firm like Cooley’s, it’s relational work. I get to know somebody who’s a serial entrepreneur and is going to do five companies over the span of his life, I want to work with those companies so you’ve got to look at the person that you want to cultivate the relationship with and say, “What can I do for that person? How can I be of value to that person?” A CEO of a merging company, he or she is going to have to raise money somewhere along the way, he or she is going to have to hire a CFO somewhere along the way, there’s a lot of things that person is going to need, position yourself. I know what these things are now because I’ve been doing this a long time, I’m your guy when you need this, when you need outsource developers, when you need the whole myriad of things. I become their trusted adviser on those things. You need a venture capitalist, they’re going to do deals, they want deal flow, they also are going to raise funds too so they need limited partners. Knowing that food chain of value creation is helpful so if you operate in a particular space like I do and you spend your time while you can building up those relationships, putting those favors out into the marketplace, then when a pandemic hits you’re in a good spot. Here I am, I’m shut in my house just like everybody else. If you’re a CEO who has not been out networking and building up relationships with investors, you need to capitalize your company and you’re shut in your house, what are you going to do now? I tell you what a lot of them do, they reached out to me, it became overwhelming because when you know people that individuals need to know, you get inundated so that’s what happened.

I met CEOs via Zoom in a lot of different meetings and ways all over the country and I remember one guy – I won’t mention his name – he had quit his good paying job to do a startup and he hadn’t built it yet, he didn’t have any customers and he was just out of work and in no man’s land. I was able to introduce him to developers who could develop mostly for equity, I just made a lot of connections for him. Is he still going to make it? I don’t know, it’s a tough spot that he was in but he’s better off today now that he’s met me and I’ve made some of those connections for him.

Fred Diamond: Carl, we have a question here that comes in from Nelson and Nelson is in Palm Beach, Florida. Nelson, good to see you again. Nelson wants to know, “How can I develop new relationships right now?” Again, Carl, you’ve established yourself, you’ve been doing this for 20 years, you’ve been known as The Cooley Guy for a long time, you’ve developed a reputation. Let’s say for people who don’t have these relationships yet, again we’re working from our homes and things are opening up but not really, people are still working from their homes. Everybody here who I see, we have a couple dozen people who are watching today’s webinar, I’m pretty sure that everybody is at their home because I know a lot of their companies haven’t let people back into the buildings yet. You’ve got a lot of people coming to you because of your reputation. Today it’s October 21st, people are going to be listening to this and I’m sure we’re going to be at some level of the pandemic. What’s your advice for outreach, for reaching out to new people to be in your relationship for people who are in the business development profession?

Carl Grant: There have been endless online events and I get invited to so many of these things every day but if you’re not getting those invitations, you’ve got to go out and find them. I don’t know what business you’re in, Nelson, but…

Fred Diamond: He’s in software sales.

Carl Grant: There have got to be some associations around your customer base or your industry and you start to go out to these events and they have a little chat room right there. If it’s a camera on event, turn your camera on, be seen and I try to figure out how to make people want to get to know me. If I introduce myself in the chat room and I take my LinkedIn profile and I put it with my post, I will say, “If I could do this, this or this for you, reach out to me.” I give them a reason to want to come to me, I’m not going to go chasing them, I just put the bait out there and let them come to me. Now, I have to be careful because sometimes I get overwhelmed. If I hold myself out as the guy who knows money sources and you need to raise money, all of a sudden I’m absolutely inundated. The reason the VCs take these referrals from me is because for every hundred companies that come through my funnel, only a few make it out. I try to be as nice as I can to the 98 who don’t make it through because they might come back with something good but only a few make it through and those few that make it through often times get rejected. It’s a tough business.

Fred Diamond: Just curiously, what’s something positive that’s come out of this? Again, you moved, you said things are starting up again, you’re getting a lot of people reaching out to you. What’s been the biggest positive result or surprise that has come out of the last 6-7 months for you specifically as a BD professional?

Carl Grant: I could pick up and move across the country and it didn’t really matter. It might have been a big deal if all of a sudden we were in the office and then I wasn’t around the office as much. I’ll still go back, I’ve got an office in Washington DC. I will go to my office occasionally but my job isn’t in the office so for somebody who wanted to move, a lot of people have just done that. In fact, taxes, I can’t believe how many people just moved here from California and New York. I was quizzing the women at the DMV when I went to get my driver’s license and they said everybody is either from California or New York. That was a good positive. Then this podcast I launched, you’re sitting around doing your work, doing your stuff and I might have been planning this podcast for a year and I finally pulled the trigger. Having some extra time at home was a way to do that and there’s some other non-profit related things that had been really good but I don’t want to bore everybody with all the good things that have happened. There are some things that have happened that wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t in a pandemic.

Fred Diamond: How have you changed in the past few months? Again, you moved from Virginia to Texas, I actually lived in Houston for a couple years and considered moving to Austin in the late 90s, it’s a beautiful part of Texas, it’s thriving. How have you changed? Some things that you’ve noticed about yourself as a business development professional that have changed over the last couple of months.

Carl Grant: I realized how adaptable I could be because you would think that somebody doing what I do could just die and lose this job in a situation like this, it was the opposite for me, I thrived, I loved it. I have a broadcast journalism background, Fred, so the idea of being on camera during the day was exciting to me and it’s too much now, that’s another thing I figured out is you can’t do Zoom all day, you can’t check your emails, you can’t even go to the bathroom – at least you shouldn’t, there’ve been some disasters [laughs]. What I have done is if I’m meeting somebody that’s local to me and I haven’t met them before, I’ll go meet them in person. I think I’ve already had this thing which I’m not worried about so I’ll go meet them in person. If they’re not up for a personal meeting I’ll respect that, I’ll do a Zoom meeting with them so I can see them and get to know them a little bit. If I’ve already met you, I don’t need to be on Zoom talking to you. I want to stay in my pajamas and do a cellphone call so I have specified that with my assistant when she sets them up, just like she prioritizes those meetings, this is when I met in person, this is when I Zoom, this is when I do a voice call.

Fred Diamond: Carl, I have one more question for you and then I’m going to ask for your final thought, something to inspire us today. Carl, what would be your recommendations for people who are senior at BD, they’ve been doing it for 5, 10, 15 years, maybe they’re of a certain age and what would be some of your recommendations for people who are junior? Maybe they’re just getting started either in sales or BD. Let’s talk about the seasoned people first, people who have been 10, 15, 20 years, what would you recommend to them right now to get going on with?

Carl Grant: I would say step up your game, learn from others like what I’m doing. I’m pretty senior, I’m way up there and I’m out there talking to other business development professionals and learning what they do so that’s a way to get some more tools in the tool kit. For somebody just starting out in this, Fred, it’s harder because going back to the whole reason for me launching that podcast is when I started out, nobody told me what to do. Literally the guy that hired me at PricewaterhouseCoopers said, “Carl, it’s like I’m leading you into a dark room, I’m not giving you a flashlight and I’m not showing you the way out.”

For some reason that excited me so I had to figure out how to do this. I was making it up as I went along, I realized when I learned who we audited at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the idea of selling somebody an audit seemed like a horrible thing to have to do but I didn’t make it about selling an audit. I made it about, “We represent these companies that could be your customers, we represent these investors, they can be your investors” and I just became the matchmaker. By the way, one day you’re going to need an audit, usually after you raise the money. Remember us and it works, nobody ever got fired by hiring PricewaterhouseCoopers, the same thing with Cooley. It wasn’t the brand name it was when I joined but it is now, we’re the gold standard in law firms. I hope that answers your question a little bit, Fred.

Fred Diamond: Carl Grant, I want to thank you again. We miss you here in Northern Virginia but it really doesn’t matter because everybody’s working out of their homes but I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around when we see your teams. Thank you so much again for all the great insights that you’ve given to tech sales professionals and BD professionals and service providers over the years. Carl, give us one final thought, give us one action item for today. You’ve given us plenty but give us one that people can latch on today October 21st to take their career to the next level.

Carl Grant: Do good to yourself and do good to others and when I say do good to yourself, you’ve got to take care of yourself. I don’t look as old as I perhaps am because I take care of myself, Fred, you’ve got to feed yourself well, you’ve got to exercise, you’ve got to have healthy habits and then you’ve got to have healthy relationships so go out and do good things for others and good things will happen to you.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 281: Law Firm Business Development Star Carl Grant Details His Strategies for Success for Growing Impactful Relationships Right Now first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 07:33
Name an impactful sales mentor: 12:54
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 14:45
Most important tip: 19:51
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 24:40
Inspiring thought: 26:08

EPISODE 123: Cooley Law Firm’s Biz Dev Chief Carl Grant’s Mission is to Help Technology Leaders Become Amazingly Successful. Here’s How He Does it.

CARL’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “People like to buy from people that they know and if you’re struggling with how to get to know people, I’m going to tell you that people can connect on very personal levels. I think the deepest personal relationships you can develop with other people are through a religious affiliation, a cultural affiliation or a common mission. Join a group that you identify with religiously, culturally or at a shared mission, such as disease-oriented organizations. Try to connect on a deep personal level with people in the business community by getting involved and when you need to reach out to them, you’re reaching out to a friend. You’re not reaching out to a stranger, you’re not making a cold call, you’re reaching out to somebody who you’ve spent hours with working on something that’s important to them.”

Carl Grant is the EVP of Business Development at the Cooley law firm.

Prior to coming to Cooley, Carl worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and two venture-backed startups.

Find Carl on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Tell us what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Carl Grant: We sell high-end legal services mainly to high growth technology companies and life sciences companies. I lead a 13 person team around the country and they do have some global responsibility as well. What I like the most about this, Fred is no two days are the same. I get to interact with some of the brightest most creative entrepreneurs in the world and I’ll bring their ideas to reality by connecting them with the folks that can help them get them there.

Fred Diamond: To give a little bit of a context, again when we talk to product people they know they have a certain quota type of a thing. For you, do you have a similar type of thing? Are you quota driven or is it relationship driven? Curiously, as a VP of BD how do you get measured at the end of the year?

Carl Grant: We do have goals, each of my team members have goals. However, a law firm as you can imagine is not a quantitative type of organization, it’s a very qualitative organization. I’ve had to adapt what I did prior at PricewaterhouseCoopers which was a highly quantified organization with quotas, with numerical goals and revenue goals and so forth. We don’t really have that here. I do know what my team has delivered, but we don’t really talk about the numbers a lot.

Fred Diamond: Interesting. Let’s go back to your career, again we mentioned you were at PricewaterhouseCoopers and a couple of entry base startups. How did you first get into sales as a career?

Carl Grant: Interestingly, it wasn’t as a career, Fred. I was a striving entrepreneur right out of grad school and I needed to earn some money. This was a long time ago, I forget what my goal was, maybe $10 an hour. I needed to just get some gas money while I was doing the startup and I took a job selling furniture, straight commission. That was about as high pressure sales job as you could have because if your prospect that walked in the door walked out without buying something, you didn’t have gas money or food money that day. I learned how to close sales in a very short amount of time. That was not a stepping stone to a career, in fact I hope the people that saw me in the furniture store would not see me in my normal day job.

Fred Diamond: One thing we ask the Sales Game Changers who we interview on the show is who do they sell to. Of course, if you’re selling tech or media we can understand who that is, but for the people listening to today’s podcast, who do you sell to? Again, you mentioned you’re a high end law firm for technology companies, CEOs, CFOs, venture capitalist, who are some of the people that you’re “trying to sell to”?

Carl Grant: It depends on the stage of the company, Fred. Every company – Apple Computer, Google included – those were startups at one point in time and when you link arms with a startup early on you can typically keep that client or a good part of that client for life. The challenge is figuring out who those startups are at idea stage that have the potential to be the next Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. At that stage we’re working with the CEO, as the company progresses along we’re often dealing with the CEO and the CFO and further along the general council. Those are the three main management team members, but we’re also dealing with the board of directors. It’s a complicated process in facilitating this type of sale and the trick to doing all this is we’re not really selling.

If you looked at my interaction day to day, I would say earlier on with these companies they’re selling to me that they’ve got the next greatest thing because they want access to my venture capital context or my team’s venture capital contacts. That’s the difference in what I do that is probably way different than the other folks you’ve had on this podcast, is that I spend my time helping these entrepreneurs raise money and then we have a very robust resume database here that has CFOs and general councils and board members. We help the companies build out their teams because once the CEO gets too busy to deal with outside legal, it’s the CFO, the general council that’s making those decisions. By helping to get good competent people in those roles and having them feel good about us finding them their next job, we’re pretty much guaranteed that work for a good, long time.

Fred Diamond: Again, you mentioned you old furniture in the beginning but then you worked for a couple entrepreneurial venture back firms. What are some of the lessons you learned from some of those jobs that have helped you get to the top of your game today?

Carl Grant: I would say the real training ground for what I do today was PricewaterhouseCoopers. The sales manager that hired me there was a former IBM sales guy and he really taught me the discipline of developing a pipeline and working that pipeline and grading those prospects and having a disciplined sale cycle. I think without that training I might not be as organized and as effective as I am at actually taking what doesn’t look like a sales job and making it a sales job.

Fred Diamond: Curiously, before we ask you what you’re an expert in again you’re EVP of business development. Give us a perspective on some of the things that you do. What does a typical day look like in a VP of Business Development for one of the top law firms in the country?

Carl Grant: That’s the beautiful thing about my job, is no two days are the same. I try to leave a little time open at the beginning of the day after my workout and just to make sure there’s no bombs in my email. I typically start my meetings around 10 am and I try to leave some time open at the end of the day if possible to follow up and make sure the emergency emails – and most communications I get are email, I get a few phone calls but everybody emails in the tech world.

In the middle of the day, it’s meeting to meeting, my average meeting is about a half hour. Phone call is about 15 minutes, I have to be very regimented with my time so I would say I operate more like a doctor than I do a typical sales person in terms of diagnosing what needs to be done with the company and figuring out what the next steps are.

To facilitate a sale in an environment like this, it’s never done alone. I don’t sell somebody and sign them up and send them an engagement letter, I have to bring in an attorney and have to pass of that relationship. I work my own pipeline, but I also manage a team so we’re coming into review season and I’m having to take prospects that I otherwise would have dealt with and send them to team members gracefully so they don’t feel upset that I’m not giving them personal attention, but I really have to barricade myself for several weeks to get through 13 reviews. It takes a lot of time.

Fred Diamond: Tell us what you’re an expert in, tell us a little about your specific area of brilliance.

Carl Grant: I would say if I’m an expert in anything it’s human relations. I look at experts like Dale Carnegie and I’m a student of his and others of that ilk, it’s all about figuring out what you can do to help other people. I’m never out looking to see what somebody can do for me. In fact, if somebody tries to do something for me I turn it around, I try to figure out what I can do for that other person. I do favors for people nonstop, connecting them to their next job, helping them raise money, helping them find their next big sales contract, helping them get introduced to a potential buyer of their company, a potential partner.

I would rather do 10 things for you and never ask you for anything and one day if I ever do need anything you’ll be very happy to do it for me. I very seldom call in those chips, but that way I’m not calling people trying to get them to buy anything.

Fred Diamond: I guess in your business it’s a long sale cycle, it’s not even really a sale cycle. You’re setting up, you’re teeing up the relationships because one day the CFO that you got a job might be the CFO of a company that’s going to do an IPO at some point and you’ve been doing this for what, 16 years now with Cooley?

Carl Grant: Over 16 years, but no two of these sale cycles are the same Fred. The other day we had a cold email that came in off the website. Normally, those are not very good prospects but this one was a company – I won’t say the name of the company – that had raised $98 million dollars and wants to go public. Who would figure? I wish they all came in that way. I made one phone call and put together a team, and hopefully we’ll get the work. I had the marketing team put together pitch materials, they don’t all come in like that.

Usually I have to do a lot of hard work, there’s a lot of hand holding upfront with a CEO who has an idea and I have to talk him or her through what they need to do next, because I see this thousands of times and this may be their first startup. From that idea to the point where they can actually pay us fees is a lot of work and a lot of hand holding and a lot of time in between.

Fred Diamond: Carl, who was an impactful sales career mentor and how did they impact your career?

Carl Grant: That’s easy, it’s a combination of folks and what I have done over the course since I’ve worked in professional services firms – two of the best, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Cooley – I’ve gone out on meetings with some of the top rain maker partners from each of these firms and I’ve watched what each of these individuals do when they’re in a meeting with a prospective client. I have essentially become a parrot, I have learned to repeat things that I’ve heard others say that I know work and I become a combination of the best of the best when I go out. I think it’s pretty effective.

Fred Diamond: Give us an example. Again, you were at PricewaterhouseCoopers and now you’re at Cooley and you said you’ve been able to watch some of the top rain makers – it’s the first time you use that word. Tell us one or two strategies, techniques or habits that they had that you were able to mimic.

Carl Grant: I would say – and maybe he’s listening – Corey Starr over at PwC was just phenomenal at figuring out what he could do to help make the prospective client he was meeting with successful. It’s all about the other person, it’s not about me, it’s not about us, it’s about how we can help that other company. Here at Cooley, Mike Lincoln is the master. You would not even know that he was even part of the meeting because he’s so into the other person and what they do and I’ve just watched him. I don’t know if he’s ever read the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People but he embodies it. I wish I could be more like that, I’m still working at it.

Fred Diamond: What are two of the biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader? You mentioned you manage a 13 person team, so what are the two big challenges that you face today?

Carl Grant: I think we touched on it earlier, I’m managing a function that normally would be quantified and I’m in an environment, this is not an organization where people take credit for things. As a law firm, we’re rather unusual. Most law firms have what we call origination credits and that’s where partners get origination credits and they get comped on bringing business in and sending it to others, we don’t have any of that here. Thumping your chest and saying that you won this client is not something that you do at Cooley but I have people that go out into the marketplace and are supposed to be operating as rain makers in the market place yet you shun credit and it’s a tricky game.

I like the culture here at Cooley, it’s the best work culture I’ve ever experienced anywhere, people are nice, they’re cooperative, they’re fun to work with but there’s no sharp elbows, there’s no harsh language and everybody’s friendly yet I need to have a team go out and drive revenue.

Fred Diamond: Take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of. Take us back to that moment.

Carl Grant: That’s easy. Many years ago now, a company down the street – Rosetta Stone – was planning to go public and for a law firm like ours, the IPO is the holy grail. That’s on the corporate side, litigation side, there’s a lot more revenues on big ticket litigation but to get in on the corporate side it’s IPO and I remember I had a friend who was in doing some outsource CFO work and she knew who was making hiring decisions, they were moving their headquarters from Harrisonburg, Virginia up to northern Virginia to access what they called “the suits” too be able to do the IPO, and they needed to hire a CFO and a general council. I went to work doing what I do and I was able to get a general council in at Rosetta Stone and we ended up working on the IPO and working with them as a client afterwards. That was textbook example of how those things can work, and it happened pretty rapidly.

Fred Diamond: Carl, did you ever question being in sales? Again, you worked for a couple venture back firms, if you will. Of course, you’ve been leading BD, you manage a team of 13 all across the country, Cooley is one of the most well-known, most successful firms in the tech space but was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me”?

Carl Grant: Absolutely, Fred. I never sought to go into sales. In fact, as I sit here in front of this microphone, I sought to go into broadcast journalism, that’s what I studied in graduate school and I prepared to have a career in cable television. When I got the phone call from PwC asking me if I wanted to be their first external salesperson I said, “I don’t know about that” until they told me what it was paying and then maybe I said, “Maybe I’ll think about that.” Yes, I have questioned it but it’s something that sought me, I didn’t seek it but now that I’m in it I’ve told my kids if you learn how to sell, there’s always somebody that needs to buy something. You can make a living doing it in good times and bad.

Fred Diamond: Carl, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the junior selling professionals around the globe listening to today’s podcast to help them improve their careers?

Carl Grant: First of all, no one wants to be sold to. People like to buy things from people they know and trust, so the best advice I can give to somebody young getting into this profession is to build a professional network. Build a network of people that could buy from them, could introduce them to the folks that could buy from them. If you could go about developing your sales career without having to make a cold call, you’re going to be more successful.

Fred Diamond: I could give you some props here, I’ve known you for a number of years and you are the quintessential business developer from a networking perspective. You have one of the richest networks and I’m beginning to learn through the course of this conversation – I think I knew this already – it’s because you truly are about helping people achieve what they need to achieve. Working with good people and helping them get to what they need to achieve, so kudos to you for that. Tell us some of the things that you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh.

Carl Grant: If I would have relied on the network that I built 20 years ago of venture capitalists, I would be a failure today because a lot of those folks, some of them have died, some of them have retired, some of them have gotten so rich that they don’t need to do any work anymore so I constantly refresh my network by going out to events and I get on the event planning platform, I find young venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who I don’t know and I set meetings with them. 10 minute meetings, I do speed dating at these conferences.

The last conference I went to, I had probably 25 meetings with young venture capitalists back to back, 10 minute meetings with a 5 minute buffer in case I needed to go to the restroom or something or in went long or somebody was late. I build a lot of new relationships, not only do I do it in person, I use apps.

There’s apps out there that are like online dating apps but they’re for professional networking. In fact, some of the dating apps have developed professional networking functionalities. Using those types of tools to connect with younger people and not rely on the people who were 10, 20 years older than me when I started in this business has helped me stay fresh.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point, I’ve got a quick question for you. Cooley has a pretty good name in this space obviously, it’s one of the most respected and successful law firms but I got to imagine if you’re a young VC or young CEO by calling and saying, “I’m the Cooley guy”, is that going to get you the meeting? If you were calling from Microsoft or IBM obviously people know but do you have the name recognition and if not how do you get those meetings?

Carl Grant: We do have the name recognition in the venture space because we formed a lot of the venture funds, however I never call anybody cold ever. I probably could count on one hand the times I’ve cold emailed somebody, I never do it. I always get introduced to somebody from somebody I know. I never go cold. People who cold call and cold email, they get ignored and rejected. I don’t get ignored and rejected because I come through people they know and trust.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Carl Grant: I’m always trying new things, Fred. In fact, I’m sitting here with you talking on a podcast, these are the types of things that I do because I want to try new things and be in new places, I’ve written a series of articles that I’ve published on LinkedIn. Initially, I was hoping to write a book but books are daunting to do so I broke it up and made it easier on myself and I’ve published a series of articles. I try to do one a month and they’re all about the types of things we’re talking about today, how to be effective at doing these things to they’ve gotten a lot of reads and shares and I’m going to be doing a radio show starting next year that will help me connect with people in new ways.

Fred Diamond: We’ve talked about this over the course of the podcast, sales can be hard. Interestingly, what you’re selling is different than some of the people we’ve interviewed on the show and again you guys have the name recognition and a lot of people need you, the people that you’re doing services for, trying to offer your services to. They really do need world-class services that would be provided by a company like Cooley but sales can be hard. People don’t always return your phone calls or your emails, why have you continued? Through the course of this podcast we’ve gotten some of your passion, we can understand why you enjoy this, we know you’ve been very successful but you said you didn’t want to go into sales originally, you wanted to go into broadcasting. What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Carl Grant: It’s not so much about the sales, Fred. It’s about being able to help people do better in business. I enjoy helping other people. If you’re worried about somebody else’s problems, you don’t have time for your own problems so I like to get my thoughts on what the other person is trying to accomplish, figure out how I can help him or her accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish and use my know-how and my connections to help them be successful. That to me is exciting, it’s exciting to watch a company go from an idea that they brought to you to having the name of their logo on a building driving down the toll road here in northern Virginia. That’s exciting, or to read about their success.

I was talking to a friend of mine who had an exit the other night when they tell me how many millions I’ve made off of their exit. It makes me happy to play a hand in helping them do it and what’s even more exciting is when their spouse comes up to you at a networking event and thanks you profusely, and you can’t even remember what you did that she’s thanking you for. That makes me feel good.

Fred Diamond: Today’s Sales Game Changers podcast we talked to Carl Grant, EVP of business development at Cooley. Carl, you’ve given us a lot of great ideas. We have listeners all around the globe listening to today’s Sales Game Changers podcast, why don’t you give a final thought to inspire our listeners today? 

Carl Grant: As I said earlier that people like to buy from people that they know and if you’re struggling with how do I get to know people, I’m going to tell you that people can connect on very personal levels. I think the deepest personal relationships you can develop with other people are through a religious affiliation, a cultural affiliation or a common mission. If you’re wondering where to start, rather than doing some awkward thing going to the local chamber of commerce join a group that you identify with religiously, culturally or at a shared mission. When I say a shared mission, I think of disease oriented organizations. If you had somebody in your family die of cancer or some other ailment, there are whole organizations and efforts around raising money and trying to stamp out these diseases so try to connect on a deep personal level with people in the business community by getting involved and when you need to reach out to them, you’re reaching out to a friend. You’re not reaching out to a stranger, you’re not making a cold call, you’re reaching out to somebody who you’ve spend hours with working on something that’s important to them.

Fred Diamond: I know you’re involved with a number of things, do you want to mention any that you’re particularly involved with that have helped you grow as a person?

Carl Grant: I’m involved with an organization called the High Tech Prayer Breakfast that I helped start 17 years ago. I didn’t start out doing it for business purposes, I did it for very personal purposes. It was a calling and what I found over the past 17 years that I’ve been doing it is we have 100 or so table hosts that are involved, we have nearly 800 people that come out every year, some of the deepest persona relationships I’ve developed over the years are through that organization and these are not relationships where you go out and you shake somebody’s hand and exchange business cards and try to figure out what you can do for each other. These are people who ask you to pray for their child when they’re in the hospital or bring their deepest things that they’re dealing with in their lives.

I’ve had so many things I feel like I pray sometimes when people come to me and share with me their problems, and these are real relationships. Business happens out of them, but that’s not the reason for the relationships. These are my friends that I’ve been friends with for 17 years now and they happen to be all people who are involved in the technology community, a lot of them are in positions of influence and yes, we do business together but that’s not the driver for those relationships.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 123: Cooley Law Firm’s Biz Dev Chief Carl Grant’s Mission is to Help Technology Leaders Become Amazingly Successful. Here’s How He Does it. first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.