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What key lessons did you learn from your first few sales jobs? 05:30
Who is an impactful sales mentor? 09:48
What are the 2 biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader? 12:25
What is the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career? 20:07
Tell us a little bit about how you sharpen your saw and stay fresh? 22:07
What’s a final thought you can share to inspire our listeners today? 27:35

EPISODE 149: MetTel Federal Partner Chief Wray Varley Said this Helped Him Transition from Sales Ops to Sales Leadership

WRAY’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Be sure to smell the roses along the way. Sales positions can provide a lot of really great experiences for folks, such as travel, sometimes it’s other things, it’s meeting new folks. Be sure you take time to enjoy that. Don’t be so driven to the sale that you miss some of those things.”

Wray Varley is the VP of Systems Integrators & Federal Partners with MetTel.

He also held sales leadership positions at CentryLink, Infinera and Qwest Government Services.

Find Wray on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about what you sell today and give us a little bit of an insight into what excites you about that.

Wray Varley: This could take a while because there are a lot of things that excite me about this position at MetTel. First and foremost, it’s everything that MetTel brings to the market. As a small business, as a competitive local exchange carrier and as a mobile virtual network operator, MetTel just has some incredible flexibility in how we bring IT solutions to our customers. In my case I’m working with obviously the Federal System Integrators and our partners to find those areas where MetTel products and services can provide greater value to their customers while at the same time bringing their capabilities to bear for the solutions that we take back to our customers.

Fred Diamond: We have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe. Tell us, if you don’t mind, what is the role of the Federal Systems Integrator? What do they do? Again, we have people listening all over the place and may not understand that specific role.

Wray Varley: It’s somewhat as the name implies from an integration perspective. Federal integrators are really those companies that do very large complex programs for the government and in some cases industry as well. There’s somebody that takes a solution that requires a number of different solutions, be it network, IT, cloud, bodies, you name it and they’re the ones that have the capability to bring all that together and “integrate” them into a single solution for their customers.

Fred Diamond: Tell us how you first got into sales as a career.

Wray Varley: I spent most of my career in the IT telecom space, actually started in operations at Bell Atlantic and then moved into a staff position where my job was to act as an intermediary between sales and operations, and it was there that I really got to see how sales operated and was a bit fascinated by it. I got to experience what it was to work with customers to create a solution, to meet a need, not just install something and then move onto the next job. I had several of the salespeople I worked with urge me to move into sales, and based on all that I took advantage of a program that allowed operations employees to try their hand at becoming sales professionals. I got through that process and been in sales ever since.

Fred Diamond: Was that a big transition for you? Tell us about that transition.

Wray Varley: It was. Having been operations all of my career prior to that, it was a big transition but it went surprisingly smoothly because I’d gotten into some roles that were quasi-sales-like. As I said, I’d been in this staff position where I was working closely with the sales folk so it wasn’t a cold-turkey, it was a really nice segue into the sales environment.

Fred Diamond: What were some of the lessons that you learned when you made that shift?

Wray Varley: I think one of the first things I learned moving from operations to sales way back when was that it does take patience. There’s a process and it can take time, certainly working with the federal government or working with any really large enterprise sale, those things don’t happen quickly, it’s not transactional. You do have to have patience unlike being out in the field where you do a job and you move onto the next job and you move onto the next job. There is a true process that you have to work through and the key is to just keep that process moving forward throughout the whole time.

Fred Diamond: Have you primarily been in the federal sales space most of your career?

Wray Varley: Pretty much. When I first started in sales coming out of that program, I was on the commercial side for approximately two years and then I was recruited over to the Bell Atlantic federal side to help with a really large program that they had that they had an opening come up for an account manager over there.

Fred Diamond: Let me ask you this question. Again, we have people listening to the podcast all around the globe. Since the Sales Game Changers podcast is based out of Washington DC, a lot of people who we talk to on the podcast are familiar with the federal marketplace but for the people listening in Australia who don’t understand the federal government marketplace, why is it such an attractive marketplace? Again, you’ve devoted seemingly the good part of your career to serving the federal space. Why is that? What is it about that market?

Wray Varley: I think there’s a few things that first attract and then keep people in the federal market. One is as I mentioned, the deals tend to be complex. They can take a while certainly, and that can be sometimes frustrating to the companies who first jump into the federal market and are used to working on the commercial side where things happen more quickly. I think for me personally, part of it has always been the mission that we’re helping serve and I think that runs true to a lot of people that are in the federal space.

It depends on what agencies you work with, I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of agencies where having never, for example, served in the military myself I know some of the things I’ve worked on in the past have truly helped enable saving lives and keeping soldiers safe and things like that. That’s rewarding to me and gives you a lot of pride in what you do when you work in the federal space.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about you, what are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Wray Varley: Brilliance and expert? I don’t know that I would necessarily consider myself either, but there are some things that I believe I do pretty well that have certainly helped get me to where I am over these many years. The main thing is I think I’ve always had an ability to build strong relationships with customers and I think this goes back to not really being a salesperson. When I first got into sales coming out of operations I actually would mention that and use that, it gave me a level of credibility sometimes with customers because I wasn’t a “sales” guy – for people on the podcast, I’m using air quotes around sales, there.

I think it’s real key in what I’ve been able to do is just be down to earth and create those strong bonds. I’ve got customers who I worked with 20 years ago or more who may be retired, or they’ve moved on to different industries that I don’t necessarily address anymore but we still stay in touch. I think it’s that level of relationship that you build that makes a big difference, there’s an old saying that you buy from people that you like, I tend to think that’s true. While certainly you need to be able to bring the right solution at a competitive price, I think when there’s a pre-established relationship there where somebody knows they can trust you and you’re not going to steer them the wrong way, that can be a great tie-breaker when it all comes down to deciding on a deal.

Fred Diamond: A lot of people we’ve interviewed on the Sales Game Changers podcast, especially who’ve had a nice, long journey in sales, a lot of success, there’s been some mentors along the way. There’s been some people that have really provided critical guidance. Why don’t you tell us a story about an impactful sales career mentor and how they impacted your career?

Wray Varley: I’ve been very lucky, I’ve worked with a number of managers who have been great mentors. Some of my mentors are people who actually grew up within the business, there’s folks like Dave Peed at Equinix Federal, Ken Folderauer at Comcast Federal, Rob DiRocco at Asurion and actually I know Rob did one of your podcasts. We grew up together at times, we were peers together at various times, I’ve worked for any one of those three gentlemen and it’s great to have that network as we’ve grown in the industry to share ideas and challenges with.

That’s a base, but I’d say the one person who’s certainly had the most impact on my career is Diana Gowen. Diana is currently the GM and SVP of MetTel Federal which actually was one of the other reasons why it was so exciting for me to go to MetTel. Diana is somewhat of an icon in the federal telecom space based on all she’s accomplished over her career. I first met and started working for Diana when she took over as the head, the GM and SVP of Qwest Government Services in I guess about 2005. Under Diana’s leadership and coaching I progressed from being a sales manager to a sales director to an AVP and when I left Century Link and went to Infinera to start a government group there, Diana was one of the first people I asked to be on my advisory board there based on all she could do.

I think the reason she’s been so valuable to me is she always pushes and challenges people to do their best which is not unique, a lot of good leaders do that but Diana is certainly one who would never ask anybody to do anything that she probably hasn’t already done herself a few times or wouldn’t be willing to do if that’s what it took. She’s always there to help if needed and she’s just a walking reference library when it comes to things in the federal IT space. You always have to be prepared, I learned early on to do a lot of homework because you’re going to think you’re going to answer every question she has and she’ll still come at it with something you hadn’t thought of. In that regard, she’s been a tremendous mentor for me.

Fred Diamond: Wray, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Wray Varley: I think the easy answer is finding the right people. As I said, I’ve listened to a number of podcasts and that comes up but it’s a competitive market and I think that’s actually a ubiquitous problem. It’s not really a sales leader problem, it’s an everybody problem so if I’m thinking more from a sales leader challenge. To me one of the challenges that I believe has become more prevalent today and has become more prevalent over the last maybe decade or so is trying to balance this near term quota pressure that you have with having some long-term planning capabilities.

So many sales companies and their sales channels today have so much pressure to sell today, and that can tend to limit sales professionals from having the ability to focus on building those long-term funnels. Sooner or later that catches up to you, if everything is 30 or 60 day you can’t succeed long-term because somebody else is going to be taking the time to plan and frame and position things down the road. I think as sales leaders, what we need to do is be able to provide some level of air cover for your team’s requirements to do both. Certainly you need to close the near term things to keep the lights on and the bills paid, but if you’re really looking long-term you need to have an element of that long-term planning.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career you’re most proud of?

Wray Varley: When you’ve hit this point it’s hard to necessarily remember all of them or even rank them. I’d say one of the most common things, quite honestly, about that question is I don’t think there’s any single sales person who’s responsible for a sale to large extent. One of the things I really believe in is the most common aspect of any sale is you have a lot of people pulling in the same direction to make it happen.

There’s probably two that come to mind and interestingly enough, the first sale is one that occurred before I was even in sales. When I was an insulation supervisor back at Bell Atlantic many moons ago, my manager and I had an idea to try and convince the Bethesda Naval Hospital to allow my team to do all of the new wiring that was going to be required during a big renovation they were going to undertake and this was right after divestiture. All that work at that time simply defaulted to AT&T after divestiture.

To keep a long story short, I was able to convince the customer at the hospital to not simply just give that work to AT&T but provide us an ability to bid on it and we actually won it. I don’t really recall the value per se, but it was a pretty significant sale especially because it came out of the operations organization. I think the most significant part of it is I suppose that’s probably the moment that really got me thinking more about, “Sales can be a real cool thing to do.”

Fred Diamond: How big of a deal was that?

Wray Varley: Again, I don’t remember the total value but it was totally rewiring the entire Bethesda Naval Hospital tower which was under renovation, an iconic tower right there on Rockville Pike and Bethesda across from NIH. Another success that’s more recent had to do with when I was at Century Link, I had the ability to restructure my team. I had special programs, law enforcement, NDHS as a vertical and I was able to carve out a team that would focus exclusively on some of the cyber security programs that were being developed with NDHS. To do that, I recruited one of our best sales engineers to come over and be a sales lead because I knew it would require an account manager with a lot of technical acumen. Ultimately, to pull that together, this became one of our fastest growing accounts in CenturyLink company much less Century Link Federal for a couple years.

Again, something like that with a lot of people involved, actually that was something where Diana, speaking of cover, we were essentially creating a product out of some skunk works that had taken place earlier on and Diana helped us with that as far as providing us the ability to do our job within the corporation.

Fred Diamond: You’ve managed teams, now you’re managing the Systems Integrators and the Partner Network for MetTel. Did you ever question being in sales? Did you ever think to yourself, “I should have stayed in operations. It’s a little too hard, I never should have made the move”?

Wray Varley: I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it as being too hard. There’s certainly been some times of frustration due to maybe a sales taking longer than anticipated or possibly not happening at all. I think anyone who’s been in sales for any period of time is probably lying a little bit if they haven’t had some of those moments. Ultimately, it’s such a great profession to be in because there’s always something new happening. I don’t think you can ever get bored as a salesperson, especially if you’re working in a space where it’s large enterprise, federal government.

Quite frankly, at this time in our history almost anywhere because it’s an age where technology is always changing and that technology provides new challenges for customers and at the same time provides new solutions for customers. In that regard, it’s one of the more exciting jobs I think you can have. If you do get a little frustrated, it only takes that next good customer meeting or lead or sale that just sucks you right back into it. It’s rewarding but from a personal perspective when you see something come to fruition in a deal and obviously at times it can be financially rewarding as well.

Fred Diamond: Are you having fun?

Wray Varley: Absolutely. Where I am right now at MetTel, this is some of the most fun I’ve had so far with what we have to offer.

Fred Diamond: Nice career journey, it’s always fun to be at a good place where things are going well. Are you working for Diana right now?

Wray Varley: I am.

Fred Diamond: Wray, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the junior selling professionals around the globe who are listening to today’s podcast?

Wray Varley: I’ve alluded to this a couple times already, Fred, is that in my perspective sales is a team sport. The most successful salespeople aren’t lone rangers out there running around just doing their own thing. I think we can acknowledge that there are instances when a big sale may happen because someone essentially ramrodded a deal through a process on the customer’s side or internally, but I think more often than not that only creates problems and ultimately can even create some resentment. You may be able to do that once, but I don’t think it’s a really long-term way to do it.

What I tell people as they start to come through sales is every deal usually includes two sales. You have to sell to the customer and that’s only half the battle, and sometimes that’s the easiest battle. I really encourage people to build the rapport within their organizations, within their support structures because ultimately you’re going to need their help to A) make the sale and more importantly, get whatever it is implemented, installed and make for a sticky and successful customer experience that will then turn into much more of a long-term relationship.

Fred Diamond: How long has MetTel been around?

Wray Varley: MetTel themselves have been around since 1996, they actually came to being with the Telecom Act of ’96 when c-lex really were able to come to bear because it opened up the market to a lot more competition. They’ve done a really cool job as a small company, they’ve actually utilized a lot of automation and virtualization both for our sales and for our customers. That’s one of the exciting things about being there, some of these new virtualized and automated technologies and solutions that we’re bringing to the government.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Wray Varley: I think one of the things that I do and what I encourage people to do is you do need to look for new challenges every so often so that you don’t get too comfortable where you are. For example, the year I left Century Link I was actually the top ranked AVP in the company that year, but I’d been in that role for about 7 years and I had the opportunity to go do something a little bit different – actually, a lot different to a certain extent. I went from a carrier to a manufacturer, still sales but it was to actually create a government sales organization. That provided me with a lot of new challenges and a lot of new opportunities to learn, it was a great growth opportunity moving from one side to the other.

I did learn a lot there and expanded my personal network. I wouldn’t suggest that everyone go out and change companies all the time, but I do think that you need to look for new opportunities to take on new challenges, even in the same company maybe taking on a new customer base after a few years to keep things fresh. I think if you stay in a role too long and if you start to get successful, you just don’t want to get complacent and sometimes that can happen. Another thing I try to do is attend as many industry conferences as possible. Those are great opportunities to see people outside their office environment, it’s rare that you have any shattering information revealed at them, but the networking opportunities both with your customer base, be they industry or government and your industry peer levels, it’s great for that. Again, to give you an unsolicited plug, I think doing things like listening to podcasts like this is great. As I said, I’ve listened to a number of them and have taken a nugget out of each one.

Fred Diamond: We’ve done 130 so far so you have a little bit to go, but I appreciate you saying that. Wray, why don’t you tell us a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Wray Varley: I’ve only actually been at MetTel since late October, so my major initiative at this point is to really get with as many system integrators and federal OEM service providers as possible. Since MetTel is a relatively new member of the government contracting community, we still need to build our brand recognition certainly being a GSA EIS awardee and also having Diana at the helm, have provided a lot of credibility and recognition for us. More importantly, I always feel like you need to build brand relevance in addition to brand recognition. I don’t want people to just say something like, “MetTel, I’ve heard of them.”

That’s a great start, but what we really need to get to is a point where people say, “MetTel, I’ve heard good things about them, they’re one of the GSA EIS awardees, they have some transformational solutions around SD, WAN, mobility and communications portal.” That actually resonates with them and they know who we are.

Fred Diamond: Again, today’s Sales Game Changers podcast we talked to Wray Varley, VP of Systems Integrators & Federal Partners at MetTel, he’s given us a lot of great insights. I like what you just said a few moments ago about pushing your boundaries, try something new, taking on a new customer, going after a new vertical marketplace as well. It’s interesting also, you’ve had a 7 year run there with Century Link, you said?

Wray Varley: I was actually at Century Link for almost 14 years total, but that last role I was in for about 7 years.

Fred Diamond: You were the top AVP at the time, you left to go on for something new. I applaud you for doing that, but a lot of people who are out there think that sales is really hard. People don’t return your phone calls, they think they don’t need to know anything from the sales professionals anymore because everything’s up on the internet and social media, etcetera but you’ve been in this for a while now. Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Wray Varley: I think one aspect which I already mentioned is that it never becomes boring or monotonous. There’s always something new and different to take on either from a customer perspective or technology perspective. You can sometimes even create that if you need to, if you feel like things are going a little bit stale. While I’m actually secretly a bit of an introvert, the thing that I enjoy most is the interaction with customers. I think you’ve heard this probably from numerous other folks on the podcast that as you rise up through the ranks in a sales career, often times your ability to meet with customers goes down in direct correlation to how you go up. I think that’s what most salespeople really enjoy the most, is the interaction with customers. As I said, I’ve got friends that were customers from 20 years ago. That’s what keeps me going, is knowing that there are new customers out there that I can help, new people to meet and again, I’m working for a really exciting company right now that’s the icing on the cake.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire the listeners today?

Wray Varley: I will definitely do my best to try and do that. One thing is I want to encourage anybody who’s interested in a sales career or who’s already there. Keep going, follow your dream whatever that is but sales can be such a great career. It can be very fulfilling certainly from a personal growth perspective and from a financial perspective. Understand that there are going to be peaks and valleys, that’s inherent in the job and you really shouldn’t let either of those scenarios have too much of an emotional impact on you. You need to stay somewhat steady and believe in the process, keep moving forward with things.

The other key point that I would ask people to do or suggest that they do is to also just be sure to smell the roses along the way. Sales positions can provide a lot of really great experiences for folks, sometimes it’s travel, sometimes it’s other things, it’s meeting new folks. Be sure you take time to enjoy that, don’t be so driven to the sale that you miss some of those things. I think that’s something that’s come with time for me and probably a number of other folks as you’ve been through the process and you get a little bit older. You reflect, and I think that’s something that we really need to focus on.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us an example of that?

Wray Varley: I’ve had the ability, based on some of the customers I’ve had at some of my different companies, to do some travel. I got to go to Australia, for example, for one company when I was trying to work with the Australian DOD. It was such a cool experience and I was able to take a little bit of an extra day even on my own time to be down there and just experience the culture. It was a place that I always wanted to go, and I think there are certain instances where things like that happen that you really need to do it. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with your family, too. I think that’s a really important thing, to have that balance.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 149: MetTel Federal Partner Chief Wray Varley Said this Helped Him Transition from Sales Ops to Sales Leadership first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 045: Asurion Sales Leader Rob DiRocco Helps the World’s Leading Brands Support the Tech that Keeps You Connected

Rob DiRocco is the Senior VP and General Manager of Retail Solutions at Asurion, the global leader in technology protection and support sold to the top retailers, manufacturers and carriers. Rob has overall responsibility for growing and managing the retail and manufacturing business including all aspects of sales to drive growth for their client partners.

Rob and his team helped top brands such as Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon sell services that support their sale of technology enabled products to consumers. Prior to Asurion, Rob spent almost 5 years leading sales and marketing at mindSHIFT Technologies which provided cloud based IT management to small and medium sized businesses. He started his career in Federal Sales at Bell Atlantic.

He received an undergraduate degree in finance and marketing from Virginia Tech, and an MBA in finance from George Washington University.

Find Rob on LinkedIN!

Rob DiRocco: Fred, first, let me thank you for the opportunity today to talk to you. I’ve got to tell you, I think your podcast is phenomenal, one of the things I’ll talk about later is I’m a big believer in continuous education and self-study and I can think of no better way than things like podcasts and you’ve had some phenomenal leaders on yours so a lot of great insights there for everyone that listens to them. I live in Vienna, VA and a fun fact my wife is the mayor of Vienna so I’m definitely involved a lot in local Vienna activities and things around the area.

Asurion’s based in Nashville. I have a broad responsibility for the P&L of this business but I always say at heart I’m a sales person and so sales is certainly the biggest thing that I oversee, and I always tell people if you cut me open you’ll see a sales person’s DNA inside through and through. Thrilled to talk today about sales and all the things associated with it and see if I can help share some advice that’s helped me over the years.

Fred Diamond: Rob, what do you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Rob DiRocco: Asurion provides technology support and customer service to consumers but we do it under the brand name of the leading retailers, manufacturers and telecom providers, some of the people that you referenced early on. We help them sell and support the technology enabled products and services that they offer to their customers and so we are the brand behind the brands.

A lot of people don’t know Asurion by name and that’s by choice because we’re really focused on promoting our client’s brand but we actually have 300 million active consumer contracts that we are managing on behalf of those clients so we have a very big private business that we run on behalf of our clients and support them.

And what excites me is that we provide a great service and there’s a high need for it. With all the advancements that we all see in connected products and smart home and internet things, all of that is fantastic but people need more help than ever in interconnecting those devices and getting the most out of their technology and we’re great at this. We have a big focus on customer experience and our net promoter scores are industry leading. What excites me as a sales leader is that we have a product that I believe in, that I know is great, and there’s a high need for it.

Fred Diamond: You definitely represent some of those great brands. You mentioned in your introduction about your DNA that you’re really a sales guy. How did you first get into sales? Tell us a little bit about your entry point into the career.

Rob DiRocco: As you noted early on, my undergraduate was at Virginia Tech and I was a finance and marketing major, that was a double major there. If you’d ask me in college, sales was not even on my radar, something that I wanted to do. I wanted to work in finance or I wanted to work in marketing, I had internships in both of those over the years.

It was not uncommon for big companies like Xerox or Procter and Gamble or IBM, companies that had very strong sales acumen to come onto a campus like Virginia Tech and ask who the student leaders were and then they would actually pursue them directly for sales positions. So I wasn’t looking for sales roles but I started getting solicited and then offers for these great sales positions at some really established companies that I thought a lot of, and it kind of opened my eyes to that as a career that I hadn’t really thought before.

I started thinking of a different lane and I eventually accepted an offer with Bell Atlantic which became Verizon predominantly because they were based in DC area where I was, and they had a great training program out of college. So I thought they had great training, it was in the area that I liked, got to handle large federal clients right away once you got through that training so for all those reasons I was drawn towards that and I really ended up making a great choice.

Fred Diamond: Curiously you mentioned you were a campus leader. How were you a campus leader at Virginia Tech, what did you do?

Rob DiRocco: I was the president of an organization called the Student Alumni Associates. It was about 300 people that supported things like campus tours and various fundraising programs for the school. I was president of my fraternity and chaired the Danceathon we had every year so I just did a lot of things like that. A little fun fact – I was the Greek man of the year.

Fred Diamond: Very good. So you mentioned your first real job in sales was with Bell Atlantic which eventually became Verizon. Tell us, Rob, some of the key lessons you learned from some of your first few jobs in sales.

Rob DiRocco: I will tell you first I was blessed to have a great first boss that I worked for, a guy named Bill McKinney. Bill was just a great coach, great person and a great person to learn from right out of college especially. And there are three things that always stuck out for me, two from Bill and just one from the position as a whole.

One is Bill was an early bird so I got in the habit really early of getting in the office early and planning out my day and that’s something that has stuck with me the whole career. The second thing is I learned is really knowing your product and your service well and knowing your client really well and the industry that you operate in. At the time that for me that was the federal space and I put in a lot of energy and learned a lot about preparing well to know that client extremely well to be successful in working with them.

And then the third one was patient but steady pursuit. That comes as a byproduct of selling to the federal government and what I was selling at Verizon had a long sell cycle. It was a high dollar sale and so one of the things you learn was you’re not going to have a quick sale. A lot of times it was going to be a long sale cycle and you had to patiently work through it but you had to advance the sale so you had to do things to continue to create momentum and move your sale forward even though you knew it was going to be a long sale cycle. So those are three things that always stood out to me that I’ve carried forward.

Fred Diamond: Early bird and getting to the office early, know your product and your services well and your client, and I liked the last one, patient but steady pursuit. It’s a marathon, most of the people I’m interviewing – as a matter of fact all the people I’m interviewing as part of the Sales Game Changers podcast have been in 20, 30 year careers, have lots of great lessons learned along the way and here they are 20, 30 years into their career at a very high level of success. You have to have had that patient but steady pursuit.

Rob DiRocco: That’s right, exactly. That’s a great summary.

Fred Diamond: So tell us more about you specifically. Rob DiRocco, what specifically are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance. 

Rob DiRocco: I hate to disappoint your listeners, I don’t know that I’d say I’m an expert in anything. What I would say is I’m an expert in knowing what I’m good at and leveraging that, and knowing what it is that I need. I work with the great people on my team or great people to work with in adjacent roles to plan a parallel path together and leverage each other’s strengths.

What I’ve learned over the years – and I think that’s important for anyone to really understand what they’re good at and what it is that is something they can improve a little bit but they’re going to always need someone else as a compliment to help them in terms of rounding out their skills – but for me, personally, I’ve always been extremely organized. I’ve always worked on my communication skills so that’s something that I’ve always learned to leverage in building relationship with clients as well as internally. I have always been a fairly decisive person which in running a business unit is something I find is very important to be able to get the facts and make a decision to move forward one way or the other in a direction.

And I’ve always been a very resilient person, that’s something that I’ll talk about I’m sure over the course of this podcast, but that’s an important skill to me and one that I know how to reset myself. So we all have a bad day, a bad meeting, what have you, I know how to reset myself. And the last one is I like to infuse humor. People that I work with would say that we have fun, we laugh and you have to, you have to see the humor in things and be able to enjoy yourselves in working with your peers to make the day one that flies through.

Fred Diamond: Well let’s touch back on that resiliency thing because it struck me as interesting. Tell us a little more about that, what do you mean and what are some of the things you specifically do – you mentioned – to reset yourself?

Rob DiRocco: Yeah. That’s something that over the years I have really worked on and I have a very specific set of ten things that I do every single day, so I have a checklist. So for me I always get up at 5am unless I’m travelling and something changes that. I will always pray, I will always read a verse of the bible, I will always do a little brainstorming in a journal, I will always work out, I will always meditate and then I will always listen to something positive, podcast, something. Whether that’s when I’m working out or I’m coming to the office, depends on what I’m doing that day from a workout perspective but I will always do those things in the morning.

And then at the end of the day I’ll always plan out my next day. So I plan out my week on Sundays and I plan out my next day every evening, and I find that set of things is for me a grounding mechanism and particularly the things I do in the morning. I always start my day productive because I always do those things before my work day even starts and so you almost feel like you already accomplished a lot before the day even begins. For me if something’s bad one day, by the next day when I do that reset, I’m good to go.

Fred Diamond: That is powerful. One thing that I’ve seen over the last year is the whole concept of morning ritual. It has become such a huge thing. Do you follow Tim Ferris at all?

Rob DiRocco: I know exactly, the four hour work week, yes. I’ve listened to his stuff before and I’ve read his books, yes.

Fred Diamond: He’s a student on morning rituals and those are things that you do to keep grounded so that’s impactful. You talked about your first boss, but tell us who was an impactful sales career mentor and how specifically did they impact your career?

Rob DiRocco: The other one that would stick out for me over the last 12 years is Tony Nader. Tony Nader for those who don’t know him was the CEO of NEW, NEW was the company that I worked for originally that got acquired by Asurion. Tony is just an exceptional person. He is the CEO of the Inova Board of Trustees and he now runs an investment firm, SWaN, plus he’s on a bunch of different boards. But what I learned from Tony is number one, having incredible balance. Someone that really stresses balancing business, family, his faith, philanthropy and really stresses that. When he was here as a CEO he always really encouraged people to find that balance and to make sure that they go to their kid’s soccer games, for example. That’s really important but then also did the right things that you do in the business side.

The second one, he is incredible at preparing. He’s a very diligent preparer for a meeting, anything important so I’ve learned a lot from him about how you prepare for an important client meeting or anything you have going on. And then the third one is he couldn’t be more respectful to everyone he meets. I don’t care who they are, what level they are, he’s always interested in them and it’s genuine interest and knows about them, knows about their family and just a genuine person. So I’ve gotten a lot out of observing him over the years and the personal coaching he’s given me.

Fred Diamond: That is great. Rob, I’m going to take you a little bit off course here for a second, because I want to go back to the introduction when we mentioned companies like Walmart, Amazon and Home Depot. For a lot of the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast, they’re striving to work with some of the big companies in the world. I’m going to take a little short detour if you don’t mind. Can you give us some insights into how you work with some of the largest companies in the world like that? What are some of the things that you’ve had to think about as you pursue companies like that from a sales perspective?

Rob DiRocco: Great question, Fred. I would say, I don’t know that it’s any different dealing with a Walmart or an Amazon as it is dealing with a large federal agency or other type of commercial entity. What I find – and some of the principles that I believe in that apply to this – is #1 you have to know your client really well. We spend a lot of time understanding what’s important to our client, understanding their buying structure, who the key decision makers are, all the things you need to do in selling into a very large organization, and when you’re selling into a large organization it’s not one decision maker, not one buyer. There are multiple people, it’s a very complex sale so you have to understand all of that, and you have to understand the arena that they’re working in.

So for us right now, it’s understanding what’s going on in retail, the dynamics of it. How that affects their business and then most importantly, how can we help them to be successful in their arena. It’s paying attention to those kinds of things. And then I also would say for us, we work hard to treat every client differently. I have two clients in sporting goods.  They are both sporting goods retailers, but I can tell you that the way they operate, their cultures, very different and so we ended up having programs that were very unique for them and how we work with them were very unique because they view their marketplace differently. So understanding what’s unique about your client is really important.

Fred Diamond: That’s powerful. So let’s talk about some of the challenges that you face today as a sales leader. Rob, tell us the two biggest challenges you face as a sales leader today.

Rob DiRocco: The two biggest challenges we face as a business and it affects very much on the sales side relates to what I just talked about a little bit which is, retailers first of all, some of them have really struggled the last year. So I mentioned Sports Authority, that was a very big client for us and they went out of business. Now, we can’t control the fact that they went out of business and there’s lots of things that go into that but as a sales person and as an organization we have to find a way to make up that revenue, right? So we have a number to hit and we want to grow our business and so you end up saying, “OK, what am I going to do to compensate for this fact that I can’t control this client going out of business but can I grow other clients, can I bring in some new business?”

So it’s the team looking and saying, “How do we adjust our business model to recognize that this thing outside of our control has happened that impacts our business model?”

The second one is everyone knows that retailers are more and more looking at digital channels so whether that be selling online to apps and different mediums and so we’ve certainly had to adjust our business to make sure that we are a leader there. And that meant we’ve had to add staff that had expertise there but it also means everybody has to raise their knowledge and awareness of working in an Omni-channel world. So those two things are things that we’ve really had to adjust our business for and focus on to be successful.

Fred Diamond: Rob, you’ve had a great career to this point and you’re going to continue having a great career, but tell us the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud us. Rob, take us back to that moment.

Rob DiRocco: Picking out a #1 is hard, I don’t know if I have a clear #1 but what I would tell you is you always remember your first big sale. For me that first big sale was NASA, when I worked at Verizon that was one of the accounts I had early on and it stuck out for me, so it was a first big sale I had. It was an integrated voice and data network that we sold to them, it was several million dollars, long sale cycle.

What really stuck out to me: #1 they were a great client. I really liked working with them, it was an agency that I had a great passion for what they did and I believed in what their mission was and so first and foremost I genuinely felt pride in helping them advance that mission with what we were doing.

Number 2, in having a long sale cycle, lots of competition on the particular business that we went after there had to do a lot of learning and adjusting our stealth strategy and how again you advance the sales I talked about earlier over a very long window in dealing with multiple decision makers.

And then the third thing that stuck out was that was by no means just my sale. That was very much a very large team sale and so a lot of people were involved and you had to really work collaboratively and I remember feeling a lot of pride and again excitement as a team when we not just closed that sale per se but actually implemented it and it was working really well and the client was really happy and that was a great feeling. So it’s something that I’ve carried forward all these years, is how do you adjust your sales approach and then the joy you have in working in team environment. I find that the most fun kind of selling is when you’re working with a cross-functional team and you’re working together to make it happen. There’s a lot of joy in that.

Fred Diamond: So Rob, you’ve had a great career in sales. Did you ever question being in sales? Now again you started off as a finance major. Did you ever question in being in sales, was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me?”

Rob DiRocco: The short answer is no, honestly. I’ve always really enjoyed sales. I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of it and the rewards of it. Now, having said that what I would say is that some point I certainly wanted to move up into sales leadership which I got the opportunity to do at Verizon which is great and then I’ve been able to maintain that throughout my career. And then at some point I started wanting to run other functional disciplines as well, marketing and product and operational things and so again I’ve had those opportunities.

So for me, I’ve been able to move my career but always maintain that sales base, sales is still very much the most important thing that I focus on but I would say that I’ve never thought, “I don’t know if I really enjoy the sales part of it.” That’s actually been the part that I enjoy the most, even when I’ve had these other disciplines and responsibilities. At the end of the day I leverage and lean on my sales experience and I really enjoy that the most at the end of the day. I’m happiest going out and seeing clients and working with clients.

Fred Diamond: Rob, what is the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals listening to today’s podcast to help them improve their career?

Rob DiRocco: There’s 3 things that I think are really important for anyone in sales and things that I would stress to anyone who wants to really get better and better at it.

One is your work ethic. I always say I would never want to lose because someone out-worked me, so you always want to know that you absolutely put everything you could into winning that sale and to working with that client. So work ethic’s important and never feeling like you’re going to let anyone else out-work you.

Number 2, and I talked about it earlier, but you have to be an expert in your customer. You have to really know their buying organization, the people involved, the processes, what’s important to them, how your product and service can really truly help them but you have to really be an expert in that, and if you’re someone that doesn’t have a set client list, maybe you have an industry. You have to know that industry and what’s important in that, so you’d have to really know the arena that you’re operating in and be an expert in it.

And then the third one is resilience, we talked about a little bit earlier but you’re going to get no’s, you’re in sales. You’re going to have bad days, you’re going to have a bad meeting, you’re going to have a bad presentation and you have to figure out how you reset yourself so it doesn’t carry forward. I like sports analogies and it’s a quarterback in football that gets beat for a touchdown or a quarterback that throws an interception and any of those scenarios they have to be able to bounce back the very next play, right? And so it’s no different in sales. You have to figure out how you can’t ever let one bad day become two bad days.

Fred Diamond: That’s interesting. What are some of the things that you do specifically to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Rob DiRocco: I talked about the routine that I follow, that’s really a big thing for me. What I would say my number onething I would say is exercise. I always tell my kids this, too. It’s like whenever you have a bad day, a bad meeting, whatever, to me nothing recharges me like exercise. It completely changes your perspective and gets you out of your head. The only other thing I would say is I’m big at thinking through if something’s challenging on whether it be with a client or something internally, whatever it is, then I’ll often take a step back and say, “OK, let me brainstorm some of the things that can be done to action on this.”

And so that helps me so that it’s not something that feels outside my control, that I can give myself back some control of, “OK, what can I control here?” or “Here’s some ideas I have, I’m going to take some action on a couple of them.” And that always sort of gives me energy again to sort of deal with whatever the challenge is.

Fred Diamond: So you’ve mentioned routines a couple of time. Just curiously, on your exercise, tell us what you do. What is your exercise routine? What are some of the things that you do?

Rob DiRocco: I mix it up, I have a pretty good gym at home but I also belong to Lifetime. But I’ll do yoga, I’ll run, I’ll lift weights, I’ll do a P90X, I’ll do Stairmaster, I mix it up. My biggest routine is I don’t have a set routine, I constantly change it up.

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

Rob DiRocco: I talked about how with our clients one of their big challenges is being more digital so for retailers in particular they want to be more in a digital arena whether that be online or app-based or other kinds of channels for sales and service and so. For us, that’s a really big focus. It was a big focus this year and it’s a big focus of ours next year, is really making sure that we are leading in that category both in how you sell services online but as importantly how you service consumers online and meet them at the way that they want to be serviced whether that be through an application, through a website, through a portal, different means to be able to do that but really focusing on that digital environment and making sure we’re leaders in it.

Fred Diamond: Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that keeps you going?

Rob DiRocco: Well sales certainly offers financial rewards if someone does well in sales there’s often great upside potential there, so along with the challenges you get a little higher reward from it. And the second one I think there’s a reward that is a great satisfaction, when you do sell something new into a client and you get it implemented and the client loves it, that is a really rewarding feeling so to me the financial and that personal sort of satisfaction you get.

Those two things are often what drives me, and then I think how you deal with it is you have to view sales as a process and you’re going to get no’s and that’s your way of giving you a sign you have to make some refinements to your approach and figure out a different way to go at things and sometimes the timing thing. I can tell you as a general manager of a business unit, I get someone soliciting me every day, multiple people. And I can’t literally return every phone call, I couldn’t, I would spend all of my time doing that so I tend to look at the ones that really are meeting a need that I’m adjusting in that very moment and I might put them in a folder say for later if they’re intriguing to me and some of it’s timing. So you have to view it as the no’s are some of the process, you just have to keep working at it and know that some of it’s timing.

Fred Diamond: Rob, give us one final thought. What’s a final thought you would like to share to Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast?

Rob DiRocco: I think the only thing we haven’t talked about is I think it’s really important to teach yourself to see threats or challenges as opportunities and it’s something that I genuinely think you have to teach yourself to do and I’ve learned over the years. But we’re all going to face challenges whether it’s a sales situation or other things in your life and one of the things I often do is I’ll take a step back and say, “What good can come out of this and how can I look at this differently so this is actually an opportunity for me or for the business?”

And I think that’s a really important different perspective that has helped me a lot over the years. I also find if I then brainstorm sort of again solutions I could use to tackle that, I talked about it earlier. But I always feel like there’s a counter move so if you always have that mindset there’s always something, some action you can take to address that challenge and I think you can go a long way.

And the last one is to feel 100% accountable so even though I talked about situations like a client going out of business, it’s outside of your control, at the end of the day I’m a big believer in being accountable for your results and your success and dealing with your challenges and so you have to take that 100% accountability and figure out another way around your problem. So those are the things that really stick out for me that I try and stress to my own life.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 045: Asurion Sales Leader Rob DiRocco Helps the World’s Leading Brands Support the Tech that Keeps You Connected first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.