Making a difference with your talent and sales approach with Steven Schmidt, CEO/Founder of TIDAL Consulting

Brad Seaman: [00:00:00] Sure from the beginning. So tell me a little bit about how you got to where you’re at today.

Steven Schmidt: [00:00:07] Yeah, so I think, you know, how I got to where I got here today. It’s it’s a great question. You know, I like a lot of people in sales, Brad, I think for me, it’s, it’s been a journey, a lot of trials and tribulations success, successes and errors.

And how I got here is I think after two decades of looking at how sales are, are formulated from the first inception. A cold call to the end result being a signed agreement, I should say, sign agreement, a happy lifelong customer. Looking at that journey always led to one thing was the constant problem.

Most problematic area. Pardon me was always at the top of funnel. I’m not known yet a single company that said I’ve had too much top of funnel. I wish I had less. And that’s how I got really good. About 10 years ago, I had a lot of people who train me to hack my way into the top of funnel. The only secret I’ve learned was being a little bit smart and.

And so I think by seeing that work over and over again and seeing the continued need for that, it allowed me to say, Hey, if I’m going to focus on anything as a company, it’s going to be something I’m passionate about. Some, I love some, I can make the world better by doing better. And so here we are now 28 strong with employee head count here at title.

Brad Seaman: [00:01:15] Awesome. Well, tell me a little bit about through people that are listening. Talk a little bit about title and what you guys do.

Steven Schmidt: [00:01:21] So title in the most easy, the easiest way to say it is title is a top of funnel service today. So 25% of our book does full cycle. We have 22 active customers, but we, you know, talent, talent before tech.

We pay our people about 30% above market brand because we, we believe that tech aiming at tech, right? You just got, have money spend on it. Now you got to people to make it work, but you have pay once you connect a conversation brand with a seed level or decision. I believe that unless you’re capable of having that conversation in a very human way, in a curious way, it’s not going to ever result in a, a meeting.

They probably just won’t show. So that that’s ultimately what we do. And we do that 24 7.

Brad Seaman: [00:02:01] So, you know, the one thing that you said there is that you pay 30% over. Market value for the guys I assume, pursuing that was a lot of towards the individual setting the meetings. Yeah. There was a podcast that I listened to.

And as a founder, you’ll probably like it. If you don’t already listen to it, it’s called the, the founders podcast by a guy named Dave. Have you heard, have you listened to it? Oh yeah. By a guy named David Sandra. So he basically takes a book. Hopefully someday we’ll have him on the podcast, but he takes a book of a famous.

Our entrepreneur and he breaks the book down kind of, it’s less about the biography or the storyline. It’s more about the principles that get pulled out. And I was listening to trader Joe’s story and he talked about in the, in the grocery business, how they paid above market value for all of their employees and how most people see pay for top talent as a liability, not as an asset, but him trader Joe and guys like David.

All believe that paying for a talent’s hard to find and you should pay for it when you get it. Yeah.

Steven Schmidt: [00:03:02] Yeah. I agree with, I agree with that sentiment a lot. I mean, I’ve done it the other way around and I’ve, I’ve seen it not work. And when you, you do it this way, there’s no guarantee. I mean, a lot of people brand the interesting part is they’re not motivated by money, but yet they still wanna make.

You know, so maybe they’re not chasing that inevitable carrot that most salespeople aren’t. I always say if you’re the sales business business, and you’re not motivated by money, like that’s just weird to me. Like that’s.

Brad Seaman: [00:03:27] Yeah. I mean, I think, well, I think you brought up a really good point there that there’s a lot of people that aren’t motivated by money, but they still want to make good money.

I think that’s a good, I think that’s a good line. There’s a lot of things that can motivate you, right? Yeah. I always

Steven Schmidt: [00:03:38] say, I said the last person that said that I said, great, you just got a 20% pay reduction. They looked at me like I was crazy. I said, no, You’re motivated by not having it. So therefore you’re motivated by

Brad Seaman: [00:03:47] happiness and sales.

You know, that part of that is how you keep score. Right? So you’re going to find, I think typically you’re going to find people that are score motivated and the way that you keep score is you keep, keep track of your paycheck and your commission check. Because I think most salespeople, most salespeople, you know, are value motivated.

I want to know that I’m bringing value to my client. There’s there is a subset of people. Takers, not givers, but I think most salespeople are givers and they, they want to be able to track the value that they give the client.

Steven Schmidt: [00:04:20] Yeah. That, that has its own currency. Right. Is that sort of worth feeling, feeling of value to your point?

That’s the chunk that I see missing when people aren’t motivated by money. The next thing is, I want to know I’m making a deal. Yup. I want to know have an impact.

Brad Seaman: [00:04:35] Yeah. So, so how’d you get, so did you plan on going in, did you come out of college and plan on being a sales rep? No,

Steven Schmidt: [00:04:42] I did not. I wanted to be a playwright, so I applied to Yale in their graduate program and I got rejected hard rejection, but that letter was motivated to me cause I said, well, you know what, Yale isn’t good enough for me.

So I’m going to go sell country music, radio ads and Joliet, Illinois, and live in a holiday Inn on an ad. And I remember thinking at the time there was that Mel Gibson movie called what I think it was called, what women want. I mean, I’m old enough to know that, but is that two is that 99? He asked something like that.

99. Good, good trivia there, watched it and thought, you know what, I’m going to be that guy, I’m gonna be the guy wearing the suit, you know? Hopefully they weren’t

Brad Seaman: [00:05:18] the guy that got electric did that. You did get electrocuted by the only thing I remember about that movie is that he drop a hair blow dryer in the back.

Steven Schmidt: [00:05:26] Yeah. Good. Gosh, you’re good at this movie trivia thing. Yeah, I didn’t want to be that. I felt like that guy though. I mean, I literally got down there and I was just miserable. I was like, is this sales? Cause I hate it. You know, we had typewriters a dark room, half the half, the guys were out drinking whiskey for lunch.

They come back and I was like, I’m 21. I just got done with the best four years of month. Well five years cause I took it a bonus here. Right? And now I’m living in a holiday Inn, sleep and maximize suitcase on the bed. Cause there was no closet go, man, what did I do? And about 30 days. And I remember I woke up the next morning and I was like, I called my mom the night before I said, mom, I think I made a mistake.

She was like, well, come on home. And I’m like, I’m going to come home. And I called like 10 of my friends. It was like, you know, had a couple of beers. I was really, I said, I’m leaving this one horse town. I wrote a note to the guy who was such a coward. And I wrote a note slid under his door at five 30 in the morning, took off my car for South Dakota rant.

I said, it’s not you it’s me. I’m out of here by, you know, and that was, that was interesting because I came back and I said, well, what am I going to do now? You know, I gotta get a job. My mom says you can live here for two weeks after. I don’t care if you pay me rent you’re out of here. And I was like, what?

And she said, it’s time for you to be an adult now. So I said, okay. So I went and slept on a friend’s floor in Minneapolis, went to about every job. Fair. That was the thing that the job fairs in a newspaper where, how you got jobs, then like the internet, wasn’t really a job posting place yet, nor did you have a router that could handle internet speeds to show you.

So I

Brad Seaman: [00:06:50] skated over this how’d you get to Joliet. So did, was that you just pulled up an app? And you said, Hey, that it sounded like you knew what you wanted to do. So you picked a vocation and you just drive out there and take a job in Julia, or I wish

Steven Schmidt: [00:07:02] I wish it was that crazy. My, my professor, when I told him I got rejected the Ellie, so yeah, I figured that’d be the case.

He goes, my brother owns a radio station in Joliet. Yeah. And the rest of this story goes like that. It was a, it was a, you know, I I’ve got somebody who knows you and you know it turns out his brother liked to drink a lot of whiskey. And that’s cool too. I mean, maybe you’re coming into this. I was young I’d wide eyed and bushy tail, you know, I didn’t, I had no idea how to do any of this.

Like I would just go out and stop by a tattoo shop and say, Hey, do you guys want to advertise on the radio station? And they’re like, no, and I’d say, okay, thanks. I go to the next place. Hey, do you guys want to advertise in the radio station? Never. I hate you guys. I was like, oh, okay. Thanks. So I was just doing the motion, you know, repetitive motion.

It’s driving around clueless. So that was on accident, but I ended up. Brad. I took a job with, it was a voice stream at the time acquired by T-Mobile in after like probably three months of looking for jobs. And that was, that was a really good decision. Didn’t hit quota for the first three months.

Didn’t know what quota was, but I had a boss who, who was tenacious around activity, the old cold call in Minneapolis. I would get out and I had zip codes, right? Zip code reps in the city. I had this Southeast suburbs and I go drive around and I have to have 50 cold calls. And I have to come back and make 50 phone calls.

And I did that every day. And so the third month he put, he was getting ready to put me on a plan. And I was so upset that this guy was about ready to fire me. I’m like, man, this adult thing does not working out for me. So well, I’m going to go back to college and go study theater all over again for five years.

And I ended up not only hitting quota, but I hit 250% and I never, again, in my career hit less than a hundred. And went on to many, 800% plus years at T-Mobile.

Brad Seaman: [00:08:46] So when you’re going to talk to me about, so somebody out there they’re listening to this, the early on their career, they’re getting put on plan.

They’ve got anxiety. What do you tell them

Steven Schmidt: [00:08:57] will not fail if you do the activity that’s prescribed you, even if you’re completely terrible at talking to people, the clocks, even right, twice a day, have broken clocks even right. Twice. And then listen, I mean, Brad, the things that are available today, this podcast go to YouTube.

You can learn how to do this job. If you’re 70 years old and make a killing, it’s not that hard to do the semantics of sales. The part I like about it, Brad is repetition. Like you can show up every day and some people think it’s insane to want to pick up the phone. I go, I like that when I go to work every day, I know when I pick up the phone, open LinkedIn and start going, you know, like.

And then, you know, you just got to prioritize and organize. So it’s entirely possible. I’ve never seen a person been put on plan and get fired because they were trying too hard, ever,

Brad Seaman: [00:09:42] never, there’s a, there’s a real I saw. So I, I typically equate this quote to I think a couple of people have said it, but I I’m a big Penske fan.

And so Roger Penske says activity equals results. And I think what he means by that is like, show me somebody that’s doing the work. And I’ll show somebody that’s getting the results. I mean, very rarely there are some cases, right? I mean, there’s, there’s definitely I, I think on the counter you can take a story like Ross Perot, where he hits his quota as an IBM sales rep right out of the gates.

And he made three phone calls. Right. But for most people, I think you got to you if you’re doing the work and you’re, and you’re doing the activity, which I think is what you want. On the street there, when you were hitting all the buildings and you were going in there is that you learned that the hard work and the activity pays off and I do think activity is under it.

So

Steven Schmidt: [00:10:36] let me understand. You said activities under attack, right? Brett.

Brad Seaman: [00:10:39] That’s what I said. Yeah, I did that. I think activity, I think active.

Steven Schmidt: [00:10:44] Yeah. So when you say that, let me ask what you, what, when you say that, what do you mean specifically? So like activity under attack me, we’re getting blocked from different channels.

Brad Seaman: [00:10:53] I think that there is a tendency for people to try to think about how to say that, like or how, how to maybe articulate it. So when you think about phone prospecting, I would 100% agree that calling random people as a bad idea, And that you need to be targeted, but I think there are, there’s a shift or a group of people that would like to say, Hey you shouldn’t do a lot of activity.

You should pick, you know, fi you know, find one shot. You know, you’re going to make it shoot that. You don’t need to take a lot of shots. And I think in general, if you look at S success it usually is a lot of consistent shots at the same target. I

Steven Schmidt: [00:11:38] think that it’s interesting because there’s this whole theory right now that the whole war on like personalization versus relevance versus scale.

I think it’s a lot about timing, right? So I might know Brad, like you might be the perfect person for me to go after, based off everything I know, right? Your tech, you can make a decision. You might be perfect for this. Doesn’t mean you’re respond to me. Right? So it’s it’s then we go, well, we got to try multiple channels.

I said yes, but I think a lot of people I would argue that, you know, the company I run today, I mean, we booked last week, 79 appointments, right? Qualified opportunities. And 68 of those were phone on cold lists. Meaning we qualified the list would be a fit. We did minimal research other than knowing that they might be like that.

And we did that now. That’s all we do, but that is like the first Roundup. And actually this is the other interesting stat. We have 18 cadence steps, 50%. I think it’s 51.2%. I’m looking at right now, 51.2% of phone meetings we set out of all of them were set on the first phone call.

Brad Seaman: [00:12:42] Run that one, that number

Steven Schmidt: [00:12:43] by me again, one point it’s 51.2% of every we’re sending the first phone call, not the third or the fourth or the fifth or sixth.

And. I thought my math was broken when I was looking at, but I went back and looked. I’m like, man, we make a lot of phone calls. Right. And the no-show rate after that, I mean, it was actually less than industry average. We had 20% of those appointments. Didn’t show our industry average and say 40% don’t show to a demo of assess product.

Brad Seaman: [00:13:14] So, let me ask you this. So you’re in the album space. There’s a really big difference between inbound leads and outbound leads. And I think that’s where a lot of the confusion for sales reps occurs is I don’t think so real quick. When I think about outbound, I think about people that in general, there’s a lot of stuff here, but deal sizes are usually larger.

Competition is typically like. Versus an inbound lead, which is going to be historically more receptive. I do think they last longer historically as a lead when they come in, like they could stay, but the cost per the typically it’s less margin for the client. So if I’m selling an outbound lead, I’m going to have a higher margin.

If I sell an inbound lead, I’m gonna have a lower margin historically, cause they’re gonna be pricing. What do you think about those thoughts in, and if I’m a sales guy, how should I treat an inbound lead versus an elderly?

Steven Schmidt: [00:14:07] Well, I think inbound there’s there’s inbound is, is normally price shopping, right?

I’m inquiring with more than just you. So I’m probably going after three or four people. You’re not the only one I found online that has a chat bot, maybe outbound is I’ve created, I’ve created this need. Right. So I didn’t call you. And he said, oh my God, Steve, perfect time. And I was just looking for the solution typically.

Right? Interesting timing or interesting value or interesting solution you provide to a problem. I may not have. I probably won’t open up to you on that first phone call, but there’s enough curiosity that you said, I’ll give you an example, Brett, in our business, it gets really busy. The end of the month.

You want to know why? Because that’s the end of the month when people just didn’t hit their quotas and they go, man, we got to do something, right. They said in the last month they do something and they’re still not doing what they said they do. I think we got to outsource our topicals. And, and deals will reactivate, you know, new deals kind of come across and, and we signed 80% of our deals in the last two days in a month.

But we’ve been talking to them for an average of about 21 days, right? So they’ll come in front of the month, nobody buys and then the them, what they do. So inbound, if I’m going out and shopping for BDRs, I’m going to get a million calls from every person. Now they’re going to light me up. But if I had to find you through a chat bot, I probably, and you weren’t a referral.

Right. Cause . We get inbound on referral, meaning, Hey, I talked to so-and-so, I’d like to talk to you more different inbound treatment, right? Totally different about inbound. Everybody needs inbound. Everybody’s outbound. I outbound rates inbound. Right? The thing that I would say is once we’re done, if we’re in a six month contract, we never see the value in terms of what the client pays us.

And like the rip tide we’ve created that has people that come back to them. Through inbound. Right? So they call it inbound. So we’ll keep to our chat bot. Well, what if the rep came and created urgency, outbound, they said, I’m not going to respond to that guy or gal, but I’m going over to their website and oh, this looks pretty great.

Let me, I’m going to inquire about more pricing. Like we wouldn’t know that that was our opportunity that we created. Right. So what’d

Brad Seaman: [00:16:01] you call that little phrase? Outbound creates inbound,

Steven Schmidt: [00:16:03] outbound creates inbound. Yep.

Brad Seaman: [00:16:07] Like perpetual and electric. Perpetual motion. No, I think that’s good. I think the other thing, you know, I would never encourage anybody to do something.

One thing that is you know, it totally doesn’t bear fruit, but I do think there’s something about outlook. I find it really interesting when people do it. And I don’t know that here’s how I would describe it. I read an article one time or I’d write it, saw a guy on, on LinkedIn and he said, Hey, I’ve been making phone calls for 90 days.

He’s a startup CEO. And here’s the thing. I didn’t close any deals, but here’s what I noticed when I did the outbound. I generated more revenue and I can’t necessarily tie that revenue, but every time I quit phone calls, My revenue drops. And I do think there’s some correlation to activity. I would love to see somebodies stats in terms of revenue growth with with spikes of outbound activity to see if though, because I do think there are tasks.

I do think there are some I do believe the activity creates results. And I think we like to think about things as being very linear. So I did this and I got this, but I don’t really actually think the world works like that the same way. When you see those little charts on the internet, that’s like, we think success looks like this and they have a little line and it’s like, it actually looks like this.

And it’s like a squiggly all over the place. I think that same thing exists in outbound. You think outbound is like, you do this and you get this and it’s clean, but it’s actually all over the place.

Steven Schmidt: [00:17:35] Yeah. Yeah, it’s a right. They see intent matters. They always say, don’t tell the universe that, well, I’m not going to tell the universe.

I’m not interested in getting business. I’m going to tell them my science is open for business, you know,

Brad Seaman: [00:17:47] open for business. I love it. So what’s the one thing. So, you know, it sounds like you guys are having just an enormous amount of growth. I’ve tracked you on internet. I love the title. I love the name.

You guys got an awesome logo. You really came out of the came out of the blue. You’ve had a little, you know, really strong kind of early success. What’s the one thing you’re just super passionate about, right. I

Steven Schmidt: [00:18:11] am passionate about, I’m passionate about leading people right now and that, that may sound like, so that, that, that I’m going to table that actually, because that’s not as sexy of a topic.

I mean, that, that matters so much because of the, in a startup, especially, you know, like the vision needs to be so clear and what, why would it be like nobody. Getting that out of your own head. And through it. Well, you know what, screw it. That’s what we’re going to talk about if that’s okay, Brett you know, this like getting, when you, when you have that idea in your head, I mean, we have a lot of good ideas and founders choose to act on when usually the one thing that, that they know can, can probably work.

And I don’t even know the percentage of the top. You know, startup businesses that never work out. Right. I think it’s like 85% or something like that. Yeah. Year one or two. Right? So you put yourself up against the stack card right away. I have a 15% shot of succeeding to get, do I believe in myself, checkmark, I got to hire new people.

Great. I got to spend all that money. I saved up to bootstrap and I’m going to be okay. Talk to the wife, get her blessing. Boom. Okay. First three hurdles across. Now you open for business and everybody else, like there’s two ways to look at it. They’re either going to dilute your vision to reality, which is.

How other people are carrying out and executing the thing that looked so good when you thought of it and talk to people or can you spend enough time with people to develop them? Because if you don’t develop people and just assume that everyone’s going to get the hint and you’re like, oh, well, no, I just thought everybody all day made perfect cold calls here.

We never had a coach on eating alternately. We’re the best we pay 30% above market. They should just get it while the human beings, they have lives outside of this, they have good days, bad days. And yeah. This was really born out of something that worked for me is taught to me by other people. So now it is my mission to, I don’t want to be a CEO is just the figurehead even now or later.

I mean, as you know, as a startup, man, this is a safe, this is it’s a busy day, right. But if, unless I carve out intentionally at least two hours, twice a week to spend with my team, I mean, that’s part of the reason we just moved into a new office. I mean, everybody else is talking about remote work. We do that, but I’m in Sioux falls.

We’ve got five other people you’re going to hire four or five. Like if 10 people in the company can be here and we can work together to teach them how to overcome objections, to teach them calling between the hours of 1 38 and 2 49, have a four X better chance of getting a hold of somebody when then not even though it should be obvious to most people.

That’s not the first thing they think of when they work up, when they wake up. And so how do I get this team and their management team to start? Very very basic at the beginning. If we, if we can check box these three things. Okay, great. And then now if those three things are all in places still are work.

We can move on to objections and then we can move on to call ribbon that go down the list. But leading by example is one thing leading by showing them how to do it. And thoroughly training them is something that I have to recommit myself to daily because when I go a week without doing it, you can see it start to fade the crumble apart.

Brad Seaman: [00:21:08] Oh, yeah. So are you getting on the phone? You’re CEO, you’re starting to add people or you’re. So you’re saying you’re still getting on the phone. You’re still showing people how to make the phone calls. You’re still sharpening the knife.

Steven Schmidt: [00:21:19] Yeah. I, I actually was actively prospecting with them two days a week for the first month and a half, but that just got to be too much just, and that’s what we trained them to do, but I still a couple of hours a week, twice a week.

So I’ll get on with them two hours, two times a week and go live on that.

Brad Seaman: [00:21:35] That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s easy. So play hockey kids go late. I was a goalie. That’s hard to teach. Goaltending I heard somebody say one time, if you teach goaltending without equipment on, you’re just yelling at the kids. Yeah.

Steven Schmidt: [00:21:50] Well they prayed for me watching you.

Brad Seaman: [00:21:52] Right. That’s that’s super true. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re if you’re, if you’re not putting the equipment on and showing them, you’re just yelling at the kids. So I think that’s great that you’re out there making, making the call.

Steven Schmidt: [00:22:03] Yeah, man. I don’t know how else it would be done.

Brad Seaman: [00:22:07] The so all right.

Well, I think that’s, you know, is there anything, anything that you wanted me to ask you that I didn’t ask?

Steven Schmidt: [00:22:14] No. I mean, I thought it was good. I think if I could share one piece of unsolicited advice and this isn’t, it’s just man, if you’re, if you’re a founder out there or if you’re somebody who wants to look at business, are you looking at your founder go man, that guy or gal is nuts.

They don’t get it. Don’t be afraid to speak up because they surely don’t get it right. If you don’t talk to them about it don’t live in your, it’s a dangerous place to be. Right. I’m running out of, I’m running out of these things to say, but that’s the one thing that resonates the most. I was having a conversation with one of our people they ended up like, yeah, I thought you just knew that.

Or you would have known that and I didn’t want to bother you with stuff. I said, I would never know that I’m so glad you brought it to my attention. And you brought a solution with the problem too. So. Keep vocalizing and giving feedback because man, your business depends on it. Even if it’s a big company or big enterprise company you can have amazing managers in a fortune 100 company, just like you can in a nimble start-up right.

It’s not a one size fits all business. So keep talking, keep vocalizing, otherwise nobody gets better.

Brad Seaman: [00:23:12] One more question for you. So you’ve been a big company guy. What’s the biggest thing that you’ve had to get comfortable with besides maybe. Coming from a big coming from T-Mobile to start your own

Steven Schmidt: [00:23:23] business.

Yeah. Great question. Resources, scalability, right? At the end of the day, I’m the janitor. You know, I’m the it guy for now and a lot of the problems. And so I think owning all those problems and now starting to delegate some of those outrights it’s nice, but every time you delegate, you lose control, which is the point.

But that’s been the biggest thing. I mean, SAS changed everything, right? Because I don’t need all the big enterprise deployments. You can get into spin up whatever you wanted to die, but it’s the resources that are there to support you. You have to squeeze more or less. You have to.