2 - The Future of Sales Presentations with Dean Curtis of Ingage

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Selling in the Dwelling episode two, your host here, Alan Langer. And I was so excited to wrap up the first episode with Matt Essler last week. And you know, it's tough to follow up one good guest after another, but I think I accomplished that today. You're going to see the CEO of Engage, I-N-G-A-G-E. And I'm going to get to Dean in a second. But before we get to Dean as my second guest, I just want to remind you that the title sponsor of Selling in the Dwelling is Paradigm Vendeau. And Paradigm is a software for the in-home selling industry. And they are a title sponsor. I'm very happy to have them and have a relationship with them. So more on them later on in the podcast. So the other thing to keep in mind is sellinginthedwelling.com is the website, and there's going to be a section on the website called Ask Allen. If you send in a question and I end up reading your question on the air to my guest, you will receive a signed copy of my book. So without further ado, I am very excited to introduce the CEO of Engage, an awesome presentation software. Dean Curtis is joining us on Selling in the Dwelling. Dean, how are you today? Awesome. Alan, thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I feel very honored to be one of your first guests on the new podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

You're awesome. You know, I the the one thing when I I I've been wanting to do this podcast for years. I had I had an initial podcast which was called Marketing and Sales Over Cocktails, which was a lot of fun, but I was kind of winging it and I'm like, oh crap, I don't have a guest for this week. And I'd put filler guests in. I am very intentional with this one. I've got a sponsor, I've got a production company, and I want one great guest after another. And you immediately came to mind. So thanks for joining me because ever since I saw Engage, which was I don't know how many years ago now, I was very impressed. I never, when I was selling, I never loved the linear approach to sales presentations. I mean, it used to be the flipbooks, remember back then in the flipbooks, and and then it went to PowerPoint or you know, just one screen after another. And you guys flip that on its ear. So I want to, I want to talk about where did Engage come from? How who was the brainchild of it? I know you've been there about nine years now or so, right? I have been. So give me a little background on where Engage came from and and the idea of turning the presentation portion of a sales process into what it is now that you guys do. Yeah, I you know, like any great startup, it's accidental.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

So when if you look back at the origin story of the company, and I'll spare you all of the details, but it goes back to 2008. And in 2008, if you were if you remember technology in 2008, it was the iPhone, and the iPhone had no app store. And when the App Store launched, it didn't have the ability to do what we now know very commonly as in-app purchase. And we were the company that made all the books for the App Store. So if you bought a book on your iPhone way back in 2008, you probably bought an app that we built for that publisher because every book was its own unique app. Well, the following year, Apple released this great new technology called In-App Purchase. So you could have one app and purchase a bunch of books. So we were that app. Wow. The year after that, Apple released iBooks and basically took the business. So what we were building at the time was this idea of interactive experiences on touch devices. And then the company evolved from there, moved into magazines. Magazines then didn't really take off on the iPad. And then the company spent a lot of time as a digital agency building custom, unique experiences for iPad for Fortune 500 companies. So GE, G, Apple, massive companies, pharmaceutical companies, earning that one and a half minutes that they get with the doctor using a piece of technology that our company built. The problem was those things cost a ton of money. So literally million-dollar apps in order to, you know, enable a sales team with really rich, interactive content. So ironically, at the time, I was actually working at Apple. So before I worked at Scroll Motion, our name of our company is actually Scroll Motion. We do business as Engage now. I was part of a partner program at Apple, and we were looking for IS software partners, ISVs, who had great solutions that helped us sell more iPads. And we were partnered with Engage, Scroll Motion, in order to bring their software to our channel. And we convinced them to build an app that allowed anybody to create the same great experience that they were charging a million dollars, literally, to create. Could they build a piece of software so that the Allen's and the Deans and the Sally's and the Jens of the world could actually build that same level of experience? That's where Engage was born.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Wow. That's fascinating. So I I I want to I want to not digress, but I want to go deeper into your past because I was looking at your LinkedIn profile as a as I should as a podcast host and doing my homework. You were at Palm. Is that Palm Pilot? Yeah. Was that the old Palm Pilot?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

My tech career was basically, so I was a teacher before that. And then I my tech career started at Oracle. A lot of people know Oracle, big database software. I went to a small company called IntelliSync, and we were building apps for all kinds of different businesses on Palm Pilots, and that led me to Palm, Palm to Apple, and then Apple to where I am today. Wow. So Palm is no longer around, correct?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

I'm assuming. Palm got purchased by HP, actually, right after I left. I love the story. Uh I forget what movie it was, but it was it was one of those tech movies where they show the history of tech and and and things and and how Blackberry refused to believe that people wanted to touch a screen rather than hit buttons. And the and the story was about how Apple just literally destroyed Blackberry and killed that entire market. And that's what I was thinking with Palm. Wasn't Palm like didn't have a like a little stylus, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

So well, what's interesting is the team that I was on at Apple was the team that was brought together in order to combat BlackBerry in the enterprise. And my whole career at Apple of eight years was designed from the beginning, was we were the iPhone and business team. We would go out to Fortune 500 companies, collect the requirements so that so we would could better understand what the requirements were to really live on a corporate network. And within two years, we went from 0% penetration to 97% penetration in the Fortune 500. And that was very impactful to the future of Blackberry.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah, I'm sure it was. So it sounds like you have a little sales experience in your background.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

I do. You know what's interesting? I was actually on the technical side of the sales team my entire career. So I was the nerd the sales team brought in to explain the detail, the architecture of Oracle and how Palm devices and Apple devices integrate with a business network. So my background is actually technical, even though now I'm on the business side as a CEO of a company.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah. And I gotta tell you, I really like what you're doing. I'm impressed because you are putting yourself out there as the face of the company. At least that's my impression from where I'm sitting. You're you're doing, you know, these 30, 40 second, you know, um clips on LinkedIn and you're just talking about sales. And a lot of CEOs don't do that. A lot of CEOs want to be in the background and and let everyone else do that. Did you make a conscious decision to do that, to to kind of like become the face of the company and start posting like you are? I did. I so I have a business coach.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I think getting a coach and being coached is one of the best things. And about two years ago, I started with a business coach, and one of his daily non-negotiables is posting on social media and building the personal brand. And not because I want to be some great influencer. Totally not what I'm trying to do. But if I am, if I have information that that I know and that I believe to be true, and I hold it to myself and don't share it with the people who follow me on social media, it's selfish. So he encouraged me to do it and encourage everyone in our coaching program to do it. And it's really it's focused me in a way where I now listen way better because I'm A, always looking for ideas on what to share. Sure. And the conversations I have with our customers, with our partners, with people like you, like they inspire me to say, wait, I know something, and our you and I'll have a conversation and be like, wow, I never heard of that. Well, that's common to me. Well, I better share it with everybody else because maybe somebody else could use it as well. So there's no ulterior motive. It's literally if I know something and I keep it to myself, I don't want to be selfish. I want to share it out there. And maybe someone will benefit, maybe they won't, maybe they'll think bad of me. I don't know. I don't care. I probably wouldn't ask their opinion about anything else anyway.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

So exactly. And you know, it and you're probably learning as you're doing this because I've been doing this now for a little while. And but when I first started, I'm like, you know, I started my business and I got to get on social media. And I remember it took me, you know, an hour and a half to do a one-minute video because I kept going back and editing and deleting and editing. And now, you know, you realize that just do it. Like, you know, totally it's it's progress over perfection, is one is one one of my favorite terms. And now I can literally pick up my phone, talk into it, and post it. And I don't, you know, it just goes because it's easy. And you know, once you get to that point, and again, I need to do it to post content and have kind of be top of mind, but also, like you're saying, I want to share this, I want to talk about these things that I just thought of because I think it could help someone else. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

And also part of it too is if I'm wrong or if somebody has an alternate opinion, I want to hear it. Maybe I want to test the thinking that I have because I don't know everything 100% don't know everything. So if you ever see something, you're like, hey, I disagree, or here's let's have that conversation. I think discourse is lost in so many ways in our culture today. Yeah, I'm happy to open those loops with people, and we have really productive conversations.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah, it's really awesome. It's awesome to see you out there, and I'm glad you're doing it. It's like, you know, you think of famous companies. You you automatically, if they did it right, you think of the CEO. You think of the Steve Jobs, the Leaya Coca. I mean, he I think he was one of the first ones to really get out there as the CEO of of Chrysler back in the day. So yeah, kudos to you. I I'm I'm impressed, and I I look forward to to watching your stuff continually. So thank you. I appreciate that. No, no problem. So talk to me a little bit about. So most of your, I would say the majority of your customers' clients are in-home sales remodeling companies, I would I would assume, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

That's right. We we decided, so we didn't intend to go in that direction. Uh, when I say it was accidental, we didn't build the software intentionally for home improvement, home remodeling. We we were going after lots of different markets. We looked at the the in-home beauty market, actually. We looked at real estate, we looked at retail, we uh we did a whole bunch of different market research and we went and did you know pilots and trials and these things. It took us about three years to find product market fit. And it we were very fortunate. A home improvement company requested a demo on our website. We showed up in you know their SEO search for alternate to PowerPoint, and it was new pro in Boston. We always be thankful for Nikki and his team up in up in Boston. And they came in, we helped them get a great in-home sales presentation on in Engage to their sales reps. And before we knew it, they introduced us to nine of their friends, and then they introduced us to a couple of building product manufacturers because they were all using the same stuff. They were all installing the same things. And then before we knew it, we had a hundred and we were like, I think we found our market. And we decided at that moment to simply focus on home improvement and be great for the home improvement in home sale. And now we're we're we're 100% focused on that, and that's our that's the customers that we serve. Um, no real intention of just jumping out to some other vertical. Our our plan is to expand around the home. So if you look at other things in the home, HVAC, plumbing, different home services, great model for us.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Um, but yeah, home improvement is where we live. Yeah, it's it's amazing. And I got involved with you or became a partner with you quite a while ago now, maybe four or five years ago. Yep. And um, I've loved how you evolved because you know, you used to be doing a certain thing. For first, when I first saw it, I thought it was amazing because it just wasn't something like that wasn't out there. I was always trying to play with my own presentation that I had. Then I saw you guys, and then I remember speaking with a few of the people that work for you about the design and pricing structure, and and you guys were always so open, like, let's hear it. You know, we want some ideas because you're in the home, you know, you're you're doing it. And uh, so that is one thing that's always impressed me about all the people that work. No one was ever like, nah, that's not a that's that that we we tried, that didn't work, or whatever. It was always really good stuff, uh, open to to new ideas, which obviously comes from the top.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Well, we have we have three core values at our company value focused, problem solver, and customer first. So all of our team members are focused on those three things. So value focus is not do you have values? It's are you looking at the value of the time and the resources that we spend? The problem solver is are you really creatively looking at problems that people bring to you, or are you just putting old thinking against it? We don't want that. We want true problem solvers. And then the core of it all is what matters most to the customer? Because we could create all these great ideas. And I think this is actually almost what doomed our company before we made the pivot to engage. We had all these amazing ideas, but guess what? If no one's willing to pay you money to have those ideas in your product, you're not gonna survive. Exactly. So listening to our customers and being customer first is the core of everything we do.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, and it it's wild because well, talk to me about how you got the the concept of the nonlinear sales process, because yeah, that's something that you had to be intentional about rather than saying, let's just come up with a pretty a pretty software program.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah, that goes back to our some of cutting our teeth in enterprise, especially with pharmaceutical reps. So some of the earliest pieces of content that we built were for pharma reps. If you think about their world, you've probably been to the doctor, and there's that poor poor sucker who's sitting there in a seat, they got a bag of bagels or something for the for the office staff, and they're just waiting for that three-minute break that the doctor gets to actually go pitch them the latest drug.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Right, right. You've seen this. We've all seen this. We've all seen it. I had a I had a best friend who was a farm farm rep for many years.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Well, if you think about that experience, they have to be able to answer the question from that physician at a moment's notice. They they don't have time to do death by slide deck for 16 pages to get to the point. They're the physician's gonna ask them a question that maybe, you know, somewhere else, and they need to very quickly be able to navigate through all the content that they've been trained on in order to answer that question and show that thing that's most important. I think that happens in home improvement as well. Because while we teach sales systems and we know that the five steps or the seven steps or whatever it happens to be is the right way to do it, all of that falls apart when the prospect asks a question that they want to have the answer to before you move on. And being able to move dynamically through the content that you have, I almost hesitate, by the way, to call us a presentation platform. Yeah. Think of it more like the ultimate sales tool that you have that allows you to bob and weave as the needs arise with the prospect that's sitting in front of you, to educate them, to answer their questions, to build confidence and to eventually close them, obviously. Right. And to build that trust with the client in the in the most productive way possible. And we think through interactive content, dynamic navigation, that's a great way to do it because you can respond in the moment to exactly what the client on the other side of the table is asking.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

And and it's actually, I think, as we move along, your platform is going to become even more integral and important in the selling world today because sales has been changing now, and it's it's vastly different than it even was five years ago, especially the customers. You know, customers don't even want to meet with salespeople any like they they literally like they don't they their their first, you know what the first Google search is right now? It's not contractors near me, it's how much are windows near me. Like people are looking for pricing now before they contact. So all of this stuff, they want a great experience, and that's what you guys are doing. You're you're you're coming up with you're not the typical sales experience. And what I love about I'm gonna give you a I'll tell you a quick story about how so many sales reps are stuck in a process sometimes, and that's not gonna be successful anymore. The the rep that has higher EQ are the ones that are gonna be successful. I went on a ride along, this was about two months ago. Uh obviously won't name the company, but I was with a rep and we got in, and within about four minutes, the homeowner, the husband, said, Can you tell me about how this is installed? You know what the rep said? I'll get to that in 45 minutes. I wanted to kick them under the table.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Well, what's the what's the homeowner thinking for the next 45 minutes? I I yeah, like, oh this is what I'm nothing else. They're like, I just want to know how it's installed. Because if you could answer that question and you know that's the third section, you tap like not even pitching what we do. Like, if you can knock that objection out right away or give them it's not even an objection, it's comfort, it's confidence, right? Because maybe they've already had three people in their home and none of them could really tell them the process.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

But if you have a time-lapse video that shows the first step in the home and then the last step at the punch list is done, and it's a I mean, you're educating and again, and then you can still go through your process after you do it, but you got to be nimble within the process, and that's what I love about what you guys do because that's how I sold. I I I you know I knew the five or six things I had to talk about, but I never talked about them in a specific order. I basically let the customer dictate how they wanted to hear information. And I always thought, you know, I was a pretty successful salesperson, so I thought that worked. So tell me for the folks who don't know engage at all, never heard of you. I own a I own a small contracting company, I do four million in revenue, I've got five sales reps. Tell me why I should look at engage.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

It's a great question. I think there's a few things that when you have five sales reps, you start to you start to have a few different things that happen. Number one, you have no idea if they're delivering consistently in the home, right? Maybe you're recording calls, but you really don't know visually what they're presenting or what how they're representing your company visually in the home. Maybe you've trained them on a company story and you've trained them on how to position financing, you've trained them on the products that you offer. But without a codified, I use this word all the time, a codified set of materials that they can speak from. Right. In the past, it was a flip book, and but you would never know did they ever get to page seven. Yeah. So you want to know, and I think at that level, you want to know what's working. What are they actually sending out? You know, what are they actually using in in the home with with that with that prospective client? And the problem that we help solve is that on the iPad that you've bought for them or that they've brought and you've enabled, they now have a downloaded presentation, always available, always up to date. So you don't have to worry. Did they go to the office and grab the latest version? Have they connected to like you don't have to worry about that? If they're connected to the internet at some point in the last 24 hours, they're gonna have access to the latest content. It's gonna be updated. And then we're tracking every tap swipe in that presentation to know what path did Alan go through and close the deal, and what path did Dean go through and close the deal or not close the deal. Yeah. How many of them actually presented financing? How many presented, how many used the content? And when I say present, like the idea of sitting there and droning through pages in a presentation is over. No one wants that. But knowing that they use the collateral that you provided them for 25 minutes, which is the on target time for them to use the supporting materials in a sales call, whatever that time is. Yours could be an hour, yours could be five minutes. I don't know. It depends on what you're doing. So it's that amazing content, all of the plumbing to make sure people get what they need, when they need it, where they need it, and then the analytics to understand how it's being used when actually in that in that face-to-face conversation. I mean, you mentioned earlier you went on a ride-along. I'm not saying this kills ride-alongs altogether. I don't think it should. There's tremendous value. I actually go visit with our customers and ride along to see how they're using engage in the other way. And so there's still value that, but imagine if you could do a replay of every single session that they use the engage content for. Or any whatever you have. So you could know the path they took, how long they spent, what they showed, super valuable. So it's that amazing content, the sharing capability to make sure the team has everything they need, and then the analytics on the back end to prove and coach. Like you're a coach, you know, you want to review the film. Well, I can bring up analytics and compare everyone on the team and see how much they're using the content we provide them, where they're where they're using it the most, what pages they're not using. Like all of that is available. Great coaching tool. Not only because I always say this because it's so important. I think people look at analytics and like, oh, wow, you're watching me. Yeah. Right. Because I want to see how you're successful and how you're not successful. And then we can coach so that you can be ultimately successful. Or maybe you discovered a great way to do something that we need to teach everybody else. So it's not always a negative when you think about that.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

And it's also fascinating because you guys coordinate or line up or whatever the term is, integrate with Rilla, right? You know, so now you got the verbal recording analyzed by AI. Now you got you know what what the rep is doing from you know your software, the presentation software. And I mean, what a tremendous coaching tool. But here's how I look at it. I I get you know people saying, uh, especially sales managers at companies, they don't know how to present, like let's say Rilla, for example. And for folks that don't know Rilla, it's a recording software that that records a sales conversation and then it it actually analyzes AI. But every sales rep, when they see it, thinks it's big brother watching them, just like you mentioned. Yeah, well, that's not how you gotta introduce you. You have to introduce it. This is for you to listen to yourself to get better and engage is the same way. I want to I want to see, oh crap, I forgot to hit this this page here while we were saying that. Why didn't I hit that page? You know, then you can get better because you're watching what you did. It's amazing when that's recorded and you hear yourself, you realize, oh my God, I said that, or I sounded like an idiot there, or I should have asked a question here. I did that, I joke with Sebastian, the CEO of of Rilla, that he stole my idea because years ago, when the smartphone first came out, I'd hit record and put the phone in my pocket. And I'd listen on my way home to my to my sales calls, and I got better. It was very simple.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

I mean, name name one NFL quarterback who doesn't watch film. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's the same. Even the center of the like everybody, why why do sports teams intensely watch film? Because it tells the story, and it gets good or bad, it tells the story and makes you better.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah, so it's the same concept. And I and I like that you brought that up because I don't think a lot of people realize that your software not only takes the mundane linear linear presentation out of it, but it's a tracking tool as well. So you can actually get better as a writer once you look at it.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

So I think you mentioned integration with Rilla, right? So it's so powerful to see what you were showing when you said what you said. Yeah, absolutely. And if you in the Rilla console, you can if you have it integrated with Engage and Zero is the same way, you can actually see a thumbnail of what was displayed on the iPad when the words are when they're oh really?

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I didn't know that. Oh, that's really cool. Yes, that's very cool. I love it, I love it. Hey dwellers, quick break. Hey, did you know that the closing percentages for in-home sales has been dropping consistently over the last 10 years? It's really crazy, and there's a lot of reasons for it. But one of them is reps have so much to do in the house because there's so many different platforms that you're jumping back and forth all the time. Well, my title sponsor, Paradigm Vendo, takes care of that. In one digital platform, you can go from initial appointment right to final sale and signatures by visiting just their platform. It's amazing. You got to check them out. It's paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, par-a-r-a-d-i-g-m vendo.com forward slash dwelling, because your reps need to give the homeowners a great experience in the house, and jumping around doesn't do that. Visit paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling and take care of the experience your reps are giving in the house. So tell me, okay, so now let's get put your CEO hat on for a second, uh, away from your product hat. How many people are working at Engage and what is your I have a feeling I know the answer to this, but you know, what's your leadership style? You know, how do you how do you get the most out of your your employees, people to get fired up about what they're doing? Give me a little bit about background about Dean as a CEO. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

I I I appreciate the question because I think as a tech leader, you know, we're not just a bunch of nerds writing code and and sending it out. I I'm very intentional with my leadership style. I'll give you an example and then, you know, so every other week I hold what I call leadership lab and I teach a leadership principle to the company through experience and storytelling. And then the opposite weeks, I have an AMA or an ask me anything with the company to just basically open my Zoom and anybody in the company can come and ask me questions about what's going on in the company. So Okay, that's fascinating. My leadership style is I try to be as transparent as I can possibly be. I think any leader knows there's things that the timing just has to be the timing for certain modes of communication and pieces of information. That's just the way it is. I try and balance that. I also try to be super approachable, which is also hard because I'm moving and I have a vision for the company of where I want us to be in three years. And sometimes I have to go off and do things that are tough and really difficult decisions or conversations that I want to have with a certain partner that I'm not ready to tell everybody about yet. Because what one, it may not happen, but three, I'll sum it up this way: my job is to build the people, and the people build the business. That's how I think about it. And that's an evolution for me over the last couple of years. I think my first seven years here was let me roll up my sleeves and muscle through it, which was needed at the growth stage that we were at. But where we are now in order to get over this next growth ceiling to the where we want to be in the next three years, it's really about building people and spending time literally. So I have my vivid vision for the company. And in that vision, I have it split up into three equal parts. One part is building and coaching my team. One part is meeting with people who are not in my business, who are doing things where I want to be and go learn from them. And then the third is working with our customers. And I say that last, but that one has to be first. So if I'm spending a third of my time understanding our customers, a third of my time building my team and coaching my team and working alongside my team, and then a third out in the world learning from other experts, that to me is the perfect blend of a CEO's time.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

It's yeah, it's tremendous stuff. And, you know, not to bring up Steve Jobs again, but you know, he said, you know, I I I Apple's success comes from I hire smarter people than me. Like I'm not the smartest guy at the company. I don't want to be. I don't want to be the smartest guy in the room. I hire people who can do the stuff that I can't. And I think that's what the real smart CEOs do because you know the ones with big egos have a tough time, I think.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

The one the the most famous Steve quote, and I so working at Apple, I was two two levels below Steve. So like my boss reported to a guy who reported to Steve. So I was it's a very flat organization. So you have I didn't, I never got into like face-to-face conversations with Steve, but the influence is definitely there. Yeah, he would always say, I don't hire people and tell them what to do. I hire people to tell us what to do because they have the knowledge, they have the skills, they have the experience that are gonna help us grow. I try to do the same in our business.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah, that that's that's tremendous. So, what do you see in the future or or as we're evolving in in-home selling? I mean, I I have my thoughts on this. And are you seeing any trends or anything that you that you any predictions that that you know, salespeople, meeting people in the homes, where do you see that going in the next five years?

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Now it's I always put my tech nerd lens on this because I I am I love technology, right? On my weekends, I'm writing apps with AI because I'm just so interested in in that. So it's hard for me to not answer the question in terms of technology. Sure. Because I truly believe those who can leverage the latest technology, and you we could have a whole conversation about AI right now, but it doesn't matter. It's always been that who can take the modern technology and apply it to the problems that you have in your business and solve those problems as quickly as possible to gain efficiency, to gain cost savings, like that equation has never changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The equation is the same. The technology is different. So as I look at it, like what's the future? The future is still the same as it was 10 years ago. Who can look at the modern technology, understand the problems of your business, and apply that technology in a really logical way to accelerate your growth, accelerate your throughput, accelerate um the value your people bring? I think there's a lot of concern that you know the newest of the technologies is going to replace people. I'm always I'm okay with that because I think I can have those humans do higher value work because the technology is an enabler, it's not a replacement.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

And and when and it's been a fascinating thing for me because one of one of my uh I I do a lot of research, I look at a lot of studies, I love doing that, uh, look at a lot of trends. And the one study I saw uh that's been eye-opening to me over the last, I think it was seven months ago, I saw it, was that I think Cornell did this. He said that 68% of consumers will spend more money on a better experience over a better product. And to me, I see that happening. Like people now want the experience. They're literally about 80% done with their buying journey before they even contact a cuss uh a company. And now they're saying, okay, I'm gonna choose one of these three. Now I'm gonna call the company and they're gonna make their decision on the experience they had with that sales rep. And that's where a product like yours comes in because it's a great experience rather than the flipbook or the or the guy that's going through the ABCDE sales process.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Yeah. No, I I think that's a great point. We we actually recently renamed our customer success team to our customer experience team. Yeah. Because we value so much the experience that people have with our software and with our team that we want it to be front and center just as simply in the titles that we put in our our business cards and in our email signatures.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So what do you look? I'll ask you one more question, then we'll get to the ask Allen segment. So what do you look for when you're hiring your own salespeople? Are you looking for any specific trait or anything? Is it a high EQ? Are there uh are there certain things you do that um you you didn't do at a different company? Like what is what does you as Dean and Engage do when you're hiring your own salespeople?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

I I would apply this to virtually anyone we hire, and that is the desire and the the curiosity factor that they have. Oh, that's interesting. You know, I I can only teach someone so many things. And what I really want are curious team members who push us in ways that we didn't even see possible. So if if if my leadership style, which we talked about earlier, is to build the people who build the business, if I have people who are simply waiting for me to tell them what to do, that's not gonna work because me building them is not giving them a playbook that says do these five things every single time. Right. Me building them up is to give them frameworks, give them ideas, and let them run with them. And it's not like go run with scissors, it's run in a, you know, in a in a safe way where they feel supported. And I I'll give you a framework that I use for this, and it it totally defines the type of person that I want on our team. I call it the 1080-10 principle. So I want the team member to take ownership of 80% of what they do. I'm happy to help them with the first 10%. We ideate, we define what done looks like, but I want them to go off and be curious and build the rest of it. And then we'll come back together at the end and we'll finish it. But if I have to tell somebody 80% and they're only bringing 20% value, that's not the person I want on our team. I want someone who can take that direction and we can brainstorm and ideate and give them what we consider the definition of done. And then they come back, they go do all the work, they're super curious, they leverage the resources, they're collaborative, they're adaptable, all of those things. That's the kind of person I want, whether it's a salesperson, customer success, engineer, those are the people I want because I can't tell them everything. I want them to be super curious. And what's cool about AI, AI rewards the curious. So if I hire these people and they use the tools that we enable them with, they're supercharged. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yes. Awesome. Well, that's great. The 1080-10. I love that. You know, it's almost like it reminds me of coaching. I coach my daughter's uh softball team, and I want them to not have to look at me every single second of what to do when they're in the batter's box. Like be yourself, hit the ball. If you if I want you to bunt, I'll tell you to bunt. But other than that, you know, be aggressive on the base pass, stuff like that. And some players can't do it, or some and some players just thrive in that. So it's just you know, it's obviously uh up to the person. So uh interesting stuff, good good stuff there. All right, we're ready for the Ask Allen segment. And again, I since you're the second guest on my podcast, the question I'm gonna ask you is the same question I asked Matt Esler in last week's episode. And it's this one you've been a CEO now for a while, you've been in business for a while, you've been doing this a long time. You go into a coffee shop and you meet a 26-year-old energetic entrepreneur. What advice would you give him or her? Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Admit you don't know what you don't know. I think I think one of the things that I did way too much early in my entrepreneurial journey and my journey as a CEO is to believe that I could find and do and answer anything just by working harder. And I think the, you know, work smarter, not harder is a cliche, but it's totally true. And find people who are in the room where you aspire to be someday and go sit in that room and be humble and vulnerable to say, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know you are where I want to be. Would you mentor me? Ask for help because it's not a sign of weakness. It's actually a massive sign of strength to say, I know what I don't know, but I see you doing that thing or in that room or being at that point where I want to be, I want to learn from you, would you? And I guarantee there's somebody out there, there's tons of people out there who are willing to help. And in this industry, especially, it's like no other industry I've ever been in. There are mentor upon mentor out there, whether it's a paid coaching program, mastermind, or if it's literally you call someone up and say, Hey, I have this problem. I know you've been successful. Would you give me 30 minutes? That's the advice I would give. Never be afraid to pick up the phone and make that call and admit where you're weak and go get somebody who's already done it.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

That's brilliant, it's brilliant advice. And it, you know, people ask me when I had my first podcast. I got I got a uh a good handful of really decent guests, and they, you know, I would always get, how did you get that guest? And I said, I asked. Simply, I went up and I asked. Like so many people are afraid to do something as simple. It's like asking for the order. They run a great sales presentation, then never ask the customer to buy. It's the same concept. You just gotta ask and do it. The worst they can say is no, and you move on. And if they do, great.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

There's so many people out there who are willing to spend their time. Yeah, I think just and it, but it there is a moment of humility that you have to accept to say, okay, I'm gonna put my ego on the shelf. I don't know the answer to this, and formulate a really good question. Do your research, don't go in unprepared for sure. But those people who have been there and have done it, they want to share their wisdom.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Everyone does.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Absolutely, absolutely. All right, Dean. Well, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you coming on. And before we wrap up, tell people, tell all the people in the audience that are now salivating to look at engage. Where do they go? And is it just going to the website and clicking a demo, or how do they how do they uh go from here?

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah, the best thing to do is go to our website, engage.io, i-n-g-a-ge-e.io. There's a get a demo button there. If you look through the website and it looks like it's something that might help you and your and your sales team, uh help your business, by all means get on with our team. No pressure demo. We literally just love showing because seeing is believing with engaged. Sometimes you have to see it. And then for me personally, I'm posting a ton on LinkedIn. Come and follow me on LinkedIn as well as Instagram, Dean Curtis23 on Instagram. I love connecting with people there. It's uh it's a great place. Outs, it's kind of the outside of work place to see how to because I I live my whole life on there, not crazy influencery, but you know, I share about my fitness journey. I share stuff that I do as a family because we're more than just our job title. And that's a great place to get to know me as well.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

And you know, and and just to piggyback on what you just said, people want to know about you as a human, not just as a CEO. Like I just posted about my trip to Colorado with my daughter. I took her with me on a training event that I had, and I got the most engagement I've had in in a couple months simply because it was like, oh, he has a daughter, and he took her to college visits on one of his training stages. So yeah, I I think that's uh super important that that what you're doing, and uh, and I agree with it. So anyway, this has been awesome, Dean. I really thank you. And I also want to thank the folks at Paradigm Vendo for their sponsorship. Visit them at paradigmvendo.com. Uh, and then you can check out their software and also engage ing a g e dot io if you want to take uh take a look at uh Dean's incredible software uh platform as well. Dean, thank you very much. I will talk to you again, my friend, and thank you for joining me on episode two of Selling in the Dwelling. Take care, everybody.