Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
From Black Books to Watchlists: The Evolution of Modern Sales
What if the key to sales success isn't working harder, but targeting smarter? Nick Mavrick of Built Data joins Ron for a candid exploration of how construction equipment dealers can revolutionize their sales approach by embracing the Pareto Principle—the idea that 20% of customers generate 80% of business.
The conversation reveals a startling truth: most construction equipment dealers are still using century-old sales methodologies. Traditional "black book" approaches keep valuable customer information siloed with individual salespeople, creating massive inefficiencies and preventing strategic alignment across organizations. Nick explains how Built Data solves this problem by creating a "single pane of glass" that connects high-level strategy with day-to-day sales execution.
At the heart of this approach is a fundamental shift in perspective. Rather than viewing salespeople as mere revenue generators, Nick advocates treating them as internal customers deserving of support. Built Data identifies high-value targets, predicts equipment replacement cycles, and even allows salespeople to text questions about specific accounts before meetings—serving as an "outsourced wingman" for sales operations.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when discussing why 90% of companies fail to implement their strategies (hint: 95% of employees can't even articulate what the strategy is). By distilling complex data into actionable intelligence, Built Data helps bridge this communication gap while transforming salespeople into trusted advisors rather than traditional "peddlers."
Whether you're running a dealership or leading a sales team, this discussion offers practical insights about focusing your resources where they'll have the greatest impact. As Nick puts it, market disruption is inevitable, but targeting the right customers can negate up to 80% of business risk.
Ready to transform how you approach sales? Listen now, then share your thoughts about data-driven customer selection strategies!
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Aloha and welcome to another Candid Conversation, and the man raising his hand on the side of me is Nick Maverick from a company called Built Data. This is the second podcast, second Candid Conversation Nick and I have had or will have, and I want to use this as a platform for Nick to explain in pretty severe detail what he's done, why, how, all the rest of that nonsense and I'm just going to give you the company title name is Built Data and then I'm going to say Nick, what in the hell got you to start this? Where'd it come from? How'd you get it done? Tell us.
Speaker 2:Well, Ron, thank you. I always enjoy talking to you and thank you for being a blessing.
Speaker 2:So built data was knowledge acquired through many teachers through the years, mainly salespeople and what I realized is in sales and marketing there are a million things you can do, and Michael Dell had an expression I like to acquire my competitors one customer at a time, and the companion to that is you can pick your customers before they pick you. I had worked for a major equipment consolidator that competed with United, ultimately was acquired by Sunbelt. Then I had worked for a division of Volvo Construction, equipment and Rental and we deployed a very specific marketing model. It was a sales model to focus on the 20% of customers that do 80% of the business, and I know I can say that and it sounds easy and I did not invent counting to 10. And what I found is the number of opinions in business about how you achieve success really is as simple as showing somebody the distribution of the proportionality of VIPs in their customer base, and it ties to everything we know.
Speaker 2:Of course, the original model, or the Pareto principle, was based on the distribution of wealth, where 20% of the population controls 80% of the wealth In business. It's no secret that there are a small amount of companies who generate the majority of economic output or work on the majority of construction projects or industrial projects, construction projects or industrial projects. So many years ago I counted to 10 and we would display to salespersons the 20% of the customers that did 80% of the business. But it doesn't stop there. Those are the people that love you. Can you grow your share of wallet? Can you grow with them If they're a national account, can you grow from Atlanta to Denver to Los Angeles with them? And once you secure your base of success, you then can execute a more ambitious strategy. And I don't think I answered your question.
Speaker 1:I had done work you did well. What I get out of that is we do not have a working model in the construction equipment, light industrial, compact equipment markets on how to sell. We're using a model from 100 years ago. Here's my black book of my customers. I know that the company doesn't have a clue what's in that black book. You always used to drive me crazy and you found a way somehow to segment that to make it more meaningful, more understandable, because I can't deal with 20,000 customers but I could deal with 2,000. Am I?
Speaker 2:getting close, correct, lost all numbers 100% and the notion is.
Speaker 1:There's so much confusion you and I set an honor of calling.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a plan, any road will get you there. And one thing that we've created and built data is a watch list of customers so you can know that 20% of your customers will do 80% of your business. We can stock the pond with those customers and our aim is to link behavior. And I wrote down what you said earlier strategy implement, do. I wrote down what you said earlier strategy implement, do. We've created a system using 80-20 to link strategy to implementation to do. And so the CEO has a view.
Speaker 2:The director of sales who's responsible? The CEO has a strategy. The sales director has the notion of implementing Salesperson's got to do. The sales director has the notion of implementing Salesperson's got to do. We create the single pane of glass for those three people to work together and simplify and allow them to secure their business in a very predictable way, targeting the best customers and the next best customers in the market. That's it, and that's a great measure of success. It's not a long conversation, and if it is a long conversation, then they're probably drowning in data, drowning in misallocation of capital, wondering what's happening. It really shouldn't be that hard. So we distill data to its most essential, actionable information.
Speaker 1:What astounds me, nick? We've had this data for a long time and we've had this problem for a long time and nobody has done what you've done yet done what you've done yet, I'm sure once it becomes popular or successful. You're right now, three months in, and creating this new approach, an approach that works, an approach that's wildly and provably necessary, and you're going to start having all kinds of competition once this gets going, because everybody oh, I know how to sell but nobody really knows. I remember starting the product support group for Caterpillar back in 1970. And the criteria for hiring a guy to do it was they had good writing, because you had to be able to create a quote. The second thing that was very clear was that Caterpillar chose to pay commission on competitive items. But the items that they chose to pay on they didn't make Batteries, hose, that type of thing. It drove me nuts. And what was interesting was we gave them territories. They were geographic, it wasn't by size or not, the 80-20. It wasn't very sophisticated and I would travel with the salesmen once a month.
Speaker 1:I was in the vehicle with them all day and I said you know, it's next Tuesday, I'm going to be with you and they'd have the day planned for me. You know how this works. I'd have a customer list in front of me and I'd know where we are geographically. I'd say, let's go see that guy. And it wasn't on his list. Everybody he would visit. They'd have a good conversation, they were good buddies, all the rest of the nonsense. It was more a personality show than anything else, and the customer that I went to they didn't really know. So that bothered me right from the and this is 50 years ago that bothered right from the get-go.
Speaker 1:You've taken that away. You've given me a list of customers that represent 20% of the names and 80% of the business for the dealership. I can divide that by number of customers I think a salesman can cover, and then you give them the data to say, okay, this is what they bought, month by month by month for a number of years because you got the data. Month by month by month for a number of years. Because you got the data, you have the gap between when they last bought. How long apart is it all that data? And you're distilling that in a manner that they don't even need to think about it. Here's the guys you need to talk to next month. Here's the guys that are leaving you, or look like they're leaving you. You better get after it.
Speaker 2:Am I wrong? No, you're right. I mean we. The notion is, I believe we can be the outsource wingman for sales operations, and what inspired me to start the company is I had done work for a very large dealership a few years ago multi-brand dealership a few years ago, multi-brand dealership, different operations and just the amount of noise. I call it. They had bought a lot of good things that I think sounded good, but when they opened the box and installed them, they just didn't work together. The pieces didn't work together. The CRM system was bloated to the gills. It was half owned by IT and sales Data was owned by IT. They would do custom sort of Power BI queries. They had all the tools, but they lacked a sort of a philosophy to make sales or customer information operational for the salesperson, and so we aim to fill that void in sales ops is to serve the salesperson as a customer.
Speaker 2:Now we not only display data but, ron, we've evolved the business model where you can now literally text us with a question you might have on the data You're about to go into a meeting. I think it's risky. Let me start there. But how would I sell to somebody who owns these machines these competitive products. Are they part of the 20? Are they on the watch list? Are the 20 that will do 80 or the 80 that will do 20? So they can plan their day more effectively and we serve as sort of an interim you know, I don't know how to say it a wingman to the director of sales to just serve that data up to the tip of the sphere who can't get it today. And it's got to be frustrating for those companies. I know it's frustrating for those salespeople and I would presume it's frustrating for ownership, because they carry a ton of expense that they scratch their heads with, things that they quote unquote, need, whether it's CRM, licenses up the wazoo that they may or may not use, whether it's.
Speaker 1:CRM licenses up the wazoo that they may or may not use. The beauty is, without getting political, what Elon Musk is doing with the government Department of Government Efficiency, like you say. I've got all these licenses for all these salesmen and all these people to software and you know, here comes GPD, here comes artificial intelligence and basically it's the same thing as spell checkers for word processing systems. But the fundamental problem from my perspective and you're exposing it is all they've done in these systems is go from paper to glass. They've taken the methodologies, the process, the procedures, the forms even that they've been using in a manual sense. Computerized it made it faster, but hasn't changed anything. You're coming in. Here comes data. It was beautiful what you said. The data is shared between IT and sales. Bologna IT owns the data. There needs to be a specific owner for every data element and nobody can touch that field without their approval, because our data is flawed now. It's messy, it is messy.
Speaker 2:It's funny. It doesn't need to be. I was recently talking to a um, a pretty um billion dollar plus dealer and they were saying they had dirty data on their on their books for five years. To clean it up and it. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but the notion unless I misunderstood the notion was it would be cleaned up when they implemented the new DBS ERP something. But why wait? I mean you're just tight. I mean the urgency, the misallocation of capital, the changing market conditions. That's never changed, so the market will keep changing. But if you're tying one arm behind your back and I don't think dirty data is that hard, by the way, we love getting paid to fix it I don't think it's that hard and it's I don't know if you want to turn it into a long war that ends up being, you know, in a standstill. You can or just pull a SWAT team or a special forces team. Fix it in 30 days and get working, get moving.
Speaker 1:We don't have that sense of urgency, do we?
Speaker 2:doing Well, I think people, I think it. I think what happens is it's a breakdown in teamwork. Right, if you're an employee and you, if you're a high functioning executive, then you will own an issue that maybe isn't in your domain, but as businesses become bigger, they you know, you hear the term, you know stay in your domain, but as businesses become bigger, you hear the term stay in your lane. Man, there's some, as you and I talked about Charlie. There is a way to live a better life, and so I would encourage businesses. If you're carrying around these legacy problems, something that bugs you like dirty data, and you say, well, we'll get to it next quarter, next year, do it now. Do it now. By the way, you can do it by hand.
Speaker 1:I had a long chat yesterday with Jay Lucas, who's one smart man. He purchased Jordan Sitter, which is the Lord of Recruiting Companies, and he gave me a metaphor for a company using an aquarium. So I've got this aquarium and I've got it filled with water, and the water is the culture of the organization. Now I can put tools in there to keep the culture pure different plants, different scenery and then I'll put the workers in or the customers in, whatever the categorization is and if the culture is bad, the fish are going to die. If the culture is good, the fish will live.
Speaker 1:But very few people can tell me how they got their culture where they are. So you know, I'm a nut for data and one of the things that I look at is surveys, national surveys, big number stuff, not one or 2%, not 1,000, 100,000. And in America, the number of businesses that succeed in implementing their strategy over the last 20, 30 years has not exceeded 10%. In other words, 90% of the companies fail to implement their strategy, and other surveys out there point to what are the reasons for that. Why is that happening? And 95% of the employees in these companies can not tell me what the strategy is. So, from my perspective at the 100,000-foot level, that's a communications problem and bringing another name out there, Steve Clegg, who's a pretty intelligent guy in his own right. He's beyond intelligent.
Speaker 1:Well, he gets things down, and the beauty to me for smart people is they can simplify things so that anybody on the planet can understand, even me. And Steve narrows things down to being a transaction between two people a buyer and a seller. Down to being a transaction between two people, a buyer and a seller. The sales function is about that relationship between the two people. So how do we build that relationship? And it's really fundamental.
Speaker 1:What are the needs and wants of the customer In the organization? What are the needs and wants of the organization of the sales director, of the salesman, of the CEO? I don't care what it is. Tell me what you want and it's up to me to deliver it. And as time passes, the Buddhist philosophy is kind of good, do good, and if you can't do good, don't do bad. So everything's up, everything's positive. And so, mr Salesman who's selling equipment, mr Salesman who's renting equipment, mr Salesman who's doing product support sales, what do you need to get better results? I don't know many people have asked the salesman that, but if their salesman's smart, I would bet the first answer they'll come back with is give me better customers. The salesman's got to make the better customer.
Speaker 2:If I could make a companion. I think that with, with silent and is meaning treat the salesperson as a customer yeah, absolutely and if you really graded them, I would you know.
Speaker 2:You hear a lot of machismo toughen up, right, it's your job, go do it, go drive around, hustle. Yes, there are many people who succeed by doing that and there's many, you know, graveyards. A lot of machismo. Toughen up, right, it's your job, go do it, go, drive around, hustle. Yes, there are many people who succeed by doing that and there's many graveyards filled with people who did not succeed in doing that. I think it's unfair, and it's not only unfair to the salesperson, but it's a very simplistic belief, for the enterprise is if you have salespeople, buys, is if you have salespeople, you have them for a reason it's a solution-based sale. Yes, there's a place for transactions. Steve's right, because Steve would say there's multiple transactions.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:We're focusing on people who have a solution, who need a solution. You have a salesperson who can add value in helping the person achieve solution. Do you truly treat that salesperson as an internal customer? Can you make it easy for them and be the wingman to equip them with quantitative and qualitative data? That's it so. Quantitative says Ron bought these things over time. He has these needs, this is what he owns, that he bought from other people, blah, blah, blah. The qualitative can bring in what project Ron's working on. And what's interesting is the machines now, with the software, called the soft products of machines, have a bunch of technology that makes it a better one-to-one fit for customers. However, it's lost with the product manager at the OEM. It doesn't make its way down the field. So we believe not only us, but we believe we can fill that hole with accessible quantitative and qualitative information. Here's a wingman summary for Ron's lead before he goes and talks to a customer. It's not that hard. A million years ago somebody may have had an assistant to do that. I've never had one.
Speaker 1:But if you contrast that Even if I had one, I'd want to do it myself anyways yeah.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I've never had that luxury. But the why? If the salesperson is not the center of the organization, maybe consider taking a different path. They're expensive, you know, fully loaded, but it's fine, you're paying salary. Maybe you don't do or don't pay bonus benefits, taxes, a truck, a computer, branded stuff, events. You're looking at a quarter million, a half a million dollars. It's not trivial, you know. Is the enterprise fully supporting that person?
Speaker 1:And then let's go further with that whole thing. If you just make a business case number one, I don't like the term salesman, okay. I don't like the term peddler. I'm a trusted advisor. I like that. I'm going to write that down. The customer doesn't have to pay for it. If they have a question, I want them to ask me. If I don't know the answer, I'll find the answer well said, and it might not be my products that are the solution. I want the customer to trust me explicitly so that nobody else is going to be between me and that person ever.
Speaker 1:And when you get there now you work hard like hell to protect it, but you can't be replaced. The transition from that relationship between this customer and the advisor the advisor retires, the advisor is sick, the advisor quits. There has to be somebody come in and we know the statistics. So the data you talked about in the machine is unbelievable. I know next year, right now, which machines need to be replaced, which ones have reached the end of their life cycle, which ones are costing per hour higher than it should, which ones have the hour meter, all this stuff. I know who they are, I know where they are, I know what I'm going to sell. Have you met a salesman yet that has a set of goals and objectives like that for next year? No, and that's so basic and fundamental it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a request recently and I actually love these requests because the salesperson is my customer and the notion was from a sales manager at a substantial size dealership. The salesperson doesn't turn on his or her computer, by the way. That's okay, that's completely okay. And we read the data to our clients, so we read the data to salespeople, so they don't have to. We wanted to take away another thing they need to do today, right, so we summarize and push information to them. And the sales manager said he asked the salesperson what could be done better. He said, well, tell me who to target. Okay, and so now, awesome, so now we send a list of the 10 best customers and prospects to target and why. And we, you know, the wingman literally puts it in the person's hand and what does that make us? I don't think that makes us a data company or a technology company. It makes us a service company, we're.
Speaker 2:What kills me, ron, if you can help thread the message, is a lot of these so-called tools, whether it's crm. You know very well-known providers, um, and, and there's others. I think those companies are making a ton of money. You know they're the only ones making money in the gold rush by selling shovels to people going digging for gold, and it's tantamount to a lie. It really is. Now they can say well, I sold you the shovel. Well, hey, you know, dumbo, you know who's getting rich by mining gold.
Speaker 1:So I'd say take a look at your expenses mining gold.
Speaker 1:So I'd say, take a look at your expenses. Well, the other side again, your perspective is the thing that drives it. A lot of people want to sell a machine. Customer doesn't want to buy a machine. Customer wants to buy a number of miles of road, buy a number of dozen of feet of hole, all that very simple stuff. And we have classes to determine market segmentation and why, grouping people with similar needs and wants. Then we get into territory, establishing territories, and we calculate the potential of the territory in dollars and cents for parts, for service or rental, for machines, and then we go to market coverage.
Speaker 1:So I'm 20, 40 hours into now training somebody on OK, here's next year. How many calls are you going to make next year? Who are they going to be with? Why'd you choose them? Who are they going to be with? Why did you choose them? Your built data product gives them the answer to that question without them having to think about it. And I don't know and you and I have talked about this how you get that word out, how you get people to change to using these tools that have been around a long time, by the way, not just yours for three months, that's correct. This is the challenge and how to scale the damn thing. So you know, I hope this discussion and the people that are listening to it is resonating, that there's better ways to manage the sales team, the people I call advisors. There's better ways to manage your market share. There's better ways to make money and it's not necessarily by being smarter, it's just being better organized and doing what you think you need to do. Is that kind of a reasonable conclusion to draw after this?
Speaker 2:short it is. I would add a couple of things. One is you know, talk to you, talk to Steve Clegg, talk to people who can help. I'm going to say you two are some of the best minds I've ever met and you could ripple through. You can quickly cut through a lot of confusion and listen. Disruption will continue to occur.
Speaker 2:I think if you were, the question is how much of the risk can you negate? Right, I would argue you could probably negate 80% of the risk in your operating model if you listened to you and Steve Clegg and us as a service provider. The 20% in variability are market conditions. You hear some of the dominant narrative about tariffs and interest rates and this and that it is noise. It's noise, and tomorrow it's going to be something else.
Speaker 1:Yep, and we shouldn't be afraid of it. In fact, I welcome that stuff. Otherwise, just imagine how boring it would be if it was tranquil. I haven't had that in my whole damn life and I don't want it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to see you in.
Speaker 2:October.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Well, nick's going to see the light and get out to the islands In the background. My favorite beach looks just like that, except there's less surf. It runs about three and a half miles and there might be 50 to 75 people on it.
Speaker 2:And you promised me a good cup of coffee, though.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe it won't just be coffee, that's fine. Thank you, nick, and thank everyone for being a blessing that has listened to this Mahalo and I look forward to having you with me on the next Candid Conversation Mahalo, Thank you.
