#371: Patrick Martinez on Building Sales Certainty in Your Business

In this week's episode of AU, guest Patrick Martinez of Fivestone Solutions joins Ron to discuss the five sales roles every business has, and why an owner trying to cover all five statistically caps out between $1.5 and $2.5 million.

Transcript

Ron:

Hello. Hello there. Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged. I hope you're having a great day. I hope you've had a wonderful summer. Summer is over. Maybe it's not officially over, but it's almost over here as we're dropping this show to you all in mid-September. I had a great summer. I hope all of you did, but I know I did. It was very relaxing. If you see me, you'll have to ask me about my trip to Italy. I'm right now recording this about to head out to Italy, but when we drop the show, I'll have returned. Hopefully I'll have had some very good Italian pasta and some wine and some gelato and all the finer things in life. If we connect at a fall event, you'll have to ask me about it. That's how I'll know you listen to this show, if you ask me about Italy. Today we have a very special guest. This is a good friend, industry expert, and this person I've gotten to know really over the last few years. Connected with him on many different occasions and really have grown to appreciate and respect the value that he's offering all of his clients and partners. I'm bringing it here to all of you. You didn't have to pay for a session, you didn't have to pay for consulting, and you're going to get a lot of wisdom dropped on you. I know that because I know Patrick. Patrick's our guest today, and he's a consummate professional, and I know I'm going to learn a lot in this conversation. One of the reasons I had him on here is because I have so many questions, and I know he has answers. So today I'm excited to bring you Patrick Martinez. He is the CEO and head coach of Fivestone Solutions. They're out of Thousand Oaks, California, and he has been supporting entrepreneurs for many, many years. Today he runs a consultancy helping businesses around all things sales, sales strategy, sales structure. He really has a very similar mission in life and in business, and that's to help businesses grow. I know that's one of many reasons that I like Patrick, and I know that you're all going to find a lot of value. So let's go ahead and bring in Patrick, get the conversation started, and we're all going to learn something. Patrick, how are you, sir?

Patrick:

Hey there. Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to this.

Ron:

Oh, man. We're going to have a blast. I had read that you're from Thousand Oaks. Is that where you're coming to us from right now?

Patrick:

It is, yeah. Our company, like your company, is pretty virtual. We have people all over the place. But I live in Thousand Oaks. I've been here 20 years now this summer. It's just north of Los Angeles. Nobody knows where Thousand Oaks is, but I say we're like the ghetto of Malibu. Everybody knows where Malibu is. I've been in Southern California my whole life.

Ron:

So when you say Southern Cal, whenever I have somebody on the show from California, a lot of our listeners around the world know that in the not too distant past, there were all those really terrible fires that happened down there. And here we are now, Q3 2026. What's the state of affairs down in Southern Cal?

Patrick:

Well, we've got to keep it light, I think, for the podcast, but it's not great. The rebuilding effort is incredibly slow. I have several friends that are still in negotiations with their insurance companies and things like that, so they haven't even started rebuilding yet, because they haven't even gotten any money yet. It's been a little bumpy. These areas are not really easy to build in anyway, so we're kind of still not great yet, but hopefully it'll improve.

Ron:

I was talking to someone actually this past week. I was out at an event in Las Vegas. I was at the Origin facilities, and I ran into a dealer in Southern Cal. I asked him a similar question, and what he was educating me on, I thought it was sad but fascinating, is that a lot of the homes in certain parts, maybe Malibu, maybe in the Palisades, a lot of those homes were previously built on septic systems. And now that those sites have been cleared and there's going to be rebuilding, many of those homes have to be brought back to current standards, which means putting them on city water or city sewer, which means completely redoing infrastructure for those cities.

Patrick:

I know. There's lots of little things like that, little slash not so little. There's issues with water availability in terms of some of these areas. There's the battles with the insurance companies and the states. It's pretty bumpy and it's going to take a long time. A lot of people don't realize that entire neighborhoods were leveled. In Southern California, I've been here my whole life, we're used to fires and you're used to certain areas or neighborhoods being more prone to fire. But this was in the city. The entire city is leveled. So there are things that can't be built anymore. Some of these streets are too narrow to pass code. Like you said, the sewer systems, sprinkler systems, how much water is needed, all that kind of stuff. So it's going to be a long run. I've had a lot of people say, from a construction standpoint, "Oh, there's going to be so much business." I'm like, "You have no idea." There's already a labor and material shortage. Not to mention how many houses have to be built. Without the neighborhoods being burned down, there's already a shortage. You can't get into any of the neighborhoods. You can't park anywhere. It's not exactly glamorous work that people think it's going to be. It's going to be a long haul.

Ron:

Yeah. Well, let's flip it to something more positive. Geez, Ron, what a downer question to start the interview.

Ron:

Give us a quick snapshot, Patrick, of your consultancy. What type of work do you all do? Who do you typically work with?

Patrick:

Great question. About 50% of our revenue as a company comes from the manufacturing side. That is US-based manufacturing companies, usually family started, family run. Maybe there's some PE components where they're trying to grow the company or expand the company, that kind of thing. So about 50% is on the manufacturing side. About 50% is on the contractor side, so specialty contractors and all that stuff. But it's 100% engineer technical nerds, because that's what I am, that's what I started as. I was on an engineering path, and then fate intervened and I did something different.

Ron:

So give me clarity, if you don't mind. When you say manufacturer clients, what is a typical type of manufacturer client? Who are the personnel that you're working with? And the same for the contractor. What are the types of contractors you're working with?

Patrick:

Great question. On the manufacturing side, I'm usually brought in by an owner, CEO, sometimes a chief commercial officer, someone who's in charge of revenue. Or I can be brought in by a private equity firm to help either decide if they want to buy a company, or to grow a company they've recently purchased, or in the case of one of my clients, help them grow the company to then flip the company. Actually, two of my clients right now. So usually somebody on the commercial side. A lot of times it's second generation, because usually what you have is mom and dad started the company as the experts in whatever this technology is or this product is that they make. Second generation comes in, wants to grow that, and then about the time that they are trying to figure out what's next, we help them figure out what's next and get their processes in place. So sales playbooks, get their people dialed in. Do you have a lot of subject matter expert engineers and no real true salespeople, and how does that work together? And then what are their processes around sales? That's the manufacturing side, and it's all kinds of cool stuff. I got to tour a space facility this week, because one of my clients does work for one of the big space firms. Well, they work for all the big space firms that you've heard of that I'm not allowed to mention. I got to tour one of those facilities today and watch them making satellites and all kinds of just crazy stuff. All the stuff that just makes this country amazing. We make amazing stuff, and most people don't realize it because they're not paying attention, but we make a lot of cool stuff here in the US. Precision metal, precision plastic, aerospace, rolling companies, all kinds of stuff that we make in this country. So I work for lots of companies you've never heard of that are pretty significant. Then the other half is specialty contractors. Usually anybody working in the high-end residential market, such as integrators, lighting people, shading specialists, high-end plumbers, high-end painters, faux finishers, all that kind of stuff. Anybody who at their heart is a specialist and now they're trying to figure out, "Oh, this thing could go somewhere. How do I grow my company? How do I eventually exit my company? How do I get somebody else to do the revenue generation and the sales besides the owner?" And that's a whole lot of work over there that we do.

Ron:

At a high level, the elevator pitch if you will, if people are engaging you, what's the pitch? What's the general reason they've engaged Fivestone Solutions?

Patrick:

We help you attain sales certainty. There are lots of different reasons why companies don't have sales certainty and their pipeline is bumpy, or maybe they're not closing deals that they should have been closing, or their sales process is really chaotic. These are all the symptoms, but our goal is sales certainty. So a strong pipeline, steady lead flow, systems that work and deals that close.

Ron:

I would venture to say that is 100% of the people listening going, "Uh-huh, yes, please. I would like some of that." That sounds amazing. Are your customers generally regional or local to you there in California, or do you work with people in different locations?

Patrick:

We're international. We've done a lot of stuff all over the world from Africa to India to everywhere else. I have a few clients in the Southern California area that get a little more face time from me because I'm local. And then we have clients all over the country. My manufacturing clients, I have one in Boston, one in Virginia, one in Green Bay. All over the place. The space facility that I got to tour was local here because the client flew out here, so I got to go in and check it all out. And then our contractors are all over the country.

Ron:

Maybe these two questions merge, but out of curiosity, how did you land in a place where you were helping AV integrators, custom integrators? Such a niche. I know that when I go out in the outside world and I leave this bubble, people go, "Who do you work with? What are they? How did you end up there?" And I'm like, "Well, I was dropped there by Lutron out of college and I never left." How did you land there? And the bigger question is, what's your background?

Patrick:

I was on an engineering path to Cal Poly. I got a little distracted by work and cars and money and girls, like every teenage guy does. I ended up not going to school, so I started working. Then around 1995, a buddy of mine... I was working a job that I had. I'd kind of reached the pinnacle of that job at, I don't know, 19 or whatever. And I saw where the future led and I was like, "This is not for me." And my buddy was like, "Oh, we're putting these things in called DSS satellites, and they pay us like $500 a dish to install. Do you want to come help me out?" And I was like, "Sure." So I got the job installing DirecTV satellite dishes, which was part of an audio-video integration company. I worked there for a little while. The guy who recruited me, we ended up starting a business together in '95. We landed our first kind of big, real job and got our first big deposit check like one does and put it in the bank. And then a week later he had taken the money out of the bank and skipped town. So that was my first foray into partnerships. It's like, whoa, this is wild.

Ron:

I'm not going to say they can't work, for all my people out there. But with stories I've heard, they normally don't work. The odds are never in your favor. It's not if they'll end, it's only when they'll end.

Patrick:

It is true. The odds are never in your favor.

Ron:

I know I'm going to get some comments of people going, "No, that's not true. We've been partners forever."

Patrick:

Good for you. I think if you do partnerships well, and a lot of that has to do with... I don't know if you all ever talk about the EOS process. Not to go down a rabbit hole.

Ron:

We are EOS. We've talked about it a few times. But feel free. Go from your lens or your perspective.

Patrick:

I'll be sure to talk about that today. At any rate, I think if you implement EOS in a partnership that works and is grounded in aligned values and all that good stuff, sure. This was not that, which is why I had to go to the customer and go, "I don't have your money and I can't do your job, and I'm very sorry." And that customer said, "Hey man, I knew that guy was a goofball. You're my guy. Here's more money. Finish my project." And then he went on to be my number one client. For years I could trace, like six degrees of Kevin Bacon, I could trace everybody back to that one client who just referred business. So that was our own business my wife and I started in '96. Off to the races. Started setting the clock on VCRs and going from there. Building theaters, building rooms, doing integration, everything. Ran that for a while, sold that business. Worked for the company who bought my business for a while, and then left that space. Around that time I was getting kind of burned out, and I was working with a sales coach. When I finally left the industry, if you will, he said, "You really should just come work with us. You know the stuff, you know our systems, you know our processes, you're a systems guy. Why don't you come work with us?" And so I did that. I worked with them for a few years, and then launched my own deal. So that's how I got here.

Ron:

That's amazing. Your independent practice, Fivestone Solutions, how long have you all been out there supporting people?

Patrick:

A little over 12 years now, which is kind of nuts. We're a team of four, so four of us total, spread all over the world really with this new virtual world we're in. Four employees, and then we have a few other technical partners and technical contractors that help us on some of the deeper technology stuff to support our clients. But four of us are full-time for Fivestone only.

Ron:

This show, Allison will drop me a note over here and she'll tell me exactly, but I want to say this show is up in the 360s, 370s in terms of our show count. There she is, Allison's always on the spot. She goes, "371." This is going to be show 371.

Patrick:

Fantastic.

Ron:

Your camera is one of the top three for anyone that's been on the show. It may be number one, but I'm thinking of a couple other people that also had a very polished professional digital visual presence. And surprisingly and humorously, the vast majority of our industry does not. I love you all that have been on my podcast. I'm not picking on you. But Patrick's is better. If you're listening to this, you'll have to go to YouTube and actually watch the show and see what I'm talking about. Is that just from your AV nerddom? You're like, "If I'm going to be on camera, I'm going to look good."

Patrick:

It's a bad combination of anything worth doing is worth overdoing, which is one of my mantras, and the fact that I just like gear. I'm a gear guy, I'm a car guy, I'm a truck guy, like everything. So I got a little bit into this. I actually got turned on to it by one of my clients. I had this young kid I was coaching and every time he came on Zoom I was like, "What is this?"

Ron:

Why do you look so good?

Patrick:

Yeah, I was like, "This kid is like a supermodel. What are you doing?" And he was embarrassed to tell me what he had spent and what he had done and what he was doing. And I was like, "I need to know more." So he sent me down a rabbit hole, and then, like I tell my clients, coaches have coaches. So I got a coach to help me set up my space. I did an online program with a coach to get me dialed in on my space, and then another coach to help me with some of my technology. We do a weekly sales training and we do a lot of fancy on-screen stuff and things like that. Coaches have coaches, professionals have coaches, everybody's got coaches. I'd just put that out there, that you're not at the top of your game no matter what you're doing. To your point on the camera, it's just nerddom. It's a Canon EOS R with a 4K video converter, and then good lighting. That makes a big difference. And then I have multiple cameras in this space, so I can do different stuff.

Ron:

Just to finish that thought, your camera outputs a 4K feed. You're able to likely use an HDMI converter to bring that in via some box. I'm using Blackmagic.

Patrick:

It's a little box on that camera. Basically HDMI to USB. Let me see. On this camera, it's USB or HDMI mini to HDMI. It goes into my PC as HDMI.

Ron:

Oh, it does?

Patrick:

And then we're recording and doing other stuff.

Ron:

Wow, that's a super fancy setup.

Patrick:

I have it toned down. I think we record here at 1080p or 720p, because the 4K, as you know, is just unmanageable in terms of the speed of it.

Ron:

I'm going to admit transparently here a fault and inadequacy that I have. I did my video thing in like 2021. It was a COVID project. I got a 4K video. Tried to have video that didn't suck. And I did it because I was watching my son. Some people have heard this story, but I was watching my son play Fortnite, and he was watching all these streamers. And all these streamers looked so gosh darn good on YouTube. And yet all the meetings I was having with professionals making millions of dollars, we all looked like crap online.

Patrick:

During COVID you had professional newscasters from home looking like crap. Just the other day I was at an office and there was ESPN in the background, and they were talking to a professional ESPN employee at home on his Zoom setup, and it looked considerably worse than our stuff does. I'm just like, "Wow, this is crazy."

Ron:

It was funny. I've had people ask me, and I'm calling myself out here publicly, "How'd you do it?" And I've given many people lists of pieces and parts. But I've always meant to document it and put it formally, maybe up on our website as a blog post or something. Did you ever do that? Did you ever put out, "Here's the pieces and parts I used and here's how to do your own cool setup in your office?"

Patrick:

No. What I do is I refer people to the coaching program that I signed up for, which is called On Screen Authority. Allison can put that in the show notes. On my YouTube channel, which Allison's also going to put in the notes later on, I did a walk around of me in the space. I don't get super detailed on all the billions of Amazon adapters and all the crap that I had to buy and return, and that didn't work and did work, but it does walk around the office here and shows what I've got going on. And then, I am a nerd. My audio controller is a Linn Selekt and my desktop speakers are Sonus fabers. Everything's a little bit over the top.

Ron:

I've got Sonus fabers as well, actually.

Patrick:

It's the only way to go, man. Are you going to go by the factory when you go to Italy?

Ron:

You know what? Shame on me, I'm being publicly called out here. I did not set that up in advance.

Patrick:

Oh, man. Got to rally.

Ron:

What, do you know what part of Italy they're in?

Patrick:

I don't. I haven't been there. I know a lot of guys that have been there, but you have to rally now. Get Allison on that. She'll find out how to get you on that.

Ron:

Yeah, Allison will figure that out for me no doubt.

Ron:

Let's jump into what people are actually tuning in to you to learn and talk about. Tell me at a high level, maybe we could start with when you have people that begin your coaching program and/or you're consulting for them, how do you diagnose what their current state is and maybe help them understand what's possible? I don't even know if I'm asking that question the best way I could, but how do you start with people?

Patrick:

There are a couple different paths to work with us. There are the one-on-one engagements, which are more in depth, more expensive, longer, deeper. Those usually start with a discovery call, 45 minutes to an hour, and we walk through all of our stuff. Usually people just show up and throw up. They have so much stuff on their mind, I don't have to do much discovery, because they have some major pain point. But I usually let them kind of work that out and then pull on some strings and see what's going on. In addition to the one-on-one program, we have a weekly group program. For the weekly group program, we actually have a diagnostic tool that people can self-diagnose themselves with, or that we can fill out together on a call, and that's usually another good way to uncover the stuff. Those are for specialty contractors. We kind of know where the usual pain points are, so we have you rate yourself in some of these areas.

Ron:

Got it. So how do they know what level of engagement to make with someone like yourself, whether it's your firm or another firm? Is it based on their revenue? Is it based on their pain and suffering? What is it that dictates what's the right way to do something?

Patrick:

Super great question. Usually it's this concept of brandwidth, like how much do they know me, how much do they trust me, and how big are their problems? If they know me well and trust me well and they have big problems, we usually jump right into a one-on-one engagement. If they are kind of intrigued about what we have to offer but they don't quite know if it's going to work or if they're going to be able to do it themselves, think EOS self-implementation, right? Can I give you tools and you will go do them yourself? Then we usually get them into our group program, and our group program is way more affordable. It's usually one tenth of the price. And they're in there with other like-minded people. But it's self-implementation. They've got to do the work themselves, because I can't do the pushups for you. You have to do it yourself. So we usually through discovery will sort that out. Do you have a lot of problems? Are you okay spending more money? Do you know that you need actual hands-on help versus self-implementation? We'll go towards the one-on-one avenue. If it's like, "I think we want to give this a shot," we'll go into the group model. And sometimes it goes back and forth. Sometimes people join the group program and then... we just had an email this morning that somebody was like, "I love the group program, but I'm not doing my pushups. What does it look like for us to work closer?" So they will then hop over the fence. But we have a limited amount of bandwidth there. With only four of us, we're always right on the edge of maxing the calendar out. So it just depends where we're at in the workflow.

Ron:

I'm going to describe to you a conversation I had this morning with an integrator out of the Northeast. And I'm going to make sure they watch this episode. So when I send this to them, they're going to go, "Hey, he was talking about me." In this case, this is a $2 million revenue business. Been in business more than 10 years. And in their case, they have seven employees. Now that person will really know who I'm talking about. "Man, Ron was talking about me." And the owner founder is still involved in 95% of the sales activities.

Patrick:

100%, yeah.

Ron:

And feels that he is without knowledge or awareness of how to crack the nut, and how to get beyond that and all of the weight, which is all the other entrepreneurial weights of a business owner. Including the need to win and earn all of that business. I'll just serve that up to you. Where would you go with that? Is it even realistic to think that that person could get help or grow beyond that? And if so, how would you think about that?

Patrick:

That's a great question. It's a very common spot, because at two million you're busier than a one-handed paper hanger usually, because you don't have enough money to hire all of the other people.

Ron:

I could see it on his face. It was 100 hour weeks.

Patrick:

Exactly. So then we look at phase of life. When's he looking to exit or retire, or is he? Is he really young?

Ron:

I think he's early. I don't know, and now he's going to get angry here, but I'm going to say maybe he was in his mid to late 30s.

Patrick:

Okay, so he's got a longer runway. So now we just have to triage a few things to keep him from getting divorced or having his kids run away with other parents that pay attention to him or things like that. So we do a little bit of triage in terms of where he's spending his most time. And then, is it those areas that I talked about? Does he have a steady stream of leads? Is he working with a company like One Firefly where he's got good leads and he's not maximizing them, or he's choosing to chase the wrong deals? If he's the only salesperson, what kind of salesperson is he? We break sales into five roles. We do a ton of this on YouTube and other places, so if you want to dig into it. Is he a hunter where he's really good about lining up the deals, or is he more of a farmer or a subject matter expert where deals are coming to him? So where's he fitting in the lineup and where can we support him, with maybe a hire, like his first salesperson? He's got to hire his first salesperson. Does he even understand what that person would do? A lot of technical people that need to hire a hunting salesperson have no idea what Tuesday looks like for a hunting salesperson. They don't even know what they're supposed to be doing. So we do some diagnostic there. And then bigger picture, we get into some stuff. I could put something on the screen real quick if you want to take a peek.

Ron:

Yeah. I'm going to click a button to help you share that here.

Patrick:

I didn't notice your Mac stuff in the background. I finally got my first Mac here this past week.

Ron:

Oh, man, this is vintage. I've got a buddy who helps me find vintage stuff. This is a 1991. I just got my hands on that a couple of weeks ago actually.

Patrick:

So this is a diagnostic tool I mentioned, and people can contact me. I know you're going to get my contact info, I can send this out. We're really focused around reliable leads, your sales systems, and consistent closing. Let's go with reliable leads. You all are the marketing people. First of all, we've got to get your mindset right. You're not a technician, you're not a clerk, you're a professional salesperson. So that's the number one mindset. Trusted brand builder. Are you the number one person for whatever it is you do in your particular postal district? Do people know you and know what you stand for and know to call you when something comes up? And then strategic partners. Do you have at least 50 centers of influence that can and do refer you business? So contractors, builders, architects, whatever. That's the kind of stuff we're focused on from a leads perspective. And then we go on to sales systems, then we go on to closing. For your guy here, it would really be triage. Let's plug some holes, find out where the bigger picture problem is. We take a now, soon, later approach. What's the stuff we've got to deal with now so you don't get divorced? What is the stuff you've got to do soon that will help you grow? And then what do you do later? What does five years from now look like? I hope it's not 100-hour weeks still, because you're not going to make it. So what kind of hires would you have in place? Is he still doing his own design work? What's he doing for service? All these kinds of things are part of the discovery model.

Ron:

What is the mindset of people, Patrick, that you've partnered with? Probably all types. People that have had ambition to succeed and then maybe failed to execute. And you have other, I'll just say, great students that have ambition to change. They take a coach and they change. And they get better and better and better, and ultimately they move up the ladder. Whatever that means for them. What are the characteristics of the businesses that successfully climb that ladder?

Patrick:

Such a good question. Coachability, but a lot of people use that term coachability, so I like to clearly define it for people that we talk to. It's a two-parter. Are they open to new ideas, and do they take action on those ideas? That's coachability. Because you have people who are really excited and open and chase every squirrel, but don't execute and take action. You have people that take a whole bunch of action, but they're not really open to feedback from someone who might know a little something that they're not thinking about, because they're a little bit myopic in their situation. So I've worked with all types, as you said. We want to be open to new ideas, and we have to take action, and that's actually a requirement for being in our group class, our group sessions. You need to be open and you need to take action.

Ron:

How do you hold the people that work with you accountable? Accountability is a big part. A lot of us entrepreneurs and business owners, there aren't many people in our entire lives to hold us accountable. And you're striking me as somebody that probably holds people accountable that you work with.

Patrick:

If you know your DISC profiles, I know a lot of your listeners will know their DISC profile. I'm a 92 drive and a 17 patience, which means I'm more driven than 92% of the population, and I'm less patient than 86% of the population or whatever. So I'm urgent and I'm mean, and that's how I keep people accountable. No. It's just the drive. I can manage the drive. I'm also a little bit of a unique profile in that I'm higher than the average on analytic detail. So I'm process compliant.

Ron:

That's C, right?

Patrick:

That's the C, yeah. I'm like a 52 on C. And you don't usually get that package together, so what that allows me to be is really driven but also kind of detailed, which causes me some challenges sometimes in my own brain, because I want to go and then I want to go, "Oh, there's a right way to do this, and there's a perfect way to do this."

Ron:

That could cause internal friction in you. I could see that.

Patrick:

When we're in the nerd space, we call that a me-me conflict. So I'm having conflict, but it's all internal, so me-me, rather than a me-Ron conflict. That makes me good at my job. It also makes me a little crazy for my wife to handle sometimes. But yeah, just that drive, the accountability, the regular check-ins. All of our one-on-one engagements, we're meeting at least once a week, so there might be a homework assignment. They know they've got to show up with their homework done. In our weekly group sessions every Thursday night, you get a weekly scorecard with how many touches you did, how many people you touched, what kind of meetings you had with new partners, how much stuff did you propose this week, how much stuff did you close. There are a few metrics there.

Ron:

It's almost like you're in some capacity a pseudo sales manager for these people. I'm hearing some accountabilities that are sales manager-esque.

Patrick:

It's funny that you mention that, because sometimes that's above board and spoken, where I'm actually hired as outsourced sales management, and sometimes it's implied. So I do have projects where I do outsourced sales management for a certain amount of time. I have a client right now who's looking for a new sales leader, so I've been jumping in and helping them with that for now. And then I have other clients where I'm almost a sales manager to the owner, because the owner needs the accountability partner to get stuff done. Owners get pulled in so many different directions, especially your case study, the $2 million a year guy. He's getting pulled in 100 different directions.

Ron:

And he desperately wants to grow and succeed and provide for his family and his team. And on occasion it can feel, I don't want to say hopeless, but it can feel particularly hard.

Patrick:

A guy like that would benefit from being in our group program because he's going to be around other people in that phase of life, and hearing that he's not alone in community. Our community is really strong. And then we also do a monthly owner/manager session. We have one coming this Monday actually. Only owners and managers, where we get together and we talk about crazy salespeople and eroding profit margins and marketing challenges, all that kind of stuff that the owners care about that the salespeople don't necessarily care about that much, or don't have the visibility to.

Ron:

To go high level, I understand there's no black or white answer to this. If you don't mind, I'm going to stay focused on the contractor, because that's my universe in terms of who's listening or tuning into this show. Not too many SpaceX types are probably watching Automation Unplugged, although it'd be pretty cool if they were.

Patrick:

It was so cool, man. It was so cool. And I couldn't take any pictures of anything, can't talk about anything, but it was like, "Oh, this is so rad." High value for our members here is the specialty contractor space. So ask your question.

Ron:

My question is the concept of owner, primary owner sellers. What are the typical realistic scenarios where they could move beyond being the primary breadwinner, or the only breadwinner, in their business? And a lot of them, I'm going to insert, you could challenge these statements, a lot of them probably think, "I'm the best salesperson. No one could sell as good as me. No one can produce as much as me." And because delegating and bringing on help is, in my opinion, one of the harder things to learn in entrepreneurship, but it's also one of the bottlenecks to growth. What are characteristics of businesses that move beyond the primary owner, founder, salesperson, when they could start to grow more of a sales org? Is there a revenue size, an employee size, a mindset? Where do you think that falls?

Patrick:

If we look at the five sales roles, we start with general awareness, which is do people know who you are in the community, number one. Number two, hunting, which is now I've found a specific opportunity I'm going to pursue or a specific partner I'm going to pursue. Number three, subject matter expert. I'm the nerd that knows all the nerd stuff about all the nerd stuff. And then number four is our closers. These are the ones that ask for the business, might have to negotiate a deal, terms, whatever. And then five is farming. So these are our promise keepers, our client services managers, our technicians, all that stuff. So if we look at those five roles, what I like to do is determine through DISC profiling, general conversation, discovery, where is that owner strongest? Because nobody can be good at all five, you just can't. In that spectrum there are drivers, there are influencers, there are analytics, there are amiables, there are all kinds of types. So if you're doing all five roles like I did when I was owner and when I was a salesperson at the company that bought my company, we're limited. If you're doing all five, statistically, you cap out at $1.5 to $2.5 million in sales. And that's it. You can't get past it. There's just not enough week in the week to get past that number. So what I like to do is look at that owner, look at your case study, and ask where is he strongest? And then first things first is how can we split that off? If he's not the outgoing, high expressive, going to hit every event and do every lunch type, we need to find a way to do some general awareness and some hunting. Now, that might be through a marketing company, it might be through technology, it might be through some other thing to get general awareness and get advertising, whatever it is. And then hunting through that. You can lean on some technology. You don't have to hire a person for that. If he's really good at that stuff, but he's finding that he's spending every night pounding out some proposal in D-Tools or iPoint or Portal or whatever, then that's our pain point. Let's get you out of the subject matter expert work and let's hire a subject matter expert. Let's outsource a subject matter expert. Let's lean on AI more. Let's do something different to get you out of that seat. If he's finding that he's handling all these service calls, people are calling him in after the fact, he's doing a lot of hand-holding, he's resetting Apple IDs, then that's an element where we would look at, okay, how do we hire somebody for service? Do we take one of your existing technicians and make him a service person? Do we lean on OneVision? Do we do something different? So it starts with those five roles. What is he good at? What does he like doing, or she like doing? And then how do we adjust from there? That's usually the first step, something to get him out of all five seats.

Ron:

Let's say that you were able to do that analysis. Sorry, I'm going to push a little bit. I'll stay with this example. That business is doing so much revenue, so much free cash flow, and therefore putting on another salary may or may not be tenable in current dynamics of the business. I'm not passing judgment, I don't know that answer. But you could bring this down to a three-man company. Maybe they could clearly argue there isn't enough free cash flow to justify that next hire. So is there a size where it makes sense to think about bringing someone else to support the sales apparatus? Or is the question flawed in some way?

Patrick:

No, I think it's a valid question. We do have a lot of three-person companies we work with, so I'm totally familiar with that. It's really what you want to do. And if you really, really want to grow, then you've got to go get the person. You've got to find the money. Get a loan, do whatever it takes, take on a partner, whatever, if you really, really want to grow. Now, I'd like to peel that onion a little bit. Like you pressed me, I'd press them. What does growth mean to you? Does it mean more money at the end of the job? Well, that's a different issue. That's not necessarily a sales issue. It could be, you could not be pricing jobs well or you're not working for the right people or whatever, but that's a slightly different problem than "I just need more work." But here's the problem. We've talked about this. You have five sales roles. Somebody that can do all five, that's a unicorn. So if I'm doing a million and a half a year... Oh, here's the other thing. If you're the owner of the company and you're the top salesperson, you're doing a part-time job on both. You're a part-time owner of the company and you're a part-time salesperson, so you're not doing a good job on either one of those jobs. That's a different conversation. But if you were trying to do those five and you're like, "Okay, I'm at $1.5 million and I want to get to $3 million," well, you have a couple of choices. You can go try to find another unicorn. And everybody watching us knows how hard it is to find a salesperson that knows anything about this industry. Or you can start talking about splitting roles and responsibilities, and being deliberate on what you do in the sales funnel and the sales process, and what you no longer do in the sales process and the sales funnel.

Ron:

I love that. You were kind enough to invite me to speak to one of your groups. We did that a number of months ago, and that was a lot of fun. I was fortunate enough to watch you do some of your teaching before you teed me up and I talked about some branding and PR things. And I saw a diagram where it looked like a philosophy or a core truth within your framework. Can you speak to us about that? What is that and how do you think about and talk about that with your people?

Patrick:

Are you talking about the sales certainty thing that I showed? I'm going to take myself off the screen so you get the full size deal. What we find is that everybody that works with us has one goal in mind and that is this idea of sales certainty. And so we talk through what are the three things that get in our way of sales certainty. One of them is the inconsistent pipeline, something I'm sure that a lot of your clients are familiar with, and that's why they hired you to fix it. The pipeline is inconsistent. They have the roller coaster in terms of lead flow and opportunity flow. The other part that's keeping them from sales certainty is sales chaos. And then the third thing that's standing in their way from sales certainty is this idea of lost deals. So those are the three things we're attacking, and we attack an inconsistent pipeline by creating a reliable lead flow. That's where you all come in, on the marketing side. That's where we come in, in terms of the partner system, having you build a network of people who refer you, who are solid referral partners. So we tackle reliable leads with the partner system, with our trusted brand builder, and with getting your head right.

Ron:

Looking at your core there, inconsistent pipeline. I totally get that, and I'll put it into my words. You win some work, you go out and do the work. You're super proud of doing the work. And when you finish the work, you realize, "Oh, I don't have any more work." And so they ride this roller coaster. Is that what you mean by inconsistent?

Patrick:

It is, for sure. The business development efforts, and this is not just in the integration space, but even on the manufacturing side and the space side, we start doing business development work, we start meeting people, we go to a few events, we meet some new people, we have some coffee, we make some friends, and then, oh my gosh, what happens? It works, and we get a job. And then we start working on that job, and we neglect all that business development effort.

Ron:

Because now we're busy.

Patrick:

Now we're busy, and we're producing revenue, which is a false sense of security. We just talked about this this week on our weekly email. We send out a weekly email with tools and stuff every week, and we talked about it. Revenue doesn't matter. It's too late. You can't change anything about revenue. So I don't like to talk about revenue, which makes my bros over at VITAL kind of nuts sometimes, but I don't care. It's too late. So we're looking at sales opportunities, closed deals.

Ron:

Yeah, sales is a leading indicator, right? I need sales in order to have revenue down the road.

Patrick:

And then the leading indicator on that is touches to my network. How often am I doing my touches to my network and keeping in touch with my network? So back to your point, I start executing, my revenue numbers look great, I'm all excited, and then the bottom falls out because I finish the job, I collect final payment, and now I have nothing in the pipeline. So I have to go back to square one and start doing that business development stuff. And it's even worse in slightly larger firms. You were talking about your $2 million guy. Let's push that to $5 or $6 million. Let's put a couple of salespeople on the payroll, and let's pay those salespeople on revenue instead of closed deals. And then what happens? They're also worried about closing the deals out in production, and making sure the jobs get done and they get paid, because that's how they get paid, and so they start neglecting their pipeline as well.

Ron:

Also on your diagram, right in that core, I'm doing this now from memory, I saw sales chaos. I'll totally agree, the world tends towards entropy and chaos, but what exactly are you referring to there?

Patrick:

Sales chaos is every one of my salespeople does something different, does it differently. Or I'm this owner of the company and I'm selling, and every one of my deals looks different. I grab different stuff I want to sell. I sell it a different way. I make different promises. My project managers and my production team want to string me up because they are having to produce a different job every time. So that's a couple different ways it can look. Or you have multiple salespeople that all sell something differently and make different promises.

Ron:

What's your philosophy on that? Should there be a company way?

Patrick:

There should definitely be a company way, and it's documented in the sales playbook. Now, that doesn't mean we're going to suck all the fun and creativity out of it. There's been a lot of talk about technical packages lately, and people wanting to put packages of gear together and stuff. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about the way that you message the company, the promises that you make, how you put things in front of clients, how your different salespeople represent the company out in the world. There should be some consistency and a way to do it, 100%.

Ron:

I'm curious, of the businesses you cross paths with, what percentage would you say... Now, they're meeting you, meaning they've expressed a desire to grow and they're seeking help. And then there's those that haven't done that. So I'm just curious, how common do you think actually having a sales playbook or a defined set of rules of engagement for a business's sales staff is actually completed or true or exists in this technology contractor space?

Patrick:

The follow-up question I'd ask is, do you mean it's actually written down?

Ron:

That's why I added written down. Not between the owner's ears. They've got it. They know stuff. But it's written down and followed. Someone else could read it and go, "Okay, I understand."

Patrick:

It's usually less than like 4%. I hesitate to even say 5%. It's less than 5%, for sure. And there are a couple different things that I do see. I'll tell you what I do see. I do see, like you said, the owner's like, "Oh, yeah, we've got all that." And, "Okay, show me," and it doesn't exist, because they've never written anything down, because they're a visionary leader, and why would they? So there's that. Then there's the, "Oh, yeah, we built that in AI last year." Okay, when was the last time you looked at it after you built it? "Oh, well, it's sitting on the shelf collecting dust." Well, that doesn't help. Those are usually the two things, if I do hear that there's a playbook, that's usually what it is. And don't feel bad. I work with hundred million dollar manufacturing companies that are no different. I will say, "Send me your sales playbook," and there's nothing.

Ron:

I'm going to share with you, Patrick, something. I know this is me interviewing you, but I'm going to drop a little nugget here, and I want to find out if you've heard of others doing this. I'm assuming so, because this is not a new idea. But it is something we practice at One Firefly. For the longest time, I was the primary seller. No longer. I have a sales leader in Kendall, and salespeople on the team. They're called account executives. And yet I know that they still want and need coaching and guidance, as well as different personnel at One Firefly that are client-facing. And so we packaged a lot of the sales policies, products, why does the product exist, how to talk to people about it, when they push back on this, that, or the other, how to address it, role-play scenarios, case study references of clients in our portfolio that have succeeded with this. And we built all of that into an AI tool. Internally it's colloquially referred to as Ron Bot. It's not outward-facing. Our team uses it, and it's our most used AI tool in the entire company.

Patrick:

Love it.

Ron:

And it's one of our earliest ways we even adopted AI in the company. We were like, we need to get this knowledge, almost like a RAG model, and then make our team able to reference it through an AI tool. Today we use a Claude project for that. We did custom GPTs, then we did Gemini Gems. Now we do it as a Claude project with knowledge files, and it's worked really well. Translate that maybe for the audience, and what your thoughts or belief systems are.

Patrick:

I love that. That's amazing, and that's one of the ways that you can practically use AI right away. When we started doing playbooks over a dozen years ago, everything was super manual. We would sit everybody down in a room, and we had a workflow, and we would ask them questions, and we'd extract information, and we would write it down. And then we would put it together manually, and it would take weeks. We had playbook projects where Leslie and I would literally be locked in a closet for weeks pounding stuff out.

Ron:

I did it in '21 and it took six months.

Patrick:

It's a lift. Nowadays, and AI's not going to do this for you, our value model has changed. In the old days, our value model would be that extraction and the typesetting and the organization and all that stuff. Now, our value model is that we know what questions we should ask, and we know what pieces or chapters of your playbook you should have. We do that, and then we interview you. We use AI for interviews, we use AI for captures, we use AI for watching how people do things, actually walking through and, "Show me how you do the thing." Then we use AI to capture a lot of information there, and then we use AI to start to build it. Now, you've taken it one step further, which is you built this bitching thing, and now let's make it interactive and a two-way street. So now we have the bot, the Ron Bot, which is really, really good. And we're starting to do that. We're doing that now. We've been doing that. We're starting to see it more and more. Like I said earlier, it's not just the AI building the thing, but how are you then utilizing it?

Ron:

It's about use, right? You take that time to document it. And I remember how proud my team was. We were like, "Man, we did it. Thank God." And I was sitting here going, "Okay, great. Now are any of you going to look at it again?"

Patrick:

Exactly. And that's where the Claude project really comes into play. It's super, super bitching.

Ron:

So the bottom of the triad of your sales certainty matrix is this lost deals. Tell me about that and what your point of view is.

Patrick:

The biggest thing that I come across with specialty contractors is, "I'm not getting all these deals, I'm sending all these quotes out, blah, blah, blah." And we usually drill that down into, are you dealing with the right people? So that's where our qualified buyer blueprint comes in. We walk our clients through creating this persona of the qualified buyer blueprint. Probably similar to what you all do. We probably go a little bit more crazy because we're getting really specific on some stuff, and we built some AI tools around it and all that stuff. But who is the persona of who we're pursuing? Because it might not be that you lost a deal that you should have even got. You shouldn't have even bid on that job. So you can't be mad about not getting a job that you shouldn't be bidding on. That's a big one for consistent closing.

Patrick:

Another one that we just harp on, and if you indulge me in a little mini commercial, this show's going to air mid-September. We're still working on a date, but mid to end of September to beginning of October, we're going to be doing a workshop on prepaid design services. So you have trained your clients to abuse you. We're going to undo all of that. We're going to teach you from soup to nuts, how do you position prepaid design services? What's included? How do you talk about it? How do you handle objections? How do you get your paper signed, and how do you get your money? So we're going to take people through. It's going to be a long-form workshop, probably three or four hours, on everything to know about prepaid design services.

Ron:

Where will people that are listening, and the timing's perfect, this show will launch mid-September, where would they go to read up on that and determine whether they want to register?

Patrick:

We'll push that out through all of our social channels. I know Allison's got our LinkedIn and our YouTube and all that stuff, so we'll be there, and Instagram. We post on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Ron:

All right. So hit the Fivestone Solutions socials. While we're on it, I'm going to put that up just for timeliness. There's your LinkedIn. It's at 5stone. The number five, S-T-O-N-E. Now let's see here. What else can I put on the screen? I don't have any of your other social. Here, I've got your YouTube, which is @fivestoneteam. What type of content do you have up on YouTube?

Patrick:

It's a lot of what we do, technical stuff. We do have a little bit of "what do we do here all day," which is actually put up sessions from actual coaching engagements.

Ron:

So you're sharing a lot of free content. If people consume it, there's knowledge to be gained.

Patrick:

Yeah, we're of the Gary Vee family where we just give you everything. And if you want more, then eventually you'll sign up for us. We have a ton of stuff on YouTube, long-form videos. It's funny, we were talking about cameras. Like you, right, you've been doing this a lot longer than me, I was very bad when I started. Everybody's very bad when they start, and I have a couple of old videos from way back in the day that are terrible. And still, people are like, "Oh my gosh, I saw that video." They describe this terrible video, but the content mattered.

Ron:

Well, you might have looked terrible, but your content was gold. So it's quality over, you know, whatever.

Patrick:

We've been trying to get our members to... And we just finished this, the series that you were a part of, a seven-week series on becoming almost famous, and getting our members to just get out there and do camera-facing work and to just put themselves out there and to take a stand on something and talk about something. It's a very tough hurdle for a lot of people. And as you know, you just have to start doing it, because then you get good at it.

Ron:

When I did this podcast for the first time in April 2017, I had never been live, I had never been on camera in that way, and I was like, "I have no idea what I'm doing." But I'm going to press record and see what happens.

Patrick:

Just got to do it, man.

Ron:

Just got to do it. Many would argue I still don't know what I'm doing. But I just still press record and go for it every time. And it works out.

Patrick:

So anyway, there'll be a lot more stuff coming out about the prepaid design services workshop. Just your expression, what you just said now when I mentioned it, shows me that there just continues to be a huge demand. And so we're going to help you build the whole thing. You can come in literally having never done any sort of prepaid design, and you'll come out of there with a contract, a way to take money, and a way to message it. So that's what we're looking for.

Ron:

I love it. If you were to leave our audience today, Patrick, with maybe one nugget regarding their sales function and their business, that if they worked on that thing it probably would make a measurable difference in the coming year, what's the one thing? It can be one or two things. I won't restrict you. But what jumps to the top of mind for you?

Patrick:

Sweat's coming down.

Ron:

Make it the most impactful thing, Patrick. Don't fail me now.

Patrick:

Oh, man. What was I going to say? I thought of something, and you were just talking and then it went away. Mindset mastery, I think, is the biggest thing. You're not a technician anymore, or you were maybe never a technician, but you're not a technician and you're not a clerk sitting behind the counter waiting for somebody to walk in. You're a professional, and you're very good at what you do, and there are people who need what you do. So I want you to be the authority, and I want you to educate the community. Whatever that looks like. Could be hand-to-hand, could be face-to-face, could be on YouTube or Instagram or whatever, but lean into your authority and educate the public, and the work will come.

Ron:

Amen. I love it. I think we'll wrap it there. Patrick, we already gave out a few handles here, but do you mind if we give out an email address and your website?

Patrick:

Yeah, so fivestonesolutions.com goes everywhere. fivestoneacademy.com is specifically our weekly program, which is a super fun class. I can't believe this. Today we do it Friday mornings, and this is a Friday for anybody who doesn't know, and it was our 98th session today. So we have 98, we have 99, and we have 100. We have a secret plan for 100, which I don't want to say on this in case it gets postponed, but we have a really special thing we're coming up on for 100. So Fivestone Academy is our group program. Fivestone Solutions is our website. It talks about everything, which of course can get you to the academy. And then This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. is our email.

Ron:

I love it. Well, Patrick, I love what you're doing. I appreciate your goal to help businesses and business owners grow their business, and bringing them value and education and coaching and consulting. All of us at all levels of the game... I have an executive coach, and I value that person. I've been at entrepreneurship for 19 years, and the longer I do it, the more I realize I don't know.

Patrick:

Exactly.

Ron:

We all can use coaching. I find personally a lot of value in hiring professionals to bring them into your life. It's okay acknowledging you don't know what you don't know, and bringing others into your life that give you some perspective and guidance. I think that's a good thing to, dare I say, a shortcut to success.

Patrick:

Professionals have coaches and professionals practice. Those are the two big things you can do.

Ron:

Well, Patrick, thank you for joining me on this episode of Automation Unplugged.

Patrick:

Thank you. Super fun.

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.