ISEs3 Ep11: Bob Perkins, Founder – AAISP (now Emblaze)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to ISE Season 3, Sales Enablement History. And we have not only some sales enablement history, But some insider, some American Association of Inside Sales Professionals expertise on the show today. I couldn't be more excited. This is the first time actually that Bob Perkins and I have had a chance to cross paths. I've heard his name going back to, the first time I talked with Scott Santucci about the, Early days of the sales enablement society and the founding bob came up and so i'm excited to unpack that further but bob let's go straight to him. He has been In this game for a minute. He's been an inside sales leader and pioneer very clearly all the way back to 1993, which is when I was cutting my teeth. Actually, that's when I was showing up selling long distance door to door in Chicago. You're the guy that's been calling me a million times. I'm going to kick your hiney, right? Coming after me. And my early, this is how I learned to sell. My early sales pitch was, Oh, that's great. I'm here to help that go away. Those guys and gals won't be calling you anymore. If you just press hard three copies and then you can send them to me. So we were working maybe against and or with each other at some point, the inside sales team. Bob founded the AAISP officially in 2009 and boy, has it been a journey. We're going to get a little bit into the present and future in a minute, but Bob, I'd love it if you just take a minute to unpack the past, where you've been, who you are, And a little bit about the year to date of AAISP.

Yeah, I got into sales and briefly carried a bag and then moved into management. I loved leading people. But it was predominantly field sales for a few years and a friend called me. He said, Hey, there's this telesales manager job. I said, what is telesales? He says it's sales and you don't travel much. You do it over the phone. So I joined Unisys in 1993. I have to say that was transformational in my career. Within a year, I fell in love with this thing they call telesales and way back then people, the last few years we've heard the hybrid model. We were a hybrid model in 1993. Our telesales reps. Traveled quarterly out to meet key customers. And we were discreet. We were not an overlay. We had our own quota, our own set of accounts, and it was run like a sales machine, like an engine. We were the first ever Siebel. Inside sales. I guess we were called telesales installation. we used to pull out a stopwatch and time how long it would take to pull up a customer record. It wasn't. It wasn't pretty. From there, I had a very long about a, almost a 17, 18 year career in Director VP of Insight Sales, Unisys, Silicon Graphics, UnitedHealthcare. And then when I left UnitedHealthcare to go to a small company called Merrill DataCite, it was a software as a service. And then when I left UnitedHealthcare to go to a small company called Merrill DataCite, it was a software as a service. I had a very small team and it afforded me the opportunity then to finally launch the AAISP, which I had I had a vision and I would dream about this thing called AAISP for about three years. And I would tell my wife all about what I wanted to do. Finally, I had the wherewithal to start it while I remained, employed as a VP of inside sales. we had our very first conference in Minneapolis in 2009. I borrowed a sound system from our church. Me and my business partner, Larry Reeves, put on this conference. We had 50 people. And by year two, we had 200 people and a standing ovation for what we had started. Because everybody was saying, finally, someone is paying attention to this. Thing we all love called inside sales and we brought forth great speakers. We were getting senior leaders from companies like IBM, SAP even Salesforce to come and speak at our conferences. I didn't even have an idea of what a chapter would be until after we formed AAISP. Within a year or two, we were getting calls from places like Japan, Afghanistan, France. They all wanted us, they all heard of AAISP, And they were really begging to, begging us to start a chapter in their location. And boy, the thing just exploded beyond my, I thought we'd have one conference a year with maybe a hundred people near the end, we were just under a thousand people in Chicago in 2000 18, 19, right before COVID.

That is amazing. So shout out to larry reeves. It sounds and you and The church community back in the day getting this thing seated. I love the backstory. Let's take a moment to shift gears towards the past Of sales enablement. When did those first two words come to you. Inside sales That would be interesting as well When did you first hear inside sales.

This is great. This is a great question. And I often say there's nothing new under the sun. And I'll give you, I'll give you a great analogy. And then I'll answer your question. But the analogy is this thing that exploded about 6, 7 years ago called sales development. Everybody's getting SDRs. Everybody's getting BDRs. The fact is sales development and business development has been around for years. It just wasn't called that. In Unisys, we had a group called CRR, customer relationship rep. They were SDRs basically just didn't have all the tools, but sales enablement the function of having someone help with support training technology is not necessarily new. However, The same thing with inside sales. It was telesales forever. And then we wanted to pretty up that word because telesales reminded people that telemarketing, nobody likes telemarketing. So let's call it inside sales. Inside sales has stuck. We have a little bit of a phase of digital sales five, six years ago, got popular. So sales enablement, I first heard about the term and the category, this role about midstream through my tenure at AAISP, which was somewhere around 2012 ish in that range. I'm, and this is just a guess. And boy, did it take off. And I had some conversations with a couple of the founding members there, and that thing was just exploding as well. There was a convergence of this thing, now we call it digital sales. It's the power of the internet. And even the phone and the web and being able to transact, to support, to prospect, to have meetings with folks without having to go face to face. Many studies, especially recently are showing people, oftentimes prefer virtual meetings. Back in 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15, somewhere around there. I got a hold of this thing called Zoom and I started using it and I'd get up at these conferences way before people even knew what Zoom was. And I said, raise your hand if you're using video when you sell and not 10 percent of the hands would go up, and I said, listen, you gotta do it. It's the next best thing to being there in person. So that, that's the era we went through that, so back to your question of sales enablement, probably around that 2012 timeframe. And I thought, wow, a little bit like this thing called inside digital sales, a little bit long overdue. And now it's, now you have to have it. It's not even, should we have inside sales? No, that's a. Table steak, you got to have it.

And so what I've heard generally is the folks who were putting those two words out there were vendors. The Sales Enablement Society itself was not brought into existence until 2016. And Scott Santucci's work at Forrester was in that 2008 timeframe, that Forrester officially invest in and create a practice and a business unit around. Who were those for you? If you could connect the dots for the audience, what were those individuals that you recall that were using those two words or what was your exposure?

Yeah, it was you remember when social selling got, had all the buzz around it again, that was probably, somewhere 2010, 11 ish as well. And oh, you had to be social selling, and then word sales enablement just started being used. I wouldn't say it was fully understood. I, hopefully it's more understood today. But it became a thing and roles started popping up for people that, that their role was sales enablement. Given that title, and I think much like the S-D-R-B-D-R title in a very similar fashion, it was something that was born out of this. This huge Engine that we now know, you know back when it was called telesales. It's virtual sales now And it's enabled by lots of technology Talk about the three legged stool I don't want to I don't want to Discount the two most important legs to that stool It's not technology, but it's people and it's leadership. And then of course you have tools to make it all happen. Inside sales was explode. We grew too fast. I had this theory that we were hiring at a rate that we could not effectively train. We brought in kids right out of college. We gave them a phone and a computer and we expected this. Revenue would happen. And I think we got a little upside down. I would say right around the year 2015, 16, 17. And so, we needed to train better. We needed to have better tool adoption. We needed to, to somehow, bring these less experienced reps. Up to snuff on their profession. Before there was this big virtual explosion we had to learn just like you learned. You went knocked on doors and you got, you got rejected. You had to get back up and do it again. And that was learning by experience. We shortcut that I think a little bit, and I think it, it hurt us as a professional a little bit.

Interesting. So you said that timeframe would be the 2015 2017 when there was even a shift from inside sales as the two words to BDRs or SDRs.

Certainly I put an umbrella clause up there called inside sales late, you could call it digital sales if you wanted their virtual sales, but that umbrella included this very popular and expanding role called SDR BDR.

Got it. And from a human being perspective, again, we're all about community at Orchestrate Sales. Were there individuals, like when you say social selling, was there someone that you interacted with or worked with as a subject matter expert? Same with sales enablement.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a woman called Jill Rowley, the EloQueen.

Every episode, Jill is MVP of social selling.

I can still remember some of her little sayings that have stuck with me over the years, it was good stuff. She did a great job ushering in that, that social selling mix into the world of sales.

And what about sales enablement? Any folks stick out to you in the early days?

Scott Santucci, of course, because he and I met on a number of occasions. We did a couple of joint, I know we did a joint meeting out here in Phoenix with the Sales Enablement Society and A-A-I-S-P before we got acquired by CVI. I would say that was right around the 2020 ish timeframe. So there's been some joint meetings. I understand. Since my retirement and selling AAISP to CVI, that there was a joint meeting recently between Revenue Enablement Society and Emblaze down in Atlanta, which I heard was very successful. So it's great to see the two organizations working together. I now live in Arizona, but we did a joint meeting, which I thought was excellent out here in Phoenix. And some of the SES members came out, the AAISP members came out. We had a couple of different topics. One of which of course was sales enablement that we talked about. And we, I would say we probably did that in a handful of chapters. Maybe some of which I wasn't even aware of. We had. Gosh, we had upwards to 60, 70 chapters globally couldn't keep track of them. And I know sales enablement society had probably as many, if not more even just here in the U S. I think there, there were two distinct differences. During the time that at least I had connection connectivity with Scott and team and that is we had been up and running for a while. We were a for profit organization. We had very large sponsorship packages upwards into the 100, 200, 000 dollars, and I remember talking with Scott a little bit about hey, I'm happy to share a little bit of our framework. I believe at the time they were a kind of a loosely put together non, non for profit, which by the way when I found it in 2009, I considered. Going the nonprofit route. I was doing this as a little bit of a side thing because I was passionate about it. And was advised by some friends and attorneys to go the LLC route, which we did. And, that, structure allowed us to charge for conferences and memberships and trainings, and then have a sponsorship package. And we, at our height, we had about 12 or 13 full time employees. As well and without that forget it we you know, larry reeves and I we were staying up late at night Putting this thing together the first year or two before we hired our first employee it was a fun time. I'll tell you a lot of work.

That's exciting. So in that process, then there wasn't an early partnership, just a, an awareness of each other of the sales enablement society and AAISP.

Yeah, not a formal but we had a couple of the folks speak at our conferences. It was a good thing. Sales enablement was, part of every year we would pull the leaders coming to the, let's say the leadership summit and executive retreats, AAISP. And we said what's top of mind. And I will tell you this tools and technology, which I would bucket under sales enablement was almost always in the top three or four. So we would always provide what's the latest and greatest in the tech stack, for example, we'd have speakers. And so that's why we were. Open to and honestly, eager to tap into the resources of the Sales Enablement Society.

So let's move forward a little bit on the timeline. The SES. announced just last year in October at their annual experience 2023 that they were evolving to shift from being the sales to the revenue enablement society. Do you have a strong opinion on that shift?

Okay yet another role, if you will, or function, you could call it a role or function, revenue operations, revenue enablement I would, putting my historical hat on for a moment and looking from past to present to future, it appears to me that this big umbrella called the sales Profession has diversified and it has role. specification. It used to be that if you were a sales rep, you did it all. You, and I go back to, and from your beginning, I go back and say I, I had to prospect, I had to make sure my CRM back then was, a DOS based ACT! Program. I had to make sure I had all that right. We didn't have SDRs, BDRs. We, and we had to do everything and the diversification started coming in, they started separating lead gen from selling I don't think this is something like brand new. I think it's really specifying a role. And I think it's also an attempt. To cross functionally recognize that, yes, it takes an order before anything happens at a company. Let's you and I call it what it is. If you don't have a sale, you have nothing, but I do believe that it takes many people and things to make that sale and I think I think we're seeing role specification. In part due to the, I think the profession of sales is getting a better name than it did 20, 30 years ago. It's an honorable profession. And, with that comes the fact that there's growth, there's technology growth, there's need for training. Look at the colleges that are now, they have selling sales programs. They train college age kids. About crm about selling about prospecting and it's fantastic. We didn't have that 30 years ago We barely had a few handful of colleges doing it now. We have hundreds So I think we're seeing the evolution and the continued Improvement and focus on the profession of sales and that's in part. I think that's Why you're, why you have a focus on this thing called revenue operations or revenue enablement, because it's really important without revenue. You don't have anything. Here's what I can tell you. The term inside sales is near and dear to my heart. It's it, I'm wearing a shirt that says AAISP inside sales, but you can just, you can call it digital sales. You can call it virtually, you can call it sales. And I think the same thing holds true for, you have a very specific need for sales training. Okay, that could fall under sales enablement. It could fall under something called revenue enablement revenue operations i'm not sure if it matters whether you call it inside or digital sales. It's pretty much the same thing but we know there's a need for it and there's a focus on it I think that's why these names emerge And this might be a good analogy maybe not, with sales enablement and sales operations, revenue operations, revenue enablement. And that is, I believe in part the term digital sales. in part was adopted to say, you know what, this is not just someone on the phone making phone calls. And it's more than that. And it's more sophisticated than that. And it's, and we're budgeting more money to grow digital sales. And it's the whole universe of the customer being web savvy. I like to say the future of sales is being Amazonized. What do I mean by that? We all know what Amazon is. It's everything. It's point and click, order, return, customer service, pricing, availability, everything at your fingertip, and sales is moving in that direction. So I coined this term years ago. We're becoming, sales is becoming Amazonized. And hence the need for Sales Enablement, Revenue Operations and so on.

So as we're shifting more towards the present, maybe in parallel, we had the sales enablement society becoming the revenue enablement society. We've also in recent years had. The AAISP become Emblaze, my understanding is it's the a American is now global is part of the reason for a change and the inside sales professionals to digital sales is another part. But instead of the global digital sales. Association. They went within Emblaze with a tagline that it's revenue insights that ignite and that is a definitive source for digital revenue leaders. So I would love to hear, I clearly you went through a process of transitioning the AAISP. Can you give us a behind the curtain peek on what kind of happened in that timeline and what's in a name?

Yeah. Let's just talk about the, the point that we were acquired by CVI and then the transition. And after about a year, they came up with a more modern a different name. Number one, CVI was a great company to work with because they really wanted to take the strong suit of AAISP, no doubt was the community people were very loyal. They were very curious. They were dedicated. We had a tremendous community that would come together, would share openly, would learn from each other. So CVI took that and over the last couple of years have been really what I would call expanding on that to have a one, a broader appeal, not just to this team. This word or phrase called inside sales. It's beyond that. So they're broadening the appeal. They're also bringing some, a little more of a scientific research approach to what we did. Not that we didn't, we did our own research but they're a little, they had more sophistication and more tools and more, manpower quite honestly to do a lot deeper research. So they're bringing some good science and research. Back stuff to the community, which I think is excellent. And you're right. We were global when prior to CVI, we had conferences overseas. We had chat from seas, but we still had the, that a the American word, which a lot of people said, Hey, you really are global. Do you want to change your name? And we thought about it, but we said, Hey, AAISP is so well known, people just. I'd be out, I'd be out and people wouldn't know who I was. And I heard someone say, yeah we're going to AAISP next week. They, it was almost a noun. And so we left it, but I think that, the Emblaze, they wanted a fresh, modern naming convention. And their, the mission, the future. Is to really grow as was our mission and our future was to influence and I'll use your term enabled, which we did enable leaders, predominantly leaders and sales reps to a lesser extent, but enable leaders to lead better and to bring what we used to call inside sales. into the next generation.

So you were the founder and chairman clearly in 2008 to 22. That's when it sounds as if you brokered with corporate visions and shifted gears to being and continuing to remain a part of it as a board member. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. I sit on the board and give them my input quarterly. And I just got through advising a company for about a year as an advisor and I'm still speaking with a few other companies

On behalf of the community, thank you for staying around. A lot of times that's where things fall apart, right? When the founder who had the vision and Had the people who've used AAISP as an everyday term, like Kleenex or Xerox.

I love it.

Where'd the guy go? That's our man. And he's the one keeping it all together. So that's awesome. You've been there through the transition and speaking of transitions and combinations the sales enablement society, as they became the revenue enablement society, I think had an even more keen eye towards AAISP now and just. last month released a press release that there was a partnership growing officially. There, is a revenue enablement track at digital now coming up in April next week, which we have a code for everybody out there in the listening audience to get a great discount. Were you part of brokering that?

I was not part of that, but it's certainly it's fantastic. Number one, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's high time. I think when I saw the announcement myself, I'm like, this is really good. I'm glad to see there's a track on it. Every year we would spend lots and lots of time. We did have a board meeting, by the way, on tracks. And one of my, one of the inputs I made there was let's make sure that we have something for leadership development, a lot of times leaders, Or the last one to get trained and coach. Maybe that's something that'll even be part of this revenue enablement discussion point. But I do think leaders still continue to need development. That's near and dear to my heart. I had a conflict this year and this will be the first year in, I'm going to say 16 years that I will miss Chicago. But you know what? I may get a last minute flight, just show up and, say hi to everyone.

The Crackerjack prize. There is a Bob. I can't wait. Keep me in the loop on that one. Cause I will definitely want to share it out if, and when you are able to join us out there in Chicago. So Bob, we covered the past and the present. How about the future? As the founder of the A-A-I-S-P, as the man who has been the cornerstone of the transition towards Emblaze, what do you see in this space? And by the way, all those positions we've been talking about and the specialization, can you talk a little bit down the vein of what was then inside sales and is now multiple things and as well, what was then A-A-I-S-P and what. Does good look like in that community as it continues to evolve with your guidance as well on the executive board

This is a probably the best and probably the hardest question I've been asked in a long time. And I you hit the nail on the head with that question. I wish I had a crystal ball. People ask me would ask me this question over the years. Where's inside sales headed? I really wish, I could, I can paint a vision. I just don't know if it's the if it's the correct vision, but I'll give you my thoughts on where I think it should go. And I want to start with the profession of sales as a whole. And by the way, I would bucket sales enablement in there. I would bucket revenue enable enablement, revenue ops. I would bucket this all together, and I'm going to go back to the three legged stool for a minute. People we need to start with people. It's all about, it is all about people. We know through research that hitting quotas is becoming harder. Less companies are doing it. We know through research and questionnaires and surveys that Reps are not getting coached adequately. We know this. It's not a surprise. So I think in the future, we have to double down on on training, on mentoring, on coaching. We need to treat this profession like it's one of the most critical professions in the world. When you're an accountant, boy, you, when you're a lawyer, you have to pass the bar. When you're an accountant, you got to get your CPA. It's along those lines. It's so good to see colleges training young folks. We need more of that. When I was leading and consulting over the years, people would say, can you tell us if we're doing this right? Do we have the right metrics? Do we have the right software? Do we have the right tech stack? And I said, timeout, stop. I'm going to tell you right now, you want it. You want to be successful. Get a great leader. Start with a great leader. Great leaders build great teams. It's a simple formula and we need to embrace that. The third one is tools technology. Guess what? Now we have this thing called AI entering the landscape and all I would say about technology is this and I'll give you a good example. When I started using zoom, to me, it was a game changer. Things like that can be game changers. As a profession, I think we need to make sure that the reps have those tools that will not impede them, but will help them and will be productivity enhancements for them. And I think that's where sales enablement, revenue, enablement, revenue operations can make a huge impact. Let's, let's continue to find ways to let people be people, let them be great salespeople, back in 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, there was this thing called tech stack overload. So I think the future holds some interesting interesting things in, in play for what's going to happen with technology. Whatever we do going forward. We got to put people in the center of this equation because here's a great story. I'm going to end with this little story. There was this company that had about a midsize company. They had about 30, 40 sales reps. I think they were about a 200, 300 million in sales and they had their annual president's club and they got all the sales reps together and they were doing the annual awards. And finally the VP of sales gets up and he goes, the number one was 180 percent of quota. Is so and so John Smith, John. Congratulations. John gets up and He gets the award, a nice trophy plaque, whatever it was, and then dinner starts and the VP comes over. John, congratulations. And the VP happened to have his iPad with him and he pulls up statistics on John and there he is. 180 percent of quota, but then he flips the. The page to the next dashboard and on there was number of sales calls for the year out of 30 people. And he said, congratulations, but take a look at this. You were in the lower third. You were like eight from the bottom with number of sales calls. He goes, just think if you could even improve that up to, 50 top 50 top 40 top 30%, you might've been at 200%. John looks at the VP and says, with all due respect, just think if all the reps above me made fewer sales calls. So the moral of that story is. If sales were as simple as making a call or sending an email or doing a Zoom video, from a quantity standpoint, anybody could be successful. You and I know that Six very successful sales reps are few and far between. And you can't say, if you make a hundred calls, you're going to get 10 meetings of the 10 meetings. You're going to have five go to demo of the demos. Three are going to close. It's not that easy. A monkey could do it. And so I would leave that thought to the audience that, we, as much as we are enabled to do a lot in a little bit of time, let's not forget about, the people and how important they are. To the equation. And there you go.

Orchestrate the, the friction out of the sales system. Don't focus on fixing the sales folks.

I love what you just said. In fact, before we started this the conversation today, I think you and I offline, you were talking about how you broke some things and you were a little bit of a renegade. You're very best reps. They figure out how to get rid of the friction.

They take that comp plan. They figure out what's going to work and they do what it takes to get there and provide there. customers value to keep that revenue coming in, right?

you got it?

Final note I loved what you said about AI. A tagline for me is AI curious human enthusiast. And what I mean by that is a version of what you just shared that I see AI as an opportunity to off load the administrivia and focus on your given gifting. And if that happens to be sales to your point, it is a skill. It is a gift to be able to sell well, to have the patience and to, in this day and age differentiate by leading with more of a loving kindness, not the old school boiler room approach, right? Thank you. But as my buddy Dale Dupree would say, being more of a sales rebel and really doing things differently where you meet each customer where they are.

I love that.

Oh, thank you. Can you say, I know, and that's part of the reason, Bob, we're completing each other's sentences. Where does that land with you? And is there anything finally you'd like to say in that future space? about AI friend or foe, and what's possible when sales is able to tap into their unconscious competence.

I think AI ultimately is going to be a friend. It has to be, it, it will be. We just, we want to be careful that we don't substitute it for what you just said. I love what you just said about empathy and, the, being the rebel. Really what that says to me is, you know what, Great salespeople make it about the other person. What does that mean empathy? caring attention listening More than you're speaking Those are the traits that winning sales reps carry. And you probably know steve richard.

I just reached out to him the other day.

Yeah, Steve is great. He and I over the years would say we have a listening and discovery epidemic. It's not good. People want to get out there and just sell. Here's how great my product is. Why don't you find out what's happening with the customer really understand them?

Maybe this digital cluster will ultimately melt down and consolidate to the point where we get back to that basic blocking and tackling of listening, leaning into our gifting and bringing value, recurring value, recurring impact to our client in whatever way we can present it with. The portfolio we represent

It's exciting. Listen, this whole profession is so exciting to me and what the opportunities are. Maybe I'll stick around a little bit longer and do some more advising because I just love talking about the opportunity we have.

Yes, please bob. We're with the not just the inside sales, but the digital global sales the leadership All of us we need you on the scene my friend. Thank you So much for your time today on behalf of your global community and the global podcast community I'm sure they've learned a thing or three as I have today Any final words you'd like to share on your way out the door for today?

I would just give you a boost of confidence and good luck. Wishes with keeping the newly mi nted Revenue Enablement Society, RES, front and center. Let's partner, as best we can

We'll look forward to seeing you on down the road, whether it's the Crackerjack Prize in Chicagoland or further on down the street, my friend. Thanks so much for being here.

Yeah, good. It was nice meeting you and hopefully our paths will cross again.