Sol Cartier on The Business Spotlight with Host Patrick Dougher

Posted on 12. Aug, 2012 by admin in Blog

Sol Cartier at http://www.SolCartier.com is a Business Coach, presenter, Sales trainer and entrepreneur. He was the guest on The Business Spotlight with host Patrick Dougher. Speaking about the Ninja Mindset applied to sales and sales success. Sol Cartier can be reached at SolCartier@SolCartier.com . Sol has gone from the mail room to running 3 Sales teams for a Fortune 500 company taking his team from last place to first in record time and now he is doing the same for other companies around North America.

Transcript :

Patrick:  Welcome to the Business Spotlight. I’m your host, Patrick Dougher. My guest today is Sol Cartier and you’re going to love him.

One thing about Sol is if you can imagine a ninja inside of a business suit that is directed at sales for your business in the sense of training your people with the ninja mindset that literally has no limits. Sol, thanks for being on the show.

Sol:  Thank you for the invitation. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Patrick:  You’re an enigma. You started as a file clerk and then ended up running three sales divisions for a Fortune 500 company. Dude, how did you do that?

Sol:  That’s a really good question. Sometimes I actually ask myself the same thing. Really, the turning point for me was doing some filming for one of the companies that I worked for and the site general manager walked by and he said, “Why do we pay you again?” and I was like, “Wow, I think I need to find some job stability some place.”

So I went and I did what I do best, and that is to train people. Through that training experience what I really understood about myself was I have a gift for taking big things and plying them into small packages and being able to talk to people about them in the way that makes sense. If you can do that enough in front of the right people, eventually you get noticed and you have the chance to run bigger things.

Patrick:  That’s right. I know that you’re a 5^th degree black belt in Kenpo Karate.

Sol:  This is true, yes.

Patrick:  So obviously you’ve spent years and years perfecting a skill, and I’ve seen you do that in the sales world as well where you’ll take and learn enough about somebody’s business and their operation and then be able to take it and create the next level for them. You’ve done that several times, haven’t you?

Sol:  Yeah, that’s true. I have. Sales is very much so like martial arts and many other things that we gain mastery over, and that is to just learn how things work well and learn how to make them better.

I think that the biggest thing that I do when I coach people is I tell them very much so at outset, “I’m probably not going to teach anything that you don’t already know. I’m just going to put it in a format that you can use over and over and over again and build a process around.”

Patrick:  Excellent. What are some of the things that if you were looking at a company and you were beginning to work with them, what are some of the steps that you would go through to really master their system and then be able to implement what you do?

Sol:  I think one of the first things that you have to do is really understand where they’re coming from because nobody likes you to walk in and say you’re doing it wrong. So the best thing to do is really understand what they’re doing and what they’re doing well and then go from there. You really have to take a very close look at how they interact with their clients, what they’re doing that’s working right now, and then augment that with other things that you’ve gotten from other places that work as well. So you end up with kind of a hybrid at the end.

Patrick:  Now, you monitor the activity real directly. When you’re setting up the system for somebody in sales, tell me about the system that you actually begin to implement.

Sol:  Things work from the bottom up. It’s where the rubber meets the road, to really overused a cliché.

You really have to get to the bottom rung of the organization where the sales happen and understand from that person’s perspective what they think the process is, and then you also have to work from the top down to make sure that there’s uniform language and uniform speech and uniform theory and practice and process from the top down.

Patrick:  I imagine that there’s a great deal of, in a sense, cross training between the two levels because usually the thing that made a manager a great manager wasn’t that he was a great sales person, but usually what got him there was being a great sales person potentially. Is that what you see?

Sol:  Yeah, you’re right. One of the biggest mistakes that we make in business is to take somebody who was great in sales and make him a manager. I know that sounds terrible, but that’s really the truth because the two are such disparate skill sets.

Part of what I do actually is I need to take and manage managers and teach them the skills that they were never given as a result of being promoted, and also help them remember the sales skills that they had when they were on the floor or they were out interacting with clients directly.

Patrick:  How do you take a manager and begin to get them to internalize the different aspects of what you teach?

Sol:  The best way to do that is to actually put them back in the environment and to help them understand what’s missing and help them do their own gap analysis. I think the problem that most managers have is they try and create a mini me and that’s absolutely a wrong thing to do. They need to create a better rep for themselves.

Patrick:  Well, isn’t the mini me aspect sometimes that idea that if you’re a bean counter, do you really want a bean counter selling for you?

Sol:  Yeah, that’s true. Hiring ourselves is probably our biggest mistake.

Patrick:  I wouldn’t doubt. We’ve got another section coming up. We’re going to learn more about Sol Cartier and the coaching and the service that he does for businesses around the country and really giving you the tools to help you grow your business right now.

~

Patrick:  Welcome back to the Business Spotlight. I’m Pat Dougher. My guest today is Sol Cartier and I know we’re gaining a great deal of wisdom on the process of sales and business development from a ninja point of view, because I know that you really are like that in your life. You really change the way that people think from the inside out. You give them the tools to break through. I’d call you a bit of a spiritual bolt cutter, but that’s my own view.

I want to know, who is an ideal client? What kind of company are you really looking to help grow and serve?

Sol:  I think that with the last ten years with the economy being what it has been, it’s been paramount for companies to reach into the resources that they currently own and help maximize them. A lot of times that’s going to be back office, but a lot of more times it’s going to be sales oriented. We have to be able to take the existing sales people that we have, the existing sale resource, and make it go further and faster.

Companies that find themselves in that position, which could be just about anybody in these days – I’ve been able to help companies all over the United States increase their performance. If your company is a place where you need to maximize your sales force performance, we can help you do that. Absolutely.

Patrick:  You’ve actually taken several company sales groups from last all the way to the first level, haven’t you?

Sol:  Yeah. Sometimes talking about performance can be a little bit difficult because the numbers gets stupid crazy – talking about like 180%, 187% increases in production or return on investments in the millions of dollars. It’s really just taking the current resources that you have and putting a process that works into place, helping people see from the top down that it makes sense and getting people the support that they need.

Anytime that you can really groove, if you will, if can take in a line a sales person’s why with the corporate why, how can you not have just incredible growth? It takes time to do that.

Patrick:  I know that you use several tools in your process in evaluating where somebody is, because I know that you have some really great tools that you use that actually identify who can be the most successful in sales and who you really ought to move away from sales. Correct?

Sol:  Right. Yeah, that’s true. Like what we mentioned before, one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a manager or hiring or recruiting is to hire yourself. “Because I was successful obviously you can be too.” The reality is that that’s just not true.

I do use assessments and the assessments can help me understand and help you as a corporate recruiter or manager understand – should this person really even be here? And if it is somebody that you’ve inherited or that currently exists within your firm, how can we directly coach them?

The worst thing you can do is just try and shotgun in the dark and say, “Well, I really hope this works.” But if you have a really targeted and focused way to connect with that person in an area that makes sense to gain the most benefit from your time spent with them – time, effort, and energy – that’s just the best place to go.

Patrick:  Absolutely. How do you want people to connect to you?

Sol:  I’m pretty easy to get in contact with. You can use my phone number, you can tap me on the website, you can shoot me and e-mail. I’m pretty easy to find: solcartier@solcartier.com or www.SolCartier.com.

Patrick:  Just look like the watch.

Sol:  Yeah. It’s Cartier and the phone number is (818) 394-0157. Call, click, or visit.

Patrick:  The biggest thing is that when someone gets a hold of you, what kind of process do you walk them through?

Sol:  First of all, it’s wise to find out if there’s truly a need. I know that that sounds crazy, but so many times people just want to pitch. “Here’s my thing, do you want it or not?” The reality is there are so many different ways to coach that we really need to make sure that what I have to offer is the best thing for that company and for their need at the current time. We’ll spend some time talking and then we’ll go from there.

Patrick:  You really get it. As we’re wrapping up the show, I just want to say if you’re interested and needing a business coach, a business development sales coach type of person – Sol, you’re amazing at that – and I just hope that you connect with Sol.

Sol:  Thank you.

Patrick:  I’ve known Sol for a number of years, so it’s always good for that.

I want to also say that the Business Spotlight is you telling your story. If you’re a business owner and you want your story out, we want to tell it. We want you to contact us so that you would see what it takes to be on Business Spotlight.

We’ll see you next time. This is Patrick Dougher.