Campus Series: Lamar Johnson – From Math Major to Sales Leader
Success is built when you’re tapping into your strengths rather than chasing titles. According to Lamar Johnson, this means prioritizing the career path that best aligns with you and your skillset, even when it’s tempting to fixate on climbing the ranks.
In this episode of the Campus Series Podcast, Lamar, the Executive Director at McCombs School of Business, shares about his journey into sales, the importance of assessing your skillset when choosing between individual contributor roles and leadership positions, and his experience with executing a sales program.
Guest-At-A-Glance
💡 Name: Lamar Johnson
💡What they do: Executive Director, McCombs School of Business
💡Company: University of Texas at Austin
💡Noteworthy: With a rich history in sales, from Procter & Gamble to leading a sales program at McCombs, Lamar shares valuable insights from his extensive career journey.
💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn
Key Insights
Choosing Between Leadership and Individual Contributor Roles in Sales
In a candid discussion, Lamar Johnson emphasizes the importance of aligning one’s career path with personal strengths and preferences. He advises young professionals to consider whether they enjoy leading people or prefer the autonomy of being an individual contributor. He also highlights the reality that a successful career in sales doesn’t necessarily require a managerial title. This insight underscores the importance of self-awareness and understanding one’s own skills and preferences when making career decisions.
The Evolution of Sales Training at Procter & Gamble
Lamar Johnson shares his experience at Procter & Gamble, where he started in various sales roles. He describes the company’s sales training approach, which involved starting at the “tip of the sword,” where the consumer enters the store and purchases the product. This hands-on, ground-level training provided valuable insights into the retail environment and customer behavior. Lamar’s account provides a glimpse into the changing landscape of sales and the importance of adapting to these changes.
The Power of Sales in Shaping Executive Leadership
Lamar Johnson discusses the potential of a career in sales, stating that many CEOs start in the sales world. He emphasizes that understanding customer needs is a crucial aspect of being an executive, and sales provides a strong foundation for this. He also highlights the versatility of a sales career, which can lead to various roles, including staying in sales or moving into leadership positions. This insight underscores the value of sales experience in shaping effective business leaders.
Episode Highlights
The Journey from Mathematics to Sales
Lamar Johnson shares his journey from being a mathematics major to finding his passion in sales. He talks about how he was initially drawn to actuarial science, but later found the field to be too inwardly focused. He then switched to finance, but found the job prospects unappealing. It was during this time that he stumbled upon sales and found his true calling. He emphasizes the versatility of a sales career and how it can lead to various roles, including executive leadership.
“I got to thinking that there should be some way to leverage strength in mathematics and maybe a little charisma and leadership skills and all of that sort of stuff into a different kind of career set. And so I was really looking for sales, although I didn’t know I was looking for sales.”
The Art of Adapting to the Buyer’s Needs
Lamar Johnson discusses the importance of adapting to the buyer’s needs in sales. He shares a story about a student who won a sales competition by going off script and following the buyer’s lead, demonstrating the importance of listening and adapting in sales.
“Everybody was trained. Step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, — state of the process about halfway through. The buyer for this company threw him off base and and took him in a different direction. And this kid sat back and listened, and he went where the buyer went.”
The Launch of a New Product at Procter & Gamble
Lamar Johnson recounts a memorable experience at Procter & Gamble where he was tasked with launching a new version of Camay soap. He shares how he negotiated with the company to ensure his sales team was motivated and equipped to handle the rollout, demonstrating his leadership skills and strategic thinking.
“I said, ‘We’re gonna tell you how this rollout’s gonna play out. I want you, because my people are gonna have to do a lot of this manual labor in the stores, and they’re not gonna be happy about doing this.’”
Building a Sales Program at McCombs School of Business
Lamar Johnson talks about his current role at the McCombs School of Business, where he is building a sales program. He shares the growth of the program, from 35 students in the first semester to a projected 200 students in the next year. He also shares a success story of a student who won a sales competition, highlighting the potential of the program.
“We’ve got 175 now. This time next year we’ll have about 200, and that’s kind of where we wanna level off until we can catch up with our capacity to teach them all.”
Transcript:
Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:00] Welcome back Hustlers to another episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers. It’s your special campus series. I’m your host, Kristen Wisdorf, and today I have coming at you straight from Texas, Jace Edwards. Welcome to the podcast Jace.
Jace Edwards: Thanks. Excited to be here. I’ve been really looking forward
Kristen Wisdorf: to this.
I know we’re excited to have you as the co-host today and, um, Jace is live and in person with Lamar Johnson, who’s the executive director at the McCombs Business School at University of Texas in Austin. Welcome to the podcast Lamar.
Lamar Johnson: Thanks. Great to be here. Welcome to Texas, sort of.
Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. Yeah. We’re um, hook ’em.
Right? Um, so we’re excited to have you on the podcast and learn more about your experience. You have a wealth of knowledge and experience that you’re sharing with students at ut, so let’s just dive right in. We like to start these things. Um, if you’ve been here before, you know how we get going. [00:01:00] It’s actually the same way I start my interviews with college students and that is Lamar.
Let just tell us about you. Give me your, let’s call it your 62nd highlight
Lamar Johnson: reel. 60 seconds. Wow. Okay. So, um, I grew up in East Texas, um, um, graduated high school. Wasn’t sure where I wanted to go to school. Uh, actually started out at Texas Tech University because they had a great math school. Thought I wanted to major in math.
That turned out to be a really stupid idea because I didn’t know what I was gonna do with a math degree. Um, decided to transfer to University of Texas, which had a great business school. Uh, wasn’t sure what branch of business I wanted to go into, but I wound up in finance as a finance major and was interviewing for really dull, stupid finance jobs.
At least they were to me. And, uh, my fall semester of my senior year was invited into an interview by Procter & Gamble for sales. My first reaction was sales. Why sales? Why would I even think about [00:02:00] sales? But I went because I was flattered. They invited me. Um, loved the sound of the job that the interviewer described.
Had a great rapport with the interviewer. They invited me back for another interview. Things sounded great. I went to an office visit if you would. Um, love the people I met. I said, this thing sounds like it fits me. Went to work, um, as a salesperson. Thought, thought if it didn’t work, I’d come back and get an mba.
Things worked out pretty good for me and I stayed 33 plus years at Procter & Gamble, half of them in the sales organization running various sales from, from the entry level sales up through sales management. And then about halfway through my career, as we began to put together the components of the supply chain internally, we, we realized there was a missing link.
Of connecting supply chain to our customers like Walmart and h e b here in Austin and in Texas, I should say, and other customers. And that missing link was creating all sorts of system issues with our mutual supply chains. So I was brought in to be a part of [00:03:00] a team to help design how we would connect supply chains, really all the way to the shelf and to the consumer.
Stayed in the supply chain side, got promoted a few times and then when I retired I was running all of the outbound, uh, supply chain processes for North America for P&G reporting to the president of North America. Always wanted to come back to ut my alma mater and do something to give back. And, uh, fortunately I had planned that over my, the course of my career and, uh, was able to come back and I’ve been now back for 15 years creating experiential learning opportunities for students.
That was probably more than 60 seconds, but that’s perfect.
Kristen Wisdorf: We don’t have a timer here, so, um, thank you Lamar. That’s awesome. Okay, so there’s a lot to unpack there. We’re gonna dive into all that. I’m very curious, I know you said originally you went to Texas Tech because they had a math program or to get a math degree, and you’re like, what am I gonna do with that degree?
Well, obviously you were drawn to it for a reason. Was it math something you were always. Good at, was there someone in [00:04:00] your family who pushed you to go to school for that? Like how did that originally like, um, start, what was the spark like, Hey, I’m gonna do this math thing, and then what was your like aha.
Moment?
Lamar Johnson: So, um, it was all of the, um, the testing that I did through school that showed that I had a, uh, I was better at the analytical side than the non analytical side. I always made great grades in math. Um, so I knew I had an affinity for math. Nobody in my family particularly did, but it seemed to fit me.
Um, and my high school math teacher, quite frankly had kind of taken me under her wing ’cause she saw some talent there, I guess. And so she’s the one that encouraged me to major in math. So she’s at fault for sending me down the math, which is really not, I loved her. And, but, uh, then she suggested Texas Tech and, uh, the strong math and she knew the faculty there and she knew it was a strong department and so, I went.
And then quite frankly, when I got about halfway through my first semester, I’m starting to, maybe I matured a little bit, [00:05:00] but then I said, what am I gonna do with a math degree? And I didn’t really want to be a scientist or a mathematician or a professor, or there had to be other ways I could leverage my, my math skills.
And then, so I called my mentor back, the teacher and I talked to her about it and she said, well, you know, your dad’s a businessman, so maybe you should pursue something in mathematics and business. And she introduced me to something called actuarial science. And I had never heard of actuarial science, but I started looking into it.
And of course, it’s the application of mathematics to, um, to the business world and particularly insurance world. And they’re the people that figure out how much you’re gonna have to pay for insurance based on risk. Right. So, and then I started looking back where, what schools teach that, and there were at the time, eight in the, the United States that taught actuarial science as a degree.
And the closest one was UT Austin. And I said, Austin sounds great. UT Austin sounds great. I’m gonna go there and pursue actuarial science, which I did. Um, and I spent two and a half [00:06:00] years in advanced mathematics, advanced calculus, advanced uh, probability advanced statistics, and in insurance courses, uh, thinking I was gonna be an actuary.
And then I had an aha, another aha moment that I was the only of about 12 students out of 40,000 or so at ut, only 12 students in the actuarial program. None of them had a personality. And this is not, not a slam, but you know, there’s some jokes about actuaries. You know, they’re very, um, brilliant people, but inwardly focused and I.
I got to thinking that there should be some way to leverage strength in mathematics and maybe a little charisma and leadership skills and all of that sort of stuff into a different kind of career set. And so I was really looking for sales, although I didn’t know I was looking for sales and uh, actuarial science was part of the field of school of finance at the time at ut.
So I was able to quickly switch and become a finance major. And thought that was gonna be my future until I started interviewing for jobs and [00:07:00] hated the sound of all of the finance and accounting jobs that were. Out there and then luckily stumbled into sales. And, um, so that’s my story. And what kids always ask me, they said, well, if you get into sales, you know, are you, what can you do from sales?
And I said, well, if you decide you want to do something from sales, you know, there’s a huge number of CEOs that’ll start it in the sales world. So from from sales, you can pretty much branch into whatever you want to do. Including staying in sales and making a lot of money in sales. But if you wanna lead people and lead companies and do things, other things, sales is a great place because you really began to understand your customer and understand the needs of the customer.
And that’s really what being an executive in the company is all about, is understanding what the customer needs and how am I gonna build my business to focus on the customer.
Jace Edwards: Yeah, I, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think personally everyone, regardless of what they decide to do in their career, should get some kind of sales experience because the skills that you develop, [00:08:00] um, obviously being able to manage your time effectively, like you said, kind of understanding the needs of your customers, um, you know, handling challenging conversations.
‘Cause not every conversation you’re gonna have in sales is gonna be, you know, peaches and cream, right. Um, so yeah, that’s awesome. So, Um, real quick, I wanna kind of dive through kinda your journey at Procter & Gamble with your, you know, long, very decorated career over there. Um, just real quick though, you mentioned, uh, you, you grew up in east Texas.
Where, where about in East Texas. Tyler, Tyler. Okay. Um, that’s, that’s funny. I’ve actually got a lot of family that, uh, lives in Gladewater. So right up, right outside in distant suburb
Lamar Johnson: of Tyler. Yeah. Distance suburb of Tyler 30 miles away or something
Jace Edwards: like that. Yeah. Yeah. So starting off at Procter and Gamble, um, I thought it was interesting on your LinkedIn profile it said various sales roles.
Um, so talk to us a little bit about that first role that you were in, um, kind of what the day-to-day was like, and kind of how you, you know, ultimately grew into that position to where you were kind of leading the North American sales team.
Lamar Johnson: So, [00:09:00] P&G’s sales training. Was really start starting people at the point of the tip of the sword, if you will, where the consumer comes in the store and buys the product.
So it is different today because the, the retailing, the, the grocery slash mass merchant retailing industry has changed. But the retailer used to have a ton of risk control over what happened in the store. And there were probably a bigger percentage of the business in the US was done from independent grocers than there were by chains, uh, many years ago.
And so, um, The evolution has taken place. Now, of course, Walmart had a lot to do with changing that, but there’s a lot of central control and there’s a lot of data analytics that says, here’s why the shelf should be arranged, and here’s the product mix that should be in each store. But when I started, it was still very much the retailer could decide what they carried on the shelves.
Mm-hmm. But they put on display how the shelf looked, and so the retail salesperson was responsible for. Influencing the store on a [00:10:00] store by store basis. Yeah. In a way that, you know, benefited your products. I mean, made sure the right product mix was in the store. They were priced correctly, they were on display, they were in the retailer’s ads and new products were introduced effectively.
And so it was very much an up and down the street calling on stores being successful or not. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that’s how we trained new sales reps, point of the spear down at the retail store. And the initial training was done in the field by your manager. Um, and you spent a week with the first couple of days of that week with the manager making retail calls demonstrating how to do it, and there was a very defined process for how you prepare for the call, the, the 10 steps of a call once you were there, the five steps of persuasive selling and all these things that you’re learning along the way.
But the first two days, the manager’s doing that and you’re observing and answering questions. And then the Wednesday of that week, you begin to alternate calls. And, um, and Thursday you continue to alternate calls and on Friday the new person makes all the calls [00:11:00] and you spend the last hour of the day kind of preparing for Monday and then the manager goes away and you’re out the next Monday on your own.
Yeah. And you’re getting your butt kicked up and down the street, but uh, you were expected to make 12, at least 12 calls a day, and you’re expected to get at least six orders a day, which taught me right away that hey, sales is not about making 100% of the calls. Yeah. A hundred percent of the sales you’re gonna fail Some percentage at the time.
And, um, you know, a really good day was eight or nine sales and, uh, bad day was three or four, but you had, you were supposed to average at least six. Mm-hmm. And that was kind of your objective.
Kristen Wisdorf: Um, and when you say calls Lamar, you mean in-person
Lamar Johnson: visits? In-person visits, yeah. I mean, this is, no, we, you know, we’re talking 1970, you know, there was nothing, there was no other way to, and they weren’t gonna answer your call if you phoned them anyway, so you know, it wasn’t going in the store and.
I have, if we had a couple hours, I have some incredible stories about learnings at retail. Yeah. From the time I had a gun pulled on me to even more crazy stories. But there was an incredible learning opportunity. But you learned how the [00:12:00] retailer did business. You learned how they made money. You learned how they, what they liked, what they didn’t like.
You learned how to, uh, be able to structure your presentation to to appeal to them. And you build relationships ’cause I had this, I had a territory of about a hundred stores and, um, you know, in a defined geography in, in the southern part of Louisiana, I lived, I started in New Orleans and my territory was, um, the West Bank of New Orleans and then down in the bayou country where the Cajuns lived.
And, um, there was a story of the gentleman that ran a, a pretty big grocery store in a town called Raceland, Louisiana that, uh, my first two trips in didn’t speak English to me. I only spoke, um, Cajun, which is a version of French. And, uh, the third time I went back, he finally said, okay, Proctor, I see you’re gonna keep coming back.
So, um, you know, let’s, let’s talk about business now. He, he was just trying to test my tenacity to see if I would give up and go away, or if I would keep coming back. And he became one of my best, you know, [00:13:00] customers after that. So, tremendous learning experience about how to deal with people, um, how your company made money, how your company did business with the retailers, how they made money, what you could say and do to them that would benefit both of you.
And then you get promoted and you, you, you go to a job. It was after about a year that was called a district field representative. And it was really how to become a manager at that point. You spent time working with other retail uh, salespeople in your marketplace. Uh, you shattered the, the manager around you, you went to a training school for new sales managers, and then after six or nine months, you became, uh, a manager of people.
So I had, after 18 months with the company, I I had a larger territory, and I had five salespeople. That, uh, reported to me in that territory and, you know, I was their manager. So, and then various positions beyond that. I became a district manager. I went to, I ran the sales training program in Cincinnati for a while.
I worked in marketing for a while for broadening, um, And then [00:14:00] along came this opportunity to go into supply chain management. And uh, I ran to that because it was a, it was still externally focused ’cause we were working with our customers. Um, but it was on the supply side instead of on the demand side. And I saw the opportunity to make a really big systemic change in how we both did business by streamlining the supply chain.
And it was a way to, to systemically and, um, strategically influence the business differently. Been selling new items and product and, um, shelf space and all of that other stuff.
Kristen Wisdorf: But I’m sure, I mean, you said this earlier, that supply chain opportunity, when it presented itself to you, became possible because of your experience in sales and you understanding the customer and working with the customer.
So I think that’s important for a lot of our listeners to hear that. And it’s exactly what you said, sales is a great foundation because it opens many doors once you understand your customer or your
Lamar Johnson: buyer, uh oh. [00:15:00] Yeah. Um, there was a design team that, that helped create the structure of how we were gonna go to market from a supply chain standpoint.
And there were two salespeople. Uh, two manufacturing people and a person that worked in distribution logistics. And we were given the, the charge and the task to design, uh, how we would interface partner with sales, but interface with the supply people at our customers and it, and the information people and the financial people.
Because supply chain was all about the connection of the financial information systems and. Physical product flow, all of those three things. And, uh, the, the important thing from a sales perspective is the customer point of view in designing all of this, but also the relationship with the selling organization because, As many of the people may listening, you know, you don’t want too many people messing with your customer.
Um, you know, you, you own that customer and so you don’t want some other person that’s calling [00:16:00] on a different part of the customer make a, make a problem for you. So that’s gotta be designed very closely with the sales organization. The two of us that were brought in had, were trusted people from sales.
And so we could, we could, uh, we could talk to sales and make sure that their input was in the design of this program, and then they would, it would be much more successful once it was rolled out. And I wound up being the one from sales, interestingly, that was picked to lead that organization. And, um, because, and I was the only customer focused person in the product supply, most everybody else was an engineer, um, or an operations person.
Um, But, uh, some of those factors that made me switch out of, um, um, of mathematics and actuarial science came to play. I had some leadership skills. I understood customers I could, uh, integrate easily with sales organization. I knew how to talk to leadership. I knew how to talk to company executives in the field.
And that led me to, again, get promoted a couple of times and wound up running all of these processes for, um, [00:17:00] through the supply chain that connected to customers in the us, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Um, so that’s kind of how, but it was because of my customer connection that got me there in the first place.
Most of my peers thought I was stupid for doing this because they said, You’re in sales. This is a sales and marketing driven company. Uh, you’re gonna go over there and work in the supply side. Uh, and, uh, we may never hear from you again. You know, and, uh, why are you doing that? And I said, because I can influence the business strategically in a different way than I have been for the last 18 years.
I got a lot of my career ahead of me. I, I looked at it as an opportunity to go do something like what I was doing, but do it in a very different way and impact the business. So it worked out great. Yeah,
Jace Edwards: something you mentioned earlier, um, that I do want to touch on a little bit is, you know, obviously you’ve got a lot of stories to tell.
I do. Right? I do. Um, so if you were gonna pinpoint like your, I I guess, you know, best moment in sales, whether that’s, you know, out in the field or Oh man, as a district sales [00:18:00] manager, like what kind of comes to mind when you think of like your
Lamar Johnson: highlight? I had so many, it was so, so fun. I, I, the, the last few years of my sales assignment.
I had a lot of street credibility because, you know, we, we were, we were successful in our marketplace. I had the ear of the management in Cincinnati, and uh, um, so this is just one highlight. Mm-hmm. But, um, uh, they, they, if anybody’s in retail, uh, CPG sales or has been, that’s listening to this, they’ll understand.
But when you introduce a new item, one of the barriers is it’s gotta find its way on the shelf at retail. Shelf space at retail is really valuable. And so when you talk to a retailer, you’ve got to be able to demonstrate why buying your items, um, that fit will, will, you know, Hey, where’s it gonna go on the shelf?
And you typically, the retailer said, I gotta cut something out to put something in. And so you’ve gotta have a plan [00:19:00] for, you know, to go show the retailer how the, how you can fit your new items in that very tight, very valuable space. And um, so we had just introduced a new version of Camay bar soap. So, and it was a national rollout from a test labor intensive because it was three different, uh, colors and flavors, if you will, or perfumes of.
Big size and the same number of little size. Now, Camay at the time was about 2% of the business, so it’s not a big player, but, and this was probably gonna make, maybe grow the business by 20%. So, you know, scheme of things, it’s small potatoes and you gotta have a plan to go in to talk to the retailer.
And, um, convinced them to redo that bar soap set, which was typically eight linear feet, five shelves high, maybe 50, 60 SKUs on that, on that shelf, which are individual items, and you gotta make room for new Camay. [00:20:00] And we did that and we, and we were successful and had to roll out well. As we were rolling it out, the company came to me and said, We want to test the next version of Camay in your, in your marketplace.
So in other words, in six months, we want to do it again. Yeah. And I said, no. I said, we’re not doing this. I said, you know, find another district. And they said, we, the demographics are right where you are. We’ve got, we need to do it where you are. And I said, okay, I have a couple, I have a couple of criteria, then yeah, I wanna do it.
I said, We’re gonna tell you how this rollout’s gonna play out. I want you, because my people are gonna have to do a lot of this manual labor in the stores, and they’re not gonna be happy about doing this. I said, you’re gonna, you’re gonna fly my entire sales, uh, organization, which is about 20 people.
You’re gonna fly us all to Cincinnati and we’re gonna meet with the CEO of the company, and he’s gonna tell us how important this is. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna leverage the c e o of the company to tell my salespeople why they need to go back and do this, ’cause I’m not gonna be able to look ’em straight in the face and tell ’em why [00:21:00] this is so, I, I drove a hard bargain and they did it and I said, and beyond that, we’re gonna have to leverage, we’re gonna have to find a unique way to sell the trade.
And this is gonna sound. Um, unwoke at this stage of life, but this is 1987 in North Texas, and all of the buyers of our key retailers were men and all of them hunted and fished, right? Yeah. I mean, to get the picture, they would’ve been the key Bud Light, uh, uh, consumer, right? Uh, and I said, and I wanna hire a model and I want the model to go in with our salesperson.
Uh, And I want, I want to have a Winnebago in this parking lot and I want them to come out and do a hand washing demonstration on the buyers. And it sent out a firestorm in Cincinnati. People said, and, and I said, you want my conditions? That’s what, that’s what the conditions are. Yeah. So I finally got it.
We rented a Winnebago. We went around the [00:22:00] parking, lots of these companies, the, the, the model, and my salesperson went in and brought the buyer out to the parking lot. Worked every time, by the way. To the parking lot and we did a hand washing demonstration in the, in the Winnebago, and then we sent the retailer back in and we nailed that introduction.
Yeah, it was, it was unbelievable. That’s awesome. And there was a lot of objections to this. Again, 1987 is different than today. Mm-hmm. Um, and the, the retail environment is very different than today. But I knew what would take to work in that environment. And it worked.
Jace Edwards: Yeah. Laid out your criteria and got what you wanted.
And it worked. It worked. Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, so on the flip side of highlight, right, when you think of a moment that, um, you look back on and you’re like, man, I, I can’t believe I did that, or I can’t believe that happened. Like what, what are some things that come to mind?
Lamar Johnson: Um, the, the, the biggest disappointment I had, and it was, it was after I had moved out of the sales organization, but I was in supply chain.
And, um, but you’re never, you never stop selling [00:23:00] and, and, right. I had a vision. My people had a vision that we needed to dramatically change the way we supplied product to our customer because we had 10 years before this, we’d created a very efficient system of shipping, basically full truckloads of our product that were made from a, a particular plant to our customer.
And that was the best price. And, and so customers would do almost anything for the best price. So we were sending, if, if we were, if Tide was made in a, in a, in a certain plant, then we would ship a full truckload of the tide that was made in that plant to customers for the best possible price. But as we began to learn more about inventory flow and flow all the way to the shelf, we were creating a bottleneck or a, a, a bubble, if you would, at the retailer’s warehouse because they were buying too much product.
To get the best price and then they had too much inventory in their warehouse that that sold to retail and to consumers at disproportionate rates. And so they would delay orders till they could get enough order [00:24:00] for a full truckload and then, and then they would order. Meanwhile, they might be out of four or five items down at retail.
Disappointing the consumer. We were missing sales, and so our vision was to create a system of. Mixing product upstream, offering it at the best price, but basically sending product just in time to retailers. And, um, so we developed a plan, uh, that we had part of the company very much in our favor. The business units that would’ve had to change the way they ship product, were not in favor of this.
This was a big corporate decision to change our supply system. We tested it in a marketplace to see if it would actually improve our business. The, the measurement tools weren’t fine enough at that time to be able to pick up a dramatic increase in the business as a result of this. So the test failed.
So, Two years later, I retired. Six years later, the company went to that system and deployed, um, exactly what we were trying to get done when I [00:25:00] was there. But the fact that I couldn’t get it done, I didn’t make that sale on my way out. Yeah. Was disappointing to me. Yeah. Well, those are some
Jace Edwards: fascinating stories and I’m sure that you and I will get together at some points.
Talk about more of those. Um, something you mentioned earlier is that whenever you started off in sales, uh, individual contributor, you’re the one that was going in stores, making the calls, um, and ultimately found yourself in a managerial role where, where you’re leading people. Um, one of the big things that I hear from young sales professionals is, Hey, do I.
Stayed on the individual contributor route. Do I, you know, become an account executive? Do I become a field rep or should I get into leadership and, and management? So, uh, talk to us a little bit about what that transition was like for yourself.
Lamar Johnson: Um, well, it would, I was, I felt pretty prepared for it. And P&G’s system at the time was, um, you know, we hired college graduates like myself, specifically for development track into Leadership and sales management leadership.
So that was, that was our objective, is to get promoted and move into [00:26:00] a job where you were managing people. Mm-hmm. And then managing more people, and then managing more people, et cetera. That was the, and that, that was the enticement to come to the company. Yeah. So my full expectation was at some point, I’m gonna lead an organization.
Yeah. And if I continue to do well, that organization will get larger and more important and all that sort of stuff. Okay. Um, we clearly had people that came into the job to be salespeople and they were very good salespeople and some of them were good enough people and we were able to, to spot. Enough traits in them that felt that they could also lead people.
Mm-hmm. Um, some of them wanted to be the managers of people and we didn’t think they would really have the skills to be the manager of people. Yeah. You know what I mean? Uhhuh and so, and some of those got into management and they hated it and so they Yeah. They requested to go back into a sales role.
Yeah. So we had all the types of people from those that were really happy selling, they loved the retail environment, they loved, um, you know, what they did, and they didn’t want any people responsibility at all. And they were very happy doing that. And then there were the people that expected to get people.
People [00:27:00] responsibility and wanted that as part of their career growth. Yeah. And so that was, you know, that was me. And so I was looking forward to it. Mm-hmm. And, um, fortunately I’m pretty good with people. And so, and, and the fact that you start at the bottom. You’ve done the job that they’ve done, you’ve moved into this transition role, we called it district field representative, where you’ve been being trained to be a manager for six to nine months and then come back and you manage people.
They’re fully expecting that. And as long as you had a good relationship with them, you know, along the way, um, it was fun managing them. And they were, you know, a lot of learnings because they people have issues. Yeah. And, and you get involved in those issues, whether they’re personal issues or issues with the business.
Right. But, um, and those all were learning opportunities for me and I looked forward to continue to develop and, and have a bigger responsibility and more people. And when I retired, I had 800 people working for me, so. Wow. Um, that was a lot. Yeah. What was that
Jace Edwards: like managing that many people? Like what was kind of the
Lamar Johnson: structure of it?
Well, it’s, it one of our, I mean, [00:28:00] the processes I manage were all of our demand forecasting, our, our accounts receivable, um, our order management, our warehouses. Thing our transportation functions. And so it was very varied in terms of the type of people I had working for me. Mm-hmm. Um, But I knew what their basic core functions were, even though I hadn’t done exactly that work.
But, uh, but, uh, it, it, it, it was fun learning how to manage people where I didn’t know exactly what their day-to-day work was. Yeah. I knew what the outcome of their work was, uh, because I had been the recipient of that when I was in sales, but I didn’t know exactly how they performed their task. And I learned very quickly.
It wasn’t my job to tell them how to do their job. It was my job to learn how to enable them to do it with the right resources and the right training, um, so that they could do their job, continue to do their job even better. And so at the other end, we’d have even better supply results. Yeah.
Jace Edwards: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I mean, I think one of the most important parts of being in a [00:29:00] leadership role is enabling your teams to have the tools to be successful. Not necessarily like, Hey, here’s what you need to do, right? Like, guide them, show them the way. Um, so obviously a very long career, um, in sales and, and in a leadership role.
Um, in your eyes, what do you think sets the best leaders apart? What are some of those qualities that make the, the best
Lamar Johnson: leaders out there? Great listeners. Yeah. Uh, for one, um, and, and. I think probably there’s more to this, but people skills and be able to be able to empathetic with people and, and a, a true desire to help people succeed.
And people can tell if you have that. And, and, you know, as my, my most, my favorite bosses were the ones that listen to me mm-hmm. And, and wanted to give me the tools to make me successful. And were humble about it. Yeah. Um, you know, I’m, one of my several role models in my company experience.
Uh, one of them was the [00:30:00] c e o that I demanded we go see when my story earlier. Um, but he was a very humble man. Um, he’s written a number of books. His name was John Pepper, p e p p e r. But as P&G started, uh, everybody at, at the bottom level, whatever, whether you started finance or marketing or wherever you started that entry level and move up.
He’d been through all of those jobs and, and he was the most down to earth person. Um, even as C E O, I had the good fortune in my role as running North American, the supply chain part, but went to Canada with him on the company plane and there were several other executives and we were meeting our Canadian officers there.
And, um, we get on, there was a president of Canada at the time, and so the US executives or the North American executives, which I was one, gets off the plane and the three limousines are lined up by the president of Canada to whisk us off to the, you know, to the hotel. And, uh, John and his wife Francie, who had lived, had driven up, were planned to take [00:31:00] vacation after this.
And so a, uh, a rental Oldsmobile comes up and, and the c e o gets behind the wheel and his wife gets, you know, on the other side and they go driving off following the limousines that his people were, were in. Yeah. It, it’s like one of these things that’s like, he, that’s my kind of guy. Yeah. He, he was not pretentious.
He’d do anything for you and you could talk to him and just, you know, call him John. And those were my kind of people, and that’s what I tried to do, tried to emulate that leadership style. Yeah.
Jace Edwards: These stories are fascinating, by the way. Um, I feel like you have so much knowledge to share.
Lamar Johnson: Um, so much, so much life has gone by.
Yeah.
Jace Edwards: Um, so kind of going back to the, I mentioned earlier that, you know, a lot of young sales professionals, they’re not, you know, necessarily sure. Like, Hey, do I stay in an individual contributing route or, you know, get into a leadership role. Like what advice would you give or maybe advice that you currently give your, your students who might have that kind of internal dilemma?
Lamar Johnson: Well, you know, the students I don’t think have any idea what they really [00:32:00] want to do anyway. Right? Yeah. You know, I, and what I would tell ’em is you, you get into a company that you think fits you culturally. Uh, with a job that you think sounds exciting mm-hmm. And the job that you think will be, uh, lucrative.
Yeah. And then you make a decision based on what you see around you. Um, I can’t tell Susie or Joe what they should do when they graduate. Yeah. So if you like to lead people, um, you know, and you, you, you’ve been a leader, the president of your organization or whatever you’ve been, and you like that role of leading people, then you might wanna pursue a leadership.
Kind of position that puts you in that role If you like being successful, if you like, if you’re an athlete that likes to go, you know, if you’re the miler that runs a mile, not part of a team. If you, if you wanna. Uh, you know, not have the burden of worrying about other people and all that sort of stuff, and you might think about being an individual contributor.
So, uh, that, that would be, I mean, that was the kind of discussion I had with some of [00:33:00] my people. Mm-hmm. But, um, the tougher discussion I had with some of my people is why we felt they were better off being individual contributors and they would be, If they were in management. Yeah. Because several of ’em wanted to be managers.
Uhhuh. Yeah. And you know, we just didn’t see it Uhhuh. And so we had to have those tough conversations that you’re way better doing this and here’s the kind of headaches you might have if you went to do that. And. You know, we’re gonna make that decision for you that you’re better as an individual contributor.
Jace Edwards: Right. Yeah, that’s great advice. ‘Cause I mean, look, I mean the, the reality is, I mean, a lot of people, they just are better suited for, for an
Lamar Johnson: individual contributor role. Exactly.
Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of times young people think they need to be a manager because it’s a, a promotion or the next step in their career.
When in reality in sales you can be extreme. Like it can be very lucrative and you can have a very successful career being an individual contributor. You don’t need that manager title to be successful and to, um, to make a great life for yourself
Lamar Johnson: as well. That’s certainly true in, in a lot of fields.
Some it’s not, quite frankly, because [00:34:00] and I don’t know, I can’t speak for all the consumer packaged goods companies today, and quite frankly, I’m not even sure of the structure because the job of retail sales rep went away when you could influence at the corporate level. And really it’s, uh, it’s the salespeople that now would go to work for a P&G would go to work as an account manager, and they would be part of a team that was calling on Walmart, for example.
And they would have, uh, right away after some training, they would have the.
Um, uh, not pounding the streets at retail because quite frankly, we hire third parties to go do that work now, which is all executional. It’s not, it’s not influencing, it’s executional. They don’t have a list of things to do, and they go in the store, they check ’em all off, make sure something’s on the shelf or on display.
They fill out a report and they go on. They’re not influencing anybody. They’re just checking to see what’s happening. So, so that business has changed a lot. But at the time we had people that, that were pillars of their community. [00:35:00] They lived in a small town. They were a sales rep for P&G. They had a company car.
It was prestigious. They made a good income. And the thing about P&G and a lot of companies, we had to golden handcuffs. We had an incredible profit sharing program that was non-contributing by the employee. We still do, uh, with the first company to have a profit sharing plan that the employee didn’t participate in.
It was money put aside for you. And, uh, we painted the picture and showed examples. If somebody came to work for us as a sales rep and stayed as a sales rep for 40 years, 35, 40 years, you know, it would be well into the seven figures, the amount of money that would’ve been set aside for them. And so their wealth came upon retirement, obviously with normal healthy increases and, and, uh, praise and opportunities to be, um, you know, to to, for contests and things to win and all that sort of stuff that would keep them motivated.
But we retired a lot of sales reps who bought big [00:36:00] houses in Florida when they retired and, uh, had boats and, and, uh, that was kind of the, the picture you painted for the carrot. Yeah. Wow.
Kristen Wisdorf: Well, and that’s the beauty of sales too, right? If you do a great job, you can, um, have a great lifestyle that, that goes with it or great retirement or even an early one, right?
Um, I do have an interesting question. So you mentioned earlier you, when you started talking about your experience with P&G, you started with your training and how you walked through each day and you was like on like in the field on the job training with your manager and um, it would progress over the week and then the next Monday you were on your own.
And I’m curious. How does what your students now these days expect from companies and the training they provide? How has that, is it different than what you got? I know, you know, we hire a lot of folks directly outta college and oftentimes they, they’re so used to like a classroom setting, so they expect or they get, um, they feel comfortable in a classroom setting, but there’s so much value in that on the job, in the field training.
[00:37:00] How do you, do you see similarities? What do you hear from your students these
Lamar Johnson: days? P&G, we did a combination of the two. Um, but what’s funny is we did, we, we spent a sales rep would spend six months or so in the field learning what was, what to do and what not to do, and getting beat up some and, and having, you know, and it was pretty low risk.
There wasn’t a lot of damage, uh, a new sales rep could do with 150 relatively small stores. You’re gonna have some success. You’re gonna make some people mad. They’re gonna get angry at the company. But at the end of the day, P&G wasn’t gonna go out of business, but it was a great learning group. So then at the end of six months, we sent them all to Cincinnati for our central training school, only spent a week.
Uh, and that’s where we practiced videotaping presentations and playing them back and, and, um, uh, more on, um, Uh, the, the company, uh, organization and, and you know, how, how it’s set up and more on account selling and all of that sort of stuff. And then after that training session at six months, [00:38:00] It’s like, I remember the, the shade went up.
I mean, I, all of a sudden I had a clarity on what I was supposed to go do, and I went back for six months and kicked butt in my retail section. It became, I knew how to handle issues. I knew how to handle a tough retailer, one that pulled a gun on me. I knew, um, that was, that was actually that first week after my manager left.
I had a gun pulled on me in the store when I was out by myself. I was 22 years old and, um, That was, that was phenomenal. But, uh, but I knew I knew what to do and I knew how to build my business and it was great. And then I got promoted in 12 months. And so then it was time to go learn how to be a manager.
Um, so I’m not sure that answered your question directly, but, um, uh, it was a, it was, it’s a combination of both hands-on getting dirty, making a mistake, you know, uh, qualifying leads has gotta be a lot like that. You’re gonna Yeah. Learning
Kristen Wisdorf: by doing, but you have a foundational training to fall back on. But
Lamar Johnson: you, you know, you’re, if you’re qualifying leads one month after you start, you’re, you’re probably gonna handle some of those calls [00:39:00] correctly and get some success, and you’re probably gonna.
Makes some people mad and you know, but they learn and the business goes on. So, um, it’s, it’s a combination of the two.
Jace Edwards: Yeah. So certainly a, a harrowing experience whenever you get a gun pulled on you. Uh, whenever we first spoke, um, I think I may have mentioned I got my start in door-to-door sales, um, selling residential roofing job.
Yeah. And something may or may not have happened to me. Very similar. And there’s nothing like that when you’re a young person out there just trying to make an honest living and Yeah. Um, yeah, it’ll, uh, it, it, it certainly develops me. Great. Yes. Um, so
Lamar Johnson: Lamar, whenever, uh, by the way, that retailer Yeah.
Apologized to me, ah, before I got out of the store and became one of my best customers out. Yeah. So it all worked out. Reaction was he reaction And he, over the loud speaker, he apologized to me, Mr. Procter and Gamble, man, please come back to my office. I apologize. Everybody in the store was looking around like, you know.
So I was a little reluctant to go back. Yeah. Cause I wasn’t sure exactly what was waiting for me. [00:40:00] I’m kidding. He was profusely apologetic, so Yeah. He had a bad day before I got there.
Jace Edwards: Sounds like it. Um, so Lamar, as we were getting prepped for this, something that stuck out to me is you mentioned that you wanted to make sure that you retired to something.
Right. So I kind of want to touch on. You know, what you’re currently doing with, with UT Austin here. Um, how did the sales program that, that you’re currently heading up right now, like how did that come to be? Okay,
Lamar Johnson: so let me back up and I’ll talk about planning for something. So, um, when I was heading my, uh, Dallas sales assignment, um, I, I managed, ’cause I graduated from UT Austin.
I ran the recruiting program for sales for at, um, ut, which was tremendous because it’s three hour drive away. I love coming to Austin. Um, Great be, be back on campus. And I found that I could add a lot of value by bringing the real world into the classroom. And I found that the professors all couldn’t wait till I came down and talked to me about what’s going on, what’s out there, you know, what are the new ideas?
[00:41:00] What’s P&G working on? What can we think about? And so I saw that there was this huge value of bringing the outside world in to a university. I had fun doing it. And I said, you know, so I’m gonna start laying the tracks so when I do finally retire, I can come back to my alma mater in Austin, Texas, which I love.
It’s very different today than it was in 250,000 people in 1970 when I was here. Yeah. But, but it’s still, it’s still got its charm. And, um, so I said I, I know if I give money, uh, that I’ll be on some list somewhere, and P&G had a tremendous matching program of two for one at the time. So if I give X dollars.
P&G gave 2x that those dollars, and it looked like I’m giving 3x what I wanted to give in the first place. Yeah. And, um, so I I endowed an excellence fund in marketing, um, that put me on a list. And so when I endowed that fund and had it paid off, that when I called the dean had to answer the phone, um, and give me the time of day.
And [00:42:00] so I just made it pretty clear that I want to come back and do something after I graduate from my full-time career. To bring the real world into, into the school. And so I kept that relationship up. And um, um, so about a year before I was gonna retire, I came back and I said, okay, I’m planning to retire next summer.
You know, let’s talk about what I can do here to, to help you and to help the school. And well, he said, surely you’re gonna want to teach. And I said, I don’t think so. I think teaching is gonna help a group of students. But I said, I think I can bring some skills in that can help, uh, broader, you know, help in a broader way.
And, um, well, he said okay. He said, uh, he said, I, I need help. Um, building corporate relationships, starting in the marketing department because he said they have the worst external relations of any department in the school, which is like, interesting. Yeah. And I said, okay. I said, that sounds like a business problem and a sales opportunity.
And I [00:43:00] think I can help with that. And so, uh, I created this thing called the Center for Customer Insight and Marketing Solutions, which is a way that connects faculty, students, and industry together. There’s a package of benefits mm-hmm. That makes a company want to be connected. Not unlike the sales program that you’ve heard me talk about.
Yeah. But, That, um, provides access to our best and brightest students, which is the number one objective that a company wants when they partner with a school. You know, connecting to the faculty is okay, that’s nice. Um, coming to campus is nice, but if you can show me in a differentiated way where I can see the best and brightest students, then I’m gonna be interested in connecting with you.
And, uh, so I created a program that did all that, and out of that I developed some student organizations that are. That are, the class for them is exclusively taught by corporate executives. And guess what? Those corporate executives are people that are sponsors of my of my Center of excellence in marketing.
Yeah. So I did that. Uh, a year later we started up supply chain teaching supply chain, [00:44:00] uh, management as a major at school. So I was asked to create the same concept for the supply chain program, which I did, and it successfully runs today. And then about four years ago, we. Got the vision to create, um, a program in sales.
We had some classes in sales, um, one, really only one in the business school and several in the communication school. But there was no program, uh, for sales. And uh, and we looked around. There really was not an unorganized program at the time. And what we consider our peer universities. And you know, we, we may be arrogant, but we look at Cal, Berkeley and Michigan and, uh, schools like that as that we benchmark with, and we saw an opportunity maybe to create something that they don’t have that would be valued by, um, by companies.
And so we started the design work and the, um, the dean at the time of the business school, Said, I’m gonna support this. He said, and I wanna get the School of Communication connected to it, but I think we ought to open it to the entire campus, but [00:45:00] it’ll be run out of the business school and the school of communication.
But he said, we can’t produce and provide any money for the program because all the students in it would be current students because we’ll create a minor and there’s no additional tuition. So he said, if you want money to run a program, you’re gonna have to go figure that out. And I said, I think I know how to do that.
Yeah. So I created, uh, corporate partnership program with our sales program and we’ve got 15 corporate partners and we’ve generated enough money that we start sending kids to sales competitions and yeah. We hired an administrator and so, you know, we look like a real program now. Yeah, so that’s how that started.
Jace Edwards: That’s awesome. Um, speaking of sales competition, um, you guys have a timeline? I mean, personally, I love sales competitions. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve had the opportunity, uh, to judge quite a few of those over the year, and it’s incredible to see, um, you know, how these programs, like, like the one that, that you’re running is setting these kids up for success?
Yeah. In the, in the real world, like looking back on it. I wish I would’ve taken advantage of that while I was in college. Yeah, because it’s incredible to see [00:46:00] them in action. Yeah. Um, like what’s that timeline look like for you guys? Are you guys, you’ve got a
Lamar Johnson: timeline, you got a plan? Okay. Um, we’re gonna do it internally first before we expose anyone to our students or, or get exposed.
Yeah. Um, so March 1st, 2024, we’re gonna have a sales competition. Um, and, um, We just started the planning for it. I spent, uh, an hour on the phone with my friend Greg Ricardo at lsu. Mm-hmm. Uh, they run a lot of programs. Yeah. You
Kristen Wisdorf: guys are. Yeah. He’s got a great track record
Lamar Johnson: too, said in fact, just today I got his, uh, his Qualtrics score sheet so we can steal it and use that to have our first, our first one, um, I’m, I’m supposed to go soon to go look at potential facilities over here that we can run, run the program in, ’cause we don’t have a lab, we don’t have anything yet, uh, dedicated, but we’ve got some facilities in another building that we can look at.
Um, so, so we’re just starting the planning, but we know it’s gonna be March 1st. We’ve already determined that’s the best date for it. We’re gonna do it [00:47:00] not on the weekend, cause I don’t wanna work on the weekend. We’re gonna do it on right there with you. We’re gonna do it on Friday. Most students don’t have class on Friday, and if they have class on Friday, guess what?
They can’t participate in the sales competition. Yep. Um, but, um, so we’re gonna gear up. Oh, and by the way, apparently the, the, um, lady, what is it? Lanita? From the Great North Woods, uh
Kristen Wisdorf: oh yeah. From Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Eau Claire
Lamar Johnson: from Eau Claire, right? Yeah. So, uh, I met her at, uh, one of the companies had a thing where they brought 30 or so of the people are running sales programs to their headquarters last summer.
And I went there for that and, uh, met her. And, uh, they do our, our biggest sponsor is Keurig, Dr. Pepper. Uh, and it’s a CPG company. And so, uh, they’re gonna want us to have a CPG related case, uh, at least for our internal one first. And so they apparently have Hormel as their, their big sponsor and they do CPG cases.
So Lanita, if, if I’ve mispronounce her name, I [00:48:00] apologize, but she’s gonna send me a sample case. So we’re gonna steal good ideas from every place we can steal them from. And the beauty that I,
Kristen Wisdorf: well, that’s a good, that’s a good school to steal from. That’s where I went to school. That’s my, so, yeah.
Lamar Johnson: Well, what I found is all these people that run these sales programs are all eager to help each other, and it’s very collaborative and, and we’re not competing with their students.
We may be competing for sponsorships, but we’re not competing. Students, so they’re happy to help, uh, our program get up and running. And we, we, we just finished our second full year in the program. We’ve got, uh, we’ve started our first semester with 35 students. We’ve got 175 now. Um, this time next year we’ll have about 200, and that’s kind of where we wanna level off until we can catch up with our capacity to teach them all.
Yeah. Um, but it’s been very popular and I love the fact that we’ve got kids from all over campus. Um, Uh, we’ve sent three, I sent two students to a competition in Chicago last year because the company was gonna pay their [00:49:00] way. And I found two students I thought would do really well. One of ’em went up there, he won the whole competition with 48 students.
Um, won 2000 bucks for himself and $3,000 for our program, and he is kinestheology major. Um, but he could sell. Yeah. Yeah. You got it. It’s
Kristen Wisdorf: work ethic and following a process and a little bit of personality, but, um, but you can teach anyone with any major. What
Lamar Johnson: was interesting, what was interesting about him, he didn’t follow the process.
Everybody was trained. Step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, state of the process about halfway through the buyer for this company. Threw him off base and, and, and took him in a different direction. And this kid sat back and listened and he went where the buyer went. Yeah, listen. And he didn’t stick in the process. He went completely off script and he ended up winning it because he adapted to what the buyer was actually saying.
Yeah, that’s great. Very good instincts. Yeah.
Kristen Wisdorf: So good instincts. And it sounds like he listened well, which is great. [00:50:00] So Yeah. Lamar, you have quite the, um, career, right? Almost 34 years at P&G, 18 of those in sales, I think you said, um, you came full circle. Going back to UT now creating all these programs for the business school.
You built the supply chain, I guess, business, right at Procter & Gamble. You’re building something now, you. You can take something, uh, whether it has a lot of, um, components and you, you can build something. And so, and you’ve been doing that your whole career. So I guess to wrap this thing up, what is next?
What’s the next thing you’re gonna build? Um, and is it just, you know, bringing the sales program to 200 students? Like what’s next for, for Lamar?
Lamar Johnson: Well, I, I love what I’m doing and, um, uh, I’m, I’m three weeks away from being 75 years old. Fortunately, I don’t take any medicine. I walk 50 miles a week. I still [00:51:00] got gas in the tank.
Uh, I’m gonna continue doing what I’m doing and what I’d like to do now is just find a way to make what I’ve done here. Um, Last beyond me because, you know, I won’t be here at a hundred I don’t think. Maybe, who knows? Uh, but at some point I’ll fade away and I wanna make sure when I fade away that programs I’ve helped create don’t fade away with me.
And that there’s, they’re sustained and that my successors can come in and pick up where I’ve left. And it’s not because of me, it’s because of the programs we’ve built. That’s
Kristen Wisdorf: great. And I mean, listen, this is amazing. We have had an office in Austin for many years and it’s so exciting to see a program like this being built at UT Austin just down the street from us.
So thanks for all your hard work on everything you’re doing with the students, and thanks for joining us today. You’re officially a certified hustler.
Lamar Johnson: Yeah, great. Sounds great. You get, do I get a certificate?
Kristen Wisdorf: Uh, we’ll
Lamar Johnson: send you a [00:52:00] yeti themed coffe mug.
Thanks so much fun. Thanks all.