Episode 66: Deionte Davis – No Pain, No Gain
How can you compete against someone who is constantly improving their abilities? Once Deionte Davis unlocked this cheat code, the professional sales world changed for him.
Deionte, now a successful Account Executive at Searchspring, deploys a daily improvement style to max out his gains mentally, physically and professionally. His personal love of health and fitness helped him adopt a self-improvement mindset as an SDR. And that mindset fuels his sales career.
In the newest episode of our Tech Sales is for Hustlers – Austin Series, Deionte reveals what it truly means to invest in yourself, how a tough conversation completely changed his career approach, and the core advice he’d give himself before he started his sales career.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: Deionte Davis
What he does: Account Executive
Company: Searchspring
Noteworthy: Deionte’s interest in making money, made sales an obvious choice.
Where to find Deionte: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡ The investment with the best return is the one you make in yourself. It can be hard to conquer self-doubt and easy to find excuses for why you didn’t see something through. Get comfortable with being on a constant quest to learn and develop.
⚡ Bet your money on your future. Things can take on a new perspective when the skin in the game is your own. Instead of temporary material things, opt to foot the bill for new learning opportunities or training programs for yourself.
⚡ Celebrate your strengths. If you’re putting in the work, it won’t take long to identify the areas of the job that come more naturally to you. Continue to refine these strengths of course, but also allow them to supplement your growth in other areas.
Episode Highlights
A Born Money Maker
“I’ve always been interested in making money, always entrepreneurial-minded. You sell candy at high school. Always find ways to flip things and make money. […] I grew up in a pretty middle-class family. My parents were pretty good to my sister and me, but I’ve always been interested in video games, toys, and stuff like that.
So, I had to find ways to make money. My grandparents used to buy me candy all the time. And I was like, ‘Man, I can go to school and flip this and make some money.’ […] I was making 50 bucks a week. It’s pretty good money as a kid.
[…] I would always try to be the first one in the office. I would come into this room right here at 7:30 and write my goals down. I wasn’t going out as much. I didn’t have much of a social life at the time. I was focused on just making money and getting better.
That was the number one thing in my life. That’s what I wanted.[…] I like doing deals and making money. So, I do think corporate development is probably going to be the long-term route, but for right now, I think there’s still a lot that I need to learn.”
There’s Always More to Learn
“I have to learn closing techniques and understand how to run a full cycle. Like, ‘What does my email follow-up look like? What does my regular follow-up look like? What type of things do I need to say throughout the presentation to get a yes toward the end of the sale?’
But the big one is the way I speak and present things. I still talk pretty fast. That was one thing that I always had to be cognizant of. But more so, how to ask the right questions throughout the sales process. Not just pre-setting up the meeting, but during the demo and after the demo to get it to an actual close.”
Invest in People
“I hired a couple of people, but I was actually scared to take on the manager role, and I didn’t even apply for it. I didn’t think I’d have to invest in people like that. It wasn’t something that I ever thought I would want to do, but I knew I needed to do that because I thought it was going to grow my skill set.
And so, taking that on and having to guide people’s careers added another tool to my belt that I needed. It was a challenge. It was hard. It wasn’t easy finding people, trying to build out a process, and also making sure that they were doing well.
[…] I think you have got to figure out what motivates people. How to figure out what motivates them, and what can I do to get that drive out of them? I think that was a hard part to reconcile, but also kind of dangling the carrot. Like, if you want to get here, this is what you need to do. You’ve got to excel at this role right now. I feel like that was a good thing to use as a driver for other people that weren’t super driven.”
There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Questions
“Be a sponge, check your ego at the door, be willing to learn from other people. Be willing to know what you’re talking about. Learn the client that you’re on, whatever account you’re assigned to. You need to know about their product, their industry, their space, who they sell to.
I think one thing I probably could’ve done a better job of is building a good report. I think that’s a huge one. I did that pretty well, but I could’ve done that probably a lot better. Learn how to manage business relationships, relationships with coworkers. And be curious. Ask questions.”
Transcript:
[00:02:33] Marc Gonyea: Deionte Meredith-Davis in the house, man.
[00:02:40] Deionte Davis: It’s going to be fun.
[00:02:40] Chris Corcoran: It’s going to be fun.
[00:02:41] Deionte Davis: I’m excited.
[00:02:42] Marc Gonyea: How you doing?
[00:02:43] Deionte Davis: I’m doing great, man. How about y’all? It’s been, been a while.
[00:02:46] Chris Corcoran: It has been.
[00:02:47] Marc Gonyea: It’s good that you’re here because we’re moving out of this office in December?
[00:02:51] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:02:52] Marc Gonyea: In December.
[00:02:52] Deionte Davis: I don’t know if I was close.
[00:02:53] Chris Corcoran: In November.
[00:02:54] Marc Gonyea: In November.
[00:02:55] Chris Corcoran: November.
[00:02:55] Marc Gonyea: So next month. So you’re back, the return of the prodigal son.
[00:02:59] Deionte Davis: [00:03:00] That’s still the stomping ground, right?
[00:03:01] Marc Gonyea: That’s right.
[00:03:01] Deionte Davis: So we were driving up here. I was like, “Oh gosh, I haven’t been in Austin a while.”
[00:03:05] Chris Corcoran: So final visit to the office. And first I want to thank you for, number one, appearing.
[00:03:09] Deionte Davis: Sure.
[00:03:10] Chris Corcoran: But number two, for making this a road trip, driving up from San Antonio to Austin to be here. We really appreciate it.
[00:03:15] Deionte Davis: Yeah, absolutely. It was nice. It was good, good scenery. You’ve got to drive right through Texas state. You got to see everything. And I say, I haven’t been in Austin in a couple of years, so it’s nice to be here.
[00:03:24] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Well good. And you saw your old cronies?
[00:03:28] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:03:28] Marc Gonyea: So Deionte, the folks who listen and Chris and I just to an extent know you.
[00:03:34] I know you a little bit more than Chris does. We want to start this thing off, but can you talk about yourself? Where you grew up, a little bit about what you like as a kid and all those things that will kind of, we’ll kind of go from there ’cause it’s been the audience get to know you.
[00:03:45] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So my name is Deionte.
[00:03:47] I was born in San Antonio, lived there until about four years old and then moved to a Virginia. I was there for a pretty much from four until ten years old in elementary school. And then I’m moving back to San Antonio for like middle high [00:04:00] school. Went through that, grew up playing sports. I’ve always been interested in making money, so that’s kind of, always entrepreneurial minded. Like you sell candy at high school, I always find ways to like flip things and make money.
[00:04:11] Marc Gonyea: So tell us about that. What sports did you play?
[00:04:14] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So, first sport was baseball and I started when I was like seven years old, played center field. Oh, that was decent. I wasn’t great. Played basketball for a little bit.
[00:04:22] My dad also coached our team. I was pretty good defensively, but offensively I was, I was not good whatsoever. So got out of that and then start playing football when I was in eighth grade. And was, I was pretty decent football player, so I was, probably my best sport kind of ran with that throughout high school.
[00:04:34] Also ran track when I was in high school and I was on the bowling team too. Yeah, me and my friends did it as a joke and ended up being pretty serious, pretty competitive. It was a fun time. It’s a good conversation starter. That was good.
[00:04:49] Marc Gonyea: But tell us about the other stuff too. That the, so you’re in sales.
[00:04:53] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:04:53] Marc Gonyea: So it sounds like that came up earlier on.
[00:04:57] Deionte Davis: It was so, I used to, [00:05:00] I grew up pretty middle class family. Like, you know, didn’t really have things that, like I didn’t get. You know, my parents were pretty good to me and my sister. I have younger sister and I’ve always been interested in like video games and like toys and stuff like that.
[00:05:11] So I had to find ways to make money. I rather be like, you know, cutting grass or, you know, washing dishes, whatever. And my grandparents, they used to like buy me candy all the time. And I was like, “Man, I can go to school and like flip this and make some money.” So I screw…
[00:05:23] Marc Gonyea: When was this?
[00:05:24] Deionte Davis: So that started that, it was seventh grade.
[00:05:27] Marc Gonyea: Okay.
[00:05:27] Deionte Davis: Yeah. Actually I started in sixth grade.
[00:05:29] Marc Gonyea: Sixth grade?
[00:05:29] Deionte Davis: Started in sixth grade and San Antonio is primarily like Hispanic, pretty Hispanic by culture. So like, I would get like Mexican candy and like flip that or like Blow Pops, Skittles, things like that. And I did it in sixth and seventh grade and then I moved to a different middle school in eighth grade.
[00:05:42] So I’m in a new environment, new people and…
[00:05:44] Marc Gonyea: New territory.
[00:05:45] Deionte Davis: New territory, new territory. And so, you know, found out what people like and, you know, just, just sold that and we’d get a bunch of stuff from Costco. I was making like 50 bucks a week. It’s a pretty good money as, as a kid.
[00:05:56] Marc Gonyea: That’s like a thousand dollars. 50 bucks a week?
[00:05:59] Deionte Davis: It was pretty wild. Trying to balance that while I played sports is good time.
[00:06:02] Marc Gonyea: Okay. What did you spend money on?
[00:06:04] Deionte Davis: Toys, video games.
[00:06:05] Marc Gonyea: Video games?
[00:06:07] Deionte Davis: I was a pretty big gamer. X-Box was live a lot when I was in high school. I probably spent way too much time on that, but yeah. And I think I just, I just liked the, like the chase, like the interaction with people and like the thought of like transacting and getting something that I wanted that was, that was pretty full led my time into sales.
[00:06:23] Chris Corcoran: So football, football was your sport. What position?
[00:06:27] Deionte Davis: I played corner. And then when I was in high school, I started getting a little bigger. I started like really hitting the weights and I got moved to strong safety my junior and played at my senior year.
[00:06:36] Chris Corcoran: There you go.
[00:06:37] Deionte Davis: Yeah, that was a lot more fun. I was a pretty good like cover quarter.
[00:06:42] I really wasn’t like super fast, but I did like to hit. And so like, I was pretty happy that they moved me to that position.
[00:06:48] Chris Corcoran: That’s great. That’s great.
[00:06:49] Deionte Davis: It’s fine.
[00:06:50] Marc Gonyea: Would you start really hitting the hiring college? I started hitting it when I was, so when I was a sophomore in high school. Like that’s so like my dad passed away, whatever I was, it was like the, like last month of my freshman year of high school.
[00:07:02] Deionte Davis: And so like a couple months later after that, that’s when I really started in the way it’s pretty hard. It was around like September of my sophomore year.
[00:07:10] Chris Corcoran: And then you had been on the weights since?
[00:07:12] Deionte Davis: I’ve been on weights since. There’s never really been a time in my life when I haven’t like worked out. I think I just like it.
[00:07:18] I mean, I think, you know, high school, like football, girls, like, you know, that there’s all that. And then like, I was, I got into college, I started bodybuilding and then now I’m just like staying healthy, but it’s like, it just keeps me sane and I like doing it. Nothing wrong with college students, like seeing how big I could get.
[00:07:31] I was a lot heavier back then, probably like 188. Now I think the highest I had was like 215. Yeah. And I’m like five days on that like, so..
[00:07:40] I was pretty big.
[00:07:41] Marc Gonyea: So you were coming out of high school, what’d you end up doing?
[00:07:46] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:07:47] So went to, went to Texas State, San Marcus, Bobcats.
[00:07:50] Chris Corcoran: I’m going to get more Texas State grads.
[00:07:53] Deionte Davis: They go, they go pretty hard at everything. It’s a wild school, big party school. So I went to Texas State and I studied Health and Wellness Promotion. It’s kind of like community health, health population and I was a business minor. And didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I actually kind of wanted to get into like, “I could be a firefighter or like police officer.”
[00:08:09] It was kind of my thoughts when I was in college and I’d actually worked at GNC for two years and I worked at a gym at the same time. So, did that and obviously GNC, like I was slinging supplements, like in new Braunfels. And like the, remember I started getting a lot better and start making more money.
[00:08:24] I was like, “Man, this is actually like a lot of fun.” I was, I did an internship my senior year. Two internships, actually. I did one with the city of Austin, like helping to run their health and wellness program that I had to do for school. And then I was doing another internship in San Antonio with Northwestern mutual and they don’t like lack assurance, financial planning. And just being just in the dynamics between those two offices, like being in Austin, where it was like more corporate buttoned up,
[00:08:47] I was like the HR building. They didn’t really like want to be there. Like they were like, “Oh man, I can’t wait till I retire.” And I was like,” I don’t want to be around that.”
[00:08:59] Marc Gonyea: People say to Chris, “When do you retire?” I don’t want any part of that. Like, I’m 46.
[00:09:06] Deionte Davis: So, what are you gonna do at that time? Exactly. So like being there and then being in San Antonio, like with those guys, you know, they’re making money, they’re like doing deals. I was like, “Gosh, that’s a lot of fun.”
[00:09:16] Marc Gonyea: That’s a tough business too.
[00:09:17] Deionte Davis: Oh gosh.
[00:09:19] So hard. Yeah. I think I really learned the value of like just nose to the grind, like work when I was there. It was, it was challenging, but I learned so much. Being able to face rejection, like just doing a lot of activity, like willingness to, to have humility. And I’d say also too, just like being able to shut things out and saying,” All right, I’m just going to focus on this and just go hard at it.”
[00:09:40] Being able to drop the distractions. I think that was probably the biggest thing that I got from. ‘Cause I was like, I would come up to Austin. I was still finishing like my last two classes at Texas State too, so I was living in San Marcus, but I drive up to Austin like Monday through Thursday to do the health internship.
[00:09:53] And then I would drive to San Antonio, basically Friday through the weekend and like work there to do the other internship. And I mean, they’d give us like a hundred dollars stipend a week and then whatever extra money we were making was basically off what we closed in. Maybe like three life insurance plans.
[00:10:06] So I didn’t do a lot. I’ll do a lot of activity. Yeah. I was having a lot of meetings. I had the most activity. Like I got all the interns, which was good, but it wasn’t necessarily translating to results yet. So I think like getting kicked in the teeth, like it, kinda kinda grew me up a little bit. It’s great. Getting kicked in the teeth. You will. In the B2B and B2C.
[00:10:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, for sure. So you did the internship and you’re working and, you know…
[00:10:30] Chris Corcoran: Smart, too. You can compare.
[00:10:33] Deionte Davis: Yeah. That was a big thing, coming out of that and then coming to memoryBlue. I mean, it was two different worlds. So I think I got to take like a lot of the experience I got there and and I’m actually fine enough.
[00:10:43] So once I graduated, I kind of wanted to go into med device sales. My, my mother had a friend, who’s African-American due to, you know, he’s like probably one of the few black dudes in like med device sales. So it was like, “Hey, you should like try to get your foot into this.” And so I, I talked to like a couple of like recruiters, like.
[00:10:57] And they’re like,” Hey, you know, you need like B2B experience.” And so I had a friend that interviewed here at memoryBlue. And he was like, “Hey, you should check this place out.”
[00:11:04] Marc Gonyea: Who was that?
[00:11:04] Deionte Davis: It was Esteban Chavez.
[00:11:05] So, so we actually, we grew up together in San Antonio, so it’s the same middle school with the same high school. He was the kicker on our team. And he moved to UT. Well, he went to college at UT and also in Texas State. And so like when he was, we graduated the same semester, this is actually kind of funny. He called me one night.
[00:11:21] It was like 3:00 AM. He was like, “Hey dude,” like, this is like three months before he graduated. He was like,” Hey, you should move to Austin. You can sleep on my couch. We’ll get jobs in tech sales and we’ll make it work.” And I was like, “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.”
[00:11:35] So, you know, getting the job at memoryBlue and he had a friend who was like leaving to go to Vietnam for like three months. And this friend was like, “Hey, you know, you give me 300 bucks. You can sleep at mine in Austin. So I was with his friend and his friend’s two roommates for like two months or so. You know, just started my career, just graduated.
[00:11:51] And then you know, he came back and so I had to find a new place. So I ended up sleeping on friend’s one couch. It was a one bedroom apartment at, at UT for like two months or so [00:12:00] before we got our apartment. So,
[00:12:01] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:12:01] Marc Gonyea: Why you are fired up here?
[00:12:05] Deionte Davis: Already getting things off the ground. He actually interviewed with Nimit. Yeah. And you should, you should ask him about that story.
[00:12:17] Marc Gonyea: We will ask them, not right now. Walk us through your interview. Walk, walk us through your rememberence about that. Did you kind of know what we did?
[00:12:26] Was it just like tech sales?
[00:12:28] Deionte Davis: Yeah, not really.
[00:12:29] I mean, and I was interviewed now like a few of the places, so I kind of had an idea of like what an SDR role entailed.
[00:12:34] So basically, you know, I sat in on meetings yet and I remember I had my interview with Dot and…
[00:12:38] Marc Gonyea: Dotun Adetutu.
[00:12:38] Deionte Davis: Dotun. And it went pretty good. I remember I actually got offered the job and, ended up turning it down to like, go with Northwestern mutual instead.
[00:12:46] Marc Gonyea: Come on.
[00:12:47] Deionte Davis: And I realized I made a mistake. I was like, “If I basically would have to stay in San Antonio to build my practice there.”
[00:12:52] And I was like,” Man, I don’t think I should do this.” So I actually called Nimit and I was like, “Hey, you know, you guys, still have that position open?
[00:12:58] Chris Corcoran: How long, how long? A time period?
[00:12:59] Deionte Davis: That was, I literally told Dotum ‘no’. I think it was, it was on like a Wednesday, ended up going to the Northwestern mutual office on Friday, decided like,” Okay, I don’t want to do this.”
[00:13:08] And he called me like later that day, that Friday that, “Hey, you know, you also have a position open.” He was like, “I’ll let you know like next week.” He’s like, “You still have it. We’re still interviewing some people.” So I remember Nimit called me like Tuesday that next week. He was like, “Hey, we start, position open starts next week.
[00:13:21] You know, do you wanna take it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, for sure.” So I came up and I took it.
[00:13:25] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:13:25] Deionte Davis: Now I’ve got, it’s pretty fortunate there. That was a little bit.
[00:13:28] Marc Gonyea: Now we were fortunate that you made your way today. Just, just to make sure… on Monday.
[00:13:37] Chris Corcoran: What clients did you talk to us about when you first got started? Who’s your manager? What client were you on?
[00:13:42] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So I was, so Dot was my manager and started off on a two companies as long a company called Wiretap, which it sold a, it was basically software. It was like a security solution for Slack.
[00:13:54] That’s all like if you had employees that were saying things over Slack that they probably shouldn’t have said, the company Wiretap would basically go to pick that up and, you [00:14:00] know, compliance issues, things like that. So I was on that client and then I was on another client called a Buddy Platform and basically they sold like an energy monitoring solution.
[00:14:08] And so we were pitching that to facilities directors at universities. So I was on both of those for, like the first three months coming out of college. And then, and actually it doesn’t actually came on. I remember Dot had come to me ’cause Wiretap had left. And he was like,” Hey, there’s this new company that’s called AQ showed.”
[00:14:23] He’s like, “I saw like, you know, Solver, Flexion, like an iPad for like senior living.” And like, we kind of looked at each other and I kind of laughed. I was like, “That’s kind of interesting.” And then the next week he’s like, “Yeah, you’re actually going to be on it. “And I’m like” Oh, wow.” And so I like looked him up, like looked up.
[00:14:34] He was running and I was like, “Oh man, this looks like a pretty good opportunity.” And so that’s how, how that happened.
[00:14:38] Marc Gonyea: What was it like? It was really DataZone? So when you got on the phones? Maybe go around like what was with that learning curve?
[00:14:49] Deionte Davis: So it was right after I graduated, I had actually gotten accepted, go get my master’s at Texas State and like help the ones promotion. So I’ll still like, I wasn’t like fully invested in myself to like, “Oh man, I still kinda [00:15:00] want to think I want to do this.”
[00:15:01] And I was actually going to go to the military in order to pay for my school to be able to go to my… and I’m not being able to go to the military because I’ve got asthma. So I remember like the first three months that… you guys look me up. And so, you know, not being able to do that. And I remember the first three months, like, you know, I was doing good on, on buddy.
[00:15:17] Like I was not doing good, like on Wiretap at all. And so. The that three months, whenever I found out I wasn’t gonna be able to like do my masters and go to military, I was like, “All right, well.” I was driving home. Like, it was like a Friday night. It was like six o’clock. I was like, “Man, like I better get pretty good at this because I don’t have any other option.”
[00:15:33] And so, that’s when I kind of like fully invested, it was like, “All right. I’m going to go like all in on the sales thing and now and figure it out.”
[00:15:39] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that.
[00:15:40] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause people hear that and they, they all say, “He must have really come back to work on Monday like ready to go and like he was into it.” But what is that about?” What does that mean?
[00:15:50] Deionte Davis: And so those three months, like I was not doing hot either. I think we had like 86 SDRs at that time. And I was, I mean, I was bottom of the barrel. I was like, you know, number like freaking seventy. And I remember the numbers [00:16:00] exactly. Yeah, I was not doing hot. And so there was a guy, most people have known like Grant Cardone. People are, would probably love him or hate him.
[00:16:07] I’d actually bought, like, I kind of known about him throughout college and like kind of bought some of his books and, yeah, this program, it was like 1500 bucks. And, I was like, “Man, like, you know, I think this could be something good.” So I bought it with my own money and literally that next month went from like, you know, “Bottom number 70 to like, I think number eight in the company”. And made the money back that month.
[00:16:26] Chris Corcoran: So what’d you, what’d you look, what’d you learn from the material?
[00:16:30] Deionte Davis: Really a lot of objection handling, a lot of objection handling, but also I just to learned how, how to actually like think like, through the sales process, especially like doing all the cold calls ’cause he had different modules. So the modules I was using was like an objection module and it was also a cold call module.
[00:16:43] So I was like studying those and like, role-playing that, practicing that. I think it just giving me more competence on like how to actually overcome objections on the phone. That’s kinda what took my numbers from like bottom to the top.
[00:16:53] Chris Corcoran: So what was the name of the program?
[00:16:56] Deionte Davis: It was Cardone Cardone University.
[00:16:58] Chris Corcoran: Cardone means university.
[00:16:59] So I’ve had some experience with sales trainers. And if you want to hear, it’s kind of a constant refrain, is, that there’s two types of people that are good at sales training. One: people who go because our company pays for it. And two: people who pay for it themselves.
[00:17:15] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:17:15] Chris Corcoran: Which one do you think is more expensive?
[00:17:17] Deionte Davis: I say, I say the one that pays for it themselves, because you’re going to be way more invested.
[00:17:21] Chris Corcoran: Way more, way more. I totally agree. So it’s not the material. I mean, it’s not the material.
[00:17:27] Deionte Davis: It’s the mentality. I’d actually agree with that. Yeah, for sure. And you prove the point.
[00:17:32] Yeah. There’s a, I never really thought about it like that, but yeah, I agree 100%. I think when I was in college, I remember getting like $2,000 from my grandmother and I kinda just made it, like, just put in my savings account.
[00:17:45] And I was like, “Man, like, how did I spent the money back then?” It would’ve fast-tracked me. I would’ve, I would’ve came in and like already kind of had known like some sales stuff already. So that’s like the type of mentality I’ve taken to invest in myself. Like anytime it was like, “All right, like the money’s either just going to sit there or you can use it to work.”
[00:18:03] Marc Gonyea: And put it to work. How?
[00:18:04] Deionte Davis: I think, just like looking at what is most important in your life and like what you need to improve. I kind of look at like a video game, like play like a role-playing video game. Like you get all these points, right?. And you use the points to like level up your skill set. Like if you don’t use those points, you just keep them in there.
[00:18:17] Like it’s not doing anything. And so I kind of like, use money like that. Like, “Hey, take this money, invest in myself to get better at whatever areas I need to get better at.”
[00:18:24] Chris Corcoran: Constant reinvestment.
[00:18:26] Deionte Davis: Whether it’s like supplements, like the right foods, you know, training, books, podcasts, conferences, stuff like that. So I can say…
[00:18:33] Chris Corcoran: …what I want listeners to hear. It’s not just professionally.
[00:18:36] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:18:37] Chris Corcoran: Physically, mentally, everything.
[00:18:40] Deionte Davis: A hundred percent.
[00:18:41] Marc Gonyea: Well, I mean, I was like, “I’ll come out here, checking out Deionte.” And I remember he wasn’t doing so hot. And Nimit and Dot and I were like, “Deionte, he’s working so hard.”
[00:18:50] Chris Corcoran: So he, he’ll get it.
[00:18:51] Marc Gonyea: We had some conversations.
[00:18:52] Deionte Davis: Yeah. Oh yeah. I remember that conversation. Yeah. That was a hard conversation.
[00:18:55] Marc Gonyea: What was it? I remembered Dot brought me in, this was like month three. And he was like, “Hey dude, like you’re not doing too hot. I’m working. He rolled on this like little small piece of paper. He was like, “You need to do this, this and this. Like, listen to your calls.
[00:19:04] Deionte Davis: Come use me like for coaching training.” And he was basically like, you know, “If you don’t figure this out, like, you know, you might, you might be out of here.” And so I remember, I remember leaving and, and I think another big thing too. They told me I was like, “It doesn’t seem like you’re invested.”
[00:19:16] It’s like internally, like I was like feeling the heat, but like, I just didn’t really show it externally, I guess. And so after that conversation, it was like, “All right, you’d better figure this out or else like…” Yeah, that’ll be that.
[00:19:25] Marc Gonyea: A part of that is a shot across the bow. And those are, those aren’t easy conversations for us to have, for anybody.
[00:19:31] ‘Cause that’s a young man himself. Right? You got to go to sit down with somebody you’ve got that personal affection for and be like,” Hey, it’s not working. Because the clients don’t care about that.
[00:19:39] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:19:39] Marc Gonyea: Because of results. They’re not only, that I remember coming back here like a couple months later and he’s doing a stake in it and I was working at the office.
[00:19:46] Like, here and then. Where were you? You weren’t…
[00:19:47] Deionte Davis: I was at a conference in Vegas. Yeah. I was at the next growth conference in Vegas. And I think it was like 2000 bucks or something like that, 2000, 3000. And, I mean, I think it just, it, it, it kind of expanded my mind of like, “Wow, there’s [00:20:00] like so much kind of out there that, so much of this like business world, I just didn’t know about it.
[00:20:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:20:03] Deionte Davis: I think it gave me something to like aim towards and it gave me the ability to see like, “Okay, whereas, where could my life head now?” I would say.
[00:20:12] Marc Gonyea: So I was like, “He’s in Vegas. What is he doing in Vegas?” And then they told us that, “Awesome.” You know, and it’s investing for yourself, but it wasn’t just that too. Weren’t you like structuring your days?
[00:20:25] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So coming in, there was another SDR at the time. His name, his name is Ely Gaton. So he and I would come in like, you know, 7:40 or something like that, and just come in and just role-play for like 15, 20 minutes do that. I would be like two or three seconds at kind of cardone university day. Practice those.
[00:20:40] And then also doing a lot of study, like on my industry and on my company. So I would just go on our company website, read that for like 20 minutes a day, reading to see what’s going on in the industry. And then also listening back to my calls and figuring out,” Okay, I could’ve handled this objection better.
[00:20:52] Could have said this and that.” So there was a lot of like, ’cause like not just one thing. It was a lot of all those things.
[00:20:57] Chris Corcoran: So, you people talk about..
[00:20:59] Marc Gonyea: Going all [00:21:00] in, going all in.
[00:21:01] Chris Corcoran: No, definitely going all in, but get, get a little bit better every day. This is what, this is that right there.
[00:21:06] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:21:07] Chris Corcoran: It’s, I haven’t spent 20 minutes role-playing. We’ve spent half an hour studying my industry, is doing a little bit every single day. People can’t compete, people can’t compete with that.
[00:21:17] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:21:17] Chris Corcoran: You know, over time can’t compete.
[00:21:19] Deionte Davis: Because working out is always been a big part of my life. I would wake up and I lived like near downtown Austin. So I would wake up like five o’clock, go workout, train for like an hour or so.
[00:21:28] And then, I would always try to be the first in the office. I would actually come in this room right here and like write my goals down. And, as I was like, knocking… I’d come here, like, like 7:30 and on. And like write my goals down so it can get me focused and then, I’ll keep the lights off.
[00:21:44] I set the tone. So I’ll come in and do that. And then I started the role-playing and start everything. There’s definitely a mentality. I would say.
[00:21:52] Marc Gonyea: It wasn’t going out as much.
[00:21:55] Deionte Davis: I didn’t really have much of a social life at the time. And quite frankly, like I’m a pretty introverted guy, so [00:22:00] that really wasn’t a hard thing for me.
[00:22:01] But I was, I was focused on like just making money and getting better. Like that was the number one thing in my life. That’s what I wanted.
[00:22:07] Marc Gonyea: So some people said, “More all in,” which means, “I want to make sure I get to work on time.”
[00:22:10] Deionte Davis: Right.
[00:22:11] Marc Gonyea: Right?
[00:22:14] Deionte’s like busy building the Statue of Liberty over here. And you’re like on the beach with your like sand toys, trying to build a sand castle. Like, all right. So, so you’re, you’re doing your thing. What did you get good at, on the phone? Like, what would you be, you gotta, you, you take the cardone’s stuff, that if we’re having any problem, you have to do that.
[00:22:35] And we kind of got our own memoryBlue way we want you to do things. So then you start to kind of develop your game. What was kind of your superpower?
[00:22:41] Deionte Davis: Yeah. I’d say like, knowing just the structure of a call. That was like the first one. Anticipating objections. That was a really big one. So like, knowing, also knowing the objections are going to say like industry’s specific. Because a lot of those guys, particularly when I was on Buddy, you know, they would say, “Oh, we have this,” at the time it was like a Siemens, Siemens system that they [00:23:00] would use to marshal the energy.
[00:23:01] So I anticipating that and saying, “Oh, hey, you know, I understand you guys probably have something already, but this is actually gonna help enhance that rather than, you know, taking up all your banner there, you know, your budget, whatever.” So anticipating those things, but also kind of when I was on the, on the actual account, like saying, “Hey, like we’re actually in communities that are like near your area.” But then also like doing industry research and saying, “This company is actually making an initiative like for safety and security, and then like leaning into that and leading with it.” And, “Hey, you know, we’re like a safety and security system that can help you out in these areas. I know that’s important. Do you want to take a meeting and you know, we can discuss this?”
[00:23:33] Marc Gonyea: Yes. We’re doing the research, putting their research to work.
[00:23:36] Deionte Davis: Exactly. And then knowing the outcome of the call too, I think, I felt like that was one thing I was able to do pretty good at like understanding, “Okay. I’m not trying to sell the product. I’m trying to sell them on taking 20 minutes to listen to how we can help them out with the product.”
[00:23:50] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Curious.
[00:23:52] Deionte Davis: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:23:53] Marc Gonyea: How they can find out more?
[00:23:54] Deionte Davis: Not talking to, not like talking, not giving them everything, like on the call, you know. They found a date. [00:24:00] You know, you want to give that person like everything, you know, like give him a little bit to be curious.
[00:24:03] Chris Corcoran: That’s right. Keep curious.
[00:24:07] Marc Gonyea: When you were here, who else did you learn from?
[00:24:11] Deionte Davis: Yeah. Sean Saxton, personal icons of mine. Sean..I think Sean was just quite strong and natural on the phone. Christina Ierullo. She, she’s an animal.
[00:24:22] Marc Gonyea: Tina, she’ll be in here later today.
[00:24:25] Deionte Davis: She is? Oh my gosh. I remember when she came, she like just completely destroy everyone. She was just sitting right next to me.
[00:24:31] Marc Gonyea: I was like, “Oh my gosh, she was just at Motorola.”
[00:24:34] Deionte Davis: Motorola. Yeah. Obviously, Dotun taught me a lot. No one that comes to mind as a Kiwanis wanting to say..
[00:24:40] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah.
[00:24:41] Deionte Davis: He had a very nice and natural knack on the phone. Aaron Bravo.
[00:24:46] Marc Gonyea: Bravo?
[00:24:47] Deionte Davis: Bravo, yeah.
[00:24:48] Marc Gonyea: Bravo. He was on the call with his rep at Motorola. And the guy said, “Did you say your last name was Bravo?” He said, “Bravo” and a shout out joke. I mean, who, anyone else?
Deionte Davis: Steve pushed me pretty hard, whenever I was here. Yeah, he did. He first came in and he did pre-approvals first month. Like he was always, he was always up there and I think that, like, he gave me a lot of good tricks, a lot of good, more so about being a more holistic SDR ’cause he was doing some, some email stuff at the time. I was doing a little bit, so like some of the, like the role-play and like objections he gave me, like through email helped out a lot.
[00:25:24] Marc Gonyea: And who do you think was the best, besides yourself?
[00:25:28] Deionte Davis: I would say. Chris, Christina or Josh. Josh Harris. Yeah.
[00:25:37] Marc Gonyea: Tell me, I’d said Josh earlier. Tell us about Josh.
[00:25:41] Deionte Davis: Man, what did he do? I remember like, I think the first day he came. Yeah, I think he had like 29 conversations. Yeah. It was like some astronomical amount. And I’m just like hearing him on the phone, but he was so funny, but he was like, so like bulldozer be to, like yeah. He had no fear.
[00:25:55] He would just like run through people. And, he, he was super competitive too. And I think that’s what, [00:26:00] like really pulled those very, pulled competition out of me. Yeah.
[00:26:04] Marc Gonyea: He didn’t seem to care as much about the prospects. Either, he didn’t take it personal.
[00:26:08] Deionte Davis: At all.
[00:26:11] Marc Gonyea: Shakes it off.
[00:26:13] Chris Corcoran: So that’s what made him so good. What about Christina? What made her so good?
Deionte Davis: I think Christina is like, she’s had a natural knack for talking to people. Like she, it was almost like she had come in and like had done this already before. I would say. She was really good at talking to people. Very easy person to talk to. Yeah.
[00:26:33] Marc Gonyea: So as you’re doing this, where did you think this is going to go? Are you starting to be excited about the client? Because, well, let’s talk about what you’ve got to put on because you and Josh both worked for the same company. Right? Just talk about that. So when you got put on, then Josh say, “Hey, oh yeah. You’re going to go on that.”
[00:26:49] Deionte Davis: Yeah. Yeah. So, when Josh said that I was like, “Oh man, I’m not sure how this is going to go.” And then like, I looked up, found shawls and, kind of, I was back and I was like, “Oh man, let’s do.” He worked at J & J like, played football. So he seemed like a hard guy. [00:27:00] I remember the first conversation I had with them.
[00:27:01] He was like, “Hey, like, I’m expecting like 20 meetings a month.” And me and Dot would look at each other. Like, “I do, like, we were all, like, my quota was like 10. Like I’m not going to get 20 enough.” So it kind of challenged me in a sense to like, see if I can step my game up and get better. And I think that’s where, that’s where a lot of the, “Okay,
[00:27:16] there is another level I can take this too, kind of came into play.” And then also just like with how fast the office was growing, like, and all these new people coming in there that are getting good. I was like, “All right. There’s, there’s a lot more to my game that I can add.”
[00:27:30] Marc Gonyea: Like what?
[00:27:31] Deionte Davis: I think, I would say more so the willingness to just put in extra time. I remember there, they were doing a California RLT. He was doing a California trip and he was like, “Hey, if you can set up meetings for me out in California, like, that’d be really awesome.” So like staying a little extra later on until like 6 30, 7 o’clock, seven meetings for that.
[00:27:47] That was good. ‘Cause I think it builds like a lot of rapport and kind of gave me an idea of, “Okay, like where does my career look like? Like post memoryBlue.” And when I did get over there, like they did give me a lot of opportunities to like grow and take on a lot of different projects and initiatives [00:28:00] and exposed me to a lot of areas of the business that kind of gave me a better understanding of where I want to take my career as great.
[00:28:05] And I’d say that’s where a lot of that kind of came from.
[00:28:08] Marc Gonyea: That’s great. So you work here and did you kind of, “Okay. This whole world of tech is all start down to make more sense to me?” What did you decide that you wanted to do?
[00:28:18] Deionte Davis: So I was, I was in pretty much like an AE role there, but like the company was small enough to where I kinda got to see like all the different parts of it.
[00:28:26] So I, I took a customer success job, a position, like an account management in Florida. And that was cool, but I wanted to make…
[00:28:33] Marc Gonyea: Hold on real quick. So they, they, they can’t use that, “Hey, we want to hire you?”
[00:28:36] Deionte Davis: Came on as SDR.
[00:28:37] Marc Gonyea: But you were like, “I definitely want to do it.” Did you think about it at all for a bit? Why did you go there? Because you were killing it.
[00:28:43] It sounds like, the CEO or the, some of the… exactly.
[00:28:49] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:28:49] Marc Gonyea: Charles, like you probably were attracted to him and their success. Right? Well, why else did you think of, I just like the space, like, did you say, “Hey, I want to be a closer?”
[00:28:57] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So, I kinda knew I wanted to run demos. I remember I actually had a conversation with Dot.
[00:29:01] I think I was like 10 to 10 and I asked him, I was like, because ours is kinda like a 16 month kinda like the time.
[00:29:08] Marc Gonyea: And he got converted.
[00:29:09] Deionte Davis: I got taken for the first trip.
[00:29:11] Marc Gonyea: I know we would love to have you there.
[00:29:13] Deionte Davis: was like, “When should I start? Like looking for new jobs, like post-memoryBlue.” And that’s when, like the conversation of like, “Okay, do they want to buy you off now?”
[00:29:19] That’s when that kind of came about. And so the next role, I was like, I was like more of a closing role. And when I went on with them, I was still doing a little bit SDR work. I started running my own demos. And then, that’s kinda when the, the account management position opened up. Which I didn’t necessarily know I wanted to do, but I think it was so pivotal for me to learn like that side of the business and actually get in front of customers, like learn more about the product.
[00:29:39] I learned a lot, like at that time and still how important that was.
[00:29:42] Marc Gonyea: And they said, “Let’s talk about taking an opportunity?”
[00:29:45] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:29:45] Marc Gonyea: So they, you took the opportunity to get hired by them and then they wanted you to move. Right? So how did you approach that?
[00:29:51] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So, I kind of just dove head first into it. I was kinda in a weird spot in my life.
[00:29:55] Like just some like personal things going on that like I knew I needed to like get away from Texas from Austin. [00:30:00] And so I was like, “For sure. Like, let’s do it.” So I I’ve moved to Tampa and I was like, you know, basically on an island by myself and, kind of after coming, I was going through like a little bit of a depressive period kind of off at that time.
[00:30:10] And so I get over there and being able to like focus in on, “Okay. Like where’s my life heading now?” I think that, that gave me a better understanding about, “Okay, where do I actually want to take my career from here?”
[00:30:19] Marc Gonyea: And what was it? It was, it was more that working with clients?
Deionte Davis: I think at that, at that time, it was when I got there, I realized that I enjoyed working with current clients, but like I miss the hunt and the chase of like getting new prospects, get a new business.
[00:30:35] Marc Gonyea: How long were you in that role and how long were you at, before that?
[00:30:38] Deionte Davis: Yeah, so I was there for, for about six months and then ended up moving back to Austin. And that’s when I jumped over into a sales role. And the VP of sales that we had at the time, like he had a hit the exit and he went somewhere else. And so we had hired a new VP and that’s when I kinda got moved back over to the sales side.
[00:30:53] So I was still like doing a little bit of SDR work, but I was also running like smaller demos. And then that previous VP of sales when I moved back to Austin, he had [00:31:00] left and that’s why I stepped into that role and started taking a lot of his responsibilities. I started, I find out a lot of conferences and doing those things and, got to learn a lot like net route.
[00:31:09] Marc Gonyea: Speaking of muscles, right, what skills did you have to learn? The nuances of different development you got into that closed?
[00:31:16] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So..
[00:31:18] Marc Gonyea: Coming out of the SDR or you’re doing the objection, handling and qualify, what most is, you have to do?
[00:31:23] Deionte Davis: A lot of, like closing techniques. I’d say those things. It’s just like understanding how to actually run a full cycle.
[00:31:30] You know, posts just like opening something like, “Hey, like how does my email follow-up look like? How does my, my regular follow-up look like? What type of things do I need to say, like throughout the presentation to like, get a ‘yes’, towards the end of the sale?” A lot of that stuff. And I’ll say one big one.
[00:31:44] just the way that I, I speak and I present things. I still talk pretty fast. Like,
[00:31:49] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:31:52] Deionte Davis: That was one thing always had to, like, be cognizant of. But just more so, like how to ask the right questions, like throughout the sales process, not just, not just pre setting up the [00:32:00] meeting, but like during the demo, but then also like, after the demo to get it to an actual close.
[00:32:05] Marc Gonyea: Tell Chris and I about what you were selling.
[00:32:07] Deionte Davis: Yeah, so..
[00:32:08] Marc Gonyea: We’re getting into this.
[00:32:09] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So we were selling a, so basically like in senior living communities, typically they would have a paper signing book. And so we were selling a digital sign-in kiosk to where people come in, they decided to sign on that.
[00:32:20] And obviously like in a senior living home, you have people that are pretty vulnerable. Right? And so having something that can actually track who’s coming in and every building is pretty. But the second part to that product was a conditioning system. So if you had like people that had criminal background checks, we were actually able to check those and let these communities know like, “Hey, you have someone in here that has a criminal record.”
[00:32:40] You know, you’d probably want to know that because you’re serving the vulnerable population. So we were selling that product. And we were, we were kind of like all over the United States, but there was like some patches that we hadn’t been in. So focusing on those nears was kind of what I was doing at the time.
[00:32:53] Chris Corcoran: That’s cool and this is all pre COVID.
[00:32:58] Deionte Davis: This is all pre COVID. Yeah. This was..
[00:33:01] Chris Corcoran: People really want it, now.
[00:33:01] Deionte Davis: Also, funny enough, I’d left in March 20 or it was like February 2020. And, the businesses basically doubled since then. I kind of pivoted the product a little bit and now like all the companies are like just being down the door to my house.
[00:33:14] So they’re doing, they’re doing very well.
[00:33:16] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. That’s cool.
[00:33:20] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So I, I came to a company called Searchspring and we basically sell..
[00:33:24] Chris Corcoran: In Searchspring?
[00:33:25] Deionte Davis: Searchspring. Yeah. So we sell eCommerce software. So basically if you go buy any products online, if you’d like to start typing in a certain product, we’ll say..
[00:33:33] Marc Gonyea: We’ll stop for a second because we’ll talk about that. When you decide you’re going to go to the next thing, so you’ve done it. You’ve got this experience working at memoryBlue, working for your client Converge, doing different roles. When did you decide you want to do next? How are you approaching this?
[00:33:48] Deionte Davis: Oh yeah. So, and this kind of ties into what I want to do, like long-term.
[00:33:51] Marc Gonyea: Okay.
[00:33:53] Deionte Davis: I started to find, so actually right before I moved to Atlanta, I’d found out about this company Scaleworks that’s in San Antonio.
[00:33:59] Marc Gonyea: How’d you [00:34:00] find out about it?
Deionte Davis: I was actually searching for apartments in Atlanta and I was like, “Oh, you know, maybe I should I just look and see what apartments were in San Antonio to discuss.” And then somehow I came across a company on LinkedIn and it’s basically like a hybrid of a venture capital private equity firm. So they’ll buy companies outright a hundred percent, like controlling stakes, but then injected with cash to grow. And so I was like, “Man, it would probably be a lot of fun to find new companies to basically buy, doing more like bounce stuff for like a VC firm like that. So, when I was like living Accushield, I was like, “All right.
[00:34:28] I kind of want to be in that space.” So our offices downtown San Antonio, and all the companies that are owned vasculars are all in one office. I thought that it would be a great thing to like learn a lot from all these different, you know, executives, people that are here, but also kind of get my foot into the door.
[00:34:43] So I do that, do that long-term, like corporate development. That’s kind of the route that I’ve been..
[00:34:48] Marc Gonyea: Looking around for places to live. Yeah, my order, which is good. So only to see what apartments are in San Antonio, and then you stumbled upon this company.
[00:34:58] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:34:58] Marc Gonyea: The research to do like, this is really interesting.
[00:35:00] Deionte Davis: Yeah. That, and so they got, they got that the two guys, I run it. Lew, Lew Moorman and Ed Byrne, who was like president of Rackspace in like 2013, because he was like the 20th employee, like back in the day.
[00:35:10] Marc Gonyea: I’ve been to their office. They used to be …that used to be a mall… complex.
[00:35:16] Deionte Davis: So funny enough, when I was a junior in college, my mom used to work at Rackspace, actually.
[00:35:19] She was working in the contracts department. So I remember I was going to go pick up a new iPhone. So I did like the good drive and like support this massive corporate like mall building, which they had like a bunch of just cool stuff in there.
[00:35:32] I remember that. I wanted to get on that account. I was pretty pissed. I wasn’t happy about that, but, that’s how I got my first taste into tech, but then now it’s like the, be a part of like an ecosystem where the guy that ran that also kind of runs this. I thought that was pretty cool. So that was when I knew like corporate development was I think the route I wanted to go that’s when I was like, “All right, I think that’d be a good place to be in.”
[00:35:51] Marc Gonyea: So how’d you approach this guys? Are you reached, you just apply?
[00:35:54] Deionte Davis: Actually. So this kind of ties into the SDR, what I learned from being an SDR at memoryBlue. So I [00:36:00] basically cold emailed Lew, the, the owner of Scaleworks. And I was like, “Hey, you know, my name’s Deionte. I, I can do this, this and this. I love what you’re trying to do for Scaleworks and for the city of San Antonio. I think that’s all important stuff. And, you know, would love to see what it it’d look like for me to be like a part of that. And so I basically took my email, sent that to like all like seven of the companies, the CEOs that run their companies and the prior VPs. So the search brain reached out to me about an SDR manager position.
[00:36:25] And that’s kind of how that came about. Yeah, it was not usual whatsoever. And I actually had, I emailed him, but then I also emailed the head recruiter and I was like, “Hey, you know, this is kind of my situation. Researched on LinkedIn. Make sure, you know, the email look good or whatever. “And I had a conversation with him and he kind like gave me some insight into like how they operate.
[00:36:45] And I was like, “Okay. I think Searchspring would probably be a good company to work for.” And, they were coming off a, a merger and looking to rebuild the SDR team. And so I came in to pretty much take that initial one.
[00:36:56] Marc Gonyea: And you had decided that you were going to do before they offered a job?
[00:37:04] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So I actually, I was, and this kind of ties into just like, like more personal life stuff. Like I I’d like give monotony crisis like a couple months before this. And so, I kind of never really made family priority, like post-college and so I was like, “Man, like San Antonio, like the tech ecosystem’s growing there. Like I’ve a lot of friends there, a good network. I was like, “Come and be a part of that.” And so, I kinda knew like that, that was where I wanted to be at.
[00:37:23] And I like, “That’s what the world was leading me.” So I was like, “All right, like five another interview, like pretty much broke my lease, like until I could show that I was leaving. And I was like, “I think this is where like world lead me next.” And so I kind of..
[00:37:32] Marc Gonyea: And you’re confident, your ability to get the job.
[00:37:34] Deionte Davis: I was, yeah. I was pretty confident and I was like, “There’s no way. I’m not leaving here without the job so.” Yeah.
[00:37:39] Marc Gonyea: So you showed up, they interviewed for this SDR manager role?
[00:37:42] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So I’d been at the interview, ended up getting the job and then that was… So that was, at the interview, this is like, I think around like February 14th, like 2020, somewhere in there and.. Right before COVID.
[00:37:53] Yeah, right before COVID. Yeah. And so, and I’m getting a job then. And then I moved to San Antonio, March 2020. It was March 20, 2020, like, so March, April. And so that was like right before COVID, got there. I was in the office by two weeks and then everything shut down and yeah..
[00:38:10] Marc Gonyea: Were you worried about being in San Antonio and like, “Am I employable?”
[00:38:16] Deionte Davis: I wasn’t too worried because I knew that like, they, they really were trying to like jack up part of the business up. So I wasn’t too worried about getting let go or anything. But it was, what I was little worried about being back there. ‘Cause I’ve lived in San Antonio since like 2013. So like trying to reconcile that with like now being a full grown adult, leaving there as a kid. That was a little bit of a challenge.
[00:38:34] And then also everything was just shut down. So there wasn’t much for me to do.
[00:38:38] Marc Gonyea: And what have you been working on, so when you got this role?
[00:38:42] Deionte Davis: Yeah, so basically, it was coming off a, coming off a merger between Searchspring and those competitor called Nextopia, that both got bought by Skyworks and got merged. So, we had like two SDRs at the time.
[00:38:52] There really wasn’t much of like a outbound process. So coming in to kind of figure out, “Okay, like, how are we going to actually take us from.” You know, I think [00:39:00] the quota at the time for the sales team was like 25,000 MRR, something like that. And they wanted at least, you know, 10, 15% of that to be sourced from the outbound team.
[00:39:07] So they came in, they’re like, “Hey, like, you know, figure it out. You’ve done this before.” I’ve been in SDR before. So, initially I was like, “All right, well, you know, cold calls is what I’ve done.” I think that will work, found out that that really didn’t work to the, to also, I end up evaluating a bunch of different software solutions, you know, go with outreach and, kind of build some sequences, build some cadences based on all the different platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce I worked with and then use that to drive leads and to drive opportunities.
[00:39:31] Marc Gonyea: And what do you do, build up your team?
[00:39:33] Deionte Davis: Built up the team. Yeah. So I hired a couple of people.
[00:39:36] Marc Gonyea: How was that?
[00:39:37] Deionte Davis: That was a, it was a lot of fun, I think. And I was actually kind of scared to take on the manager role and I didn’t even apply for it. Like it kind of reach out to me about it. ‘Cause I think that I, I wasn’t having to invest in people like that. Wasn’t something that I ever thought like I would really want to do, but I knew I needed to do that. ‘Cause I think it was going to grow my skillset. And so, taking that on and having to just more so guide people’s [00:40:00] careers, I think it added another layer, like another tool to my belt that I needed.
[00:40:05] It was, it was a challenge. It was hard. It wasn’t easy. Yeah. I think finding people, but then also, trying to build out a process, but also make sure that they’re doing well too. ‘Cause I can’t just focus on what I need to do. Like I have to make sure that, you know, their wellbeing is now it’s high.
[00:40:21] Like they’re doing good, but also like, is the process actually working? Like what do we need to pivot towards? And then also I can take in their feedback of like, “All right, what’s working? What’s not working?” And then try to move my ego from that and saying, “All right, well, let’s do it this way instead.”
[00:40:34] Marc Gonyea: Is it hard for you to manage folks who may not have the same material drivers?
[00:40:37] ‘Cause we have, we have, so we have delivery managers here, who get promoted and they have to reconcile that. Not everybody’s like that. You gotta treat everybody kinda differently, but the way you want it’s tough. I go from my goals. Like Michael Jordan was never coached, right? That level are good coaches. Like how, how have you reconciled that?
[00:40:57] Deionte Davis: Yeah, I mean, I definitely, wasn’t easy. I think you got to figure [00:41:00] out what motivates people. I mean, they might not be, there’s a good book called ‘Relentless’ by Tim Grover. I like it a lot. Relentless’ by Tim Grover, so he was… And he was like, so have you guys seen ‘The Last Dance’?
[00:41:11] So he was the coach. He was like the coach trainer for Michael Jordan. He wrote a book. Yeah, pretty much like all about Jordan, like being black. If I reading that, I was like, “Okay, no one’s going to be as invested as a Jordan.” So I haven’t figured out like what motivates them. But also too, like what can I do to like, get that drive out of them?
[00:41:29] I think that was a hard part to reconcile, but also like almost kind of dangling the carrot. Like, “Hey, if you want to get here, like, this is what you need to do. You got to excel at this role right now.” I feel like that was a, a good thing to use as a driver for other people that were super driven.
[00:41:41] Marc Gonyea: So, are you doing that role now?
[00:41:43] Deionte Davis: No. So, so did that for about a year and, just, just to transition…
[00:41:47] Marc Gonyea: How would you, would you put it into team, too?
[00:41:48] Deionte Davis: Yeah. So had to, when I first started and then we added another two. Yeah. Do my team.
[00:41:54] Marc Gonyea: Team before?
[00:41:54] Deionte Davis: Team before.
[00:41:56] Marc Gonyea: The teachers, people do it, did you learn how to do it here..?
[00:41:59] Deionte Davis: Exactly. [00:42:00] Cope, a little bit of cold calling, a lot of like cold emailing. We do a lot of that. So, and then I transitioned to a kind of like a role to sales team role. And then we had a director of sales dev, who’s now running that team. And so I’m like better, get in front of prospects and selling, which actually missed out a lot.
[00:42:18] So it’s been good to kind of be back at that.
[00:42:20] Marc Gonyea: What are you selling?
[00:42:21] Deionte Davis: So basically if you go to any site that sells products online, some of our big clients like SKIMS by Kim Kardashian, Fabletics, promising Kevin Hart Commercials they’re so of our clients… all the time, yeah. Chuck’s is one of our clients, we just sold them.
[00:42:37] So basically like anyone that sells products. If you’d like, go on your search bar and you start typing in, you know, it’s called blue dress and it pulls up like different products, they have a, they have a search problem. And so we basically fix all that pretty much get the right products in front of the right customers at the right time.
[00:42:50] And that’s pretty much helps drives conversions, also drives more revenue for anyone who sells products online. So we’re like kind of like, like a revenue-driven tool for like eCommerce companies. [00:43:00]
[00:43:00] Chris Corcoran: That’s cool. Yeah. So who buys it?
[00:43:03] Deionte Davis: So anyone, that so across all, like B2B.
[00:43:06] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. If you’re going to sell it to a brand who’s in that organization, Director of eCommerce or..?
[00:43:13] Deionte Davis: Exactly. So like a Director of eCommerce, eCommerce manager. So, we work with, like some pretty like GE Appliances, probably one of the bigger brands companies that we work with. We also work with like some smaller like mom-and-pop companies. So it might be selling, it’s like a CEO, like so-and-so founder.
[00:43:27] Chris Corcoran: I see.
[00:43:27] Deionte Davis: And, there’s a lot of them also work with like outside agencies too, that help build their websites.
[00:43:31] And so we have like a partnerships team that works with the agencies and gets leads from them. So I’m usually like eCommerce manager.
[00:43:37] Chris Corcoran: Right? It’s a, you’re an AE and what’s your territory?
[00:43:41] Deionte Davis: Yeah, so we, we’re not on territory structure. We’re basically on like a Round Robin system. And so wherever a leads will come and through marketing, they’ll get past, Round Robin to us.
[00:43:50] But then we’re also, they’re really starting to scale up like our outbound, some like for the AEs.
[00:43:54] Chris Corcoran: Yup.
[00:43:54] Deionte Davis: So we do a lot of AE prospecting as of late.
[00:43:57] Chris Corcoran: So you do prospecting?
[00:43:58] Deionte Davis: I prospect as an AE. [00:44:00] Almost like unheard of right?
[00:44:02] Chris Corcoran: Now, and then you got your SDR team that works for you?
[00:44:05] Deionte Davis: Exactly.
[00:44:05] Chris Corcoran: So, you’re all a team?
[00:44:08] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:44:08] Chris Corcoran: So if you, hopefully you train them well, so they can start feeding you now.
[00:44:11] Deionte Davis: So, one of the guys I was managing, he just transitioned to an AE position. I think it was like two to three months ago or so, actually sold more than me last month. It was, yeah, it was kind of like he’s giving me, give me crap for it, but, yeah.
[00:44:24] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.
[00:44:25] Deionte Davis: There’s been a lot of fun.
[00:44:27] Marc Gonyea: It’s great. So where do you see this going? For you personally. So you’re back in San Antonio. It sounds like where you want to be.
[00:44:35] Deionte Davis: Yeah, for right now.
[00:44:36] Marc Gonyea: Right now? And you’re back to selling. Is that what you think you like doing best?
[00:44:44] Deionte Davis: I do enjoy. For a while, I thought I’d want to get into like other parts of the business, like maybe marketing or product, but I realized I don’t really want to do that. Like I, like, I like doing deals and like making money. So, I do think the corporate development, that’s probably gonna be like the long-term route, but for right now, like, I think there’s still a lot that I need to learn, like sales wise and our new VP of sales, Travis Wheeler.
[00:45:04] He’s he’s been teaching me a lot. It comes from like a very like call everywhere, kind of one call close type outside of a business. And so he’s been, he’s been coaching himself pretty hard, like on just selling better over the phone.
[00:45:15] Marc Gonyea: I mean, San Antonio is interesting place, right? ‘Cause we’re both military brats. Like there was a lot of army down there.
[00:45:21] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:45:22] Marc Gonyea: And you just wonder Rackspace came into San Antonio, but it hasn’t been a tech.
[00:45:27] Deionte Davis: It’s not a huge tech hub.
[00:45:28] Marc Gonyea: So like if you’re, it’d be very interesting to see if you guys can get one of these companies that are in San Antonio to make it big.
[00:45:35] Deionte Davis: Yeah. There’s a, there’s been a lot of investment firms popping up over the last few years.
[00:45:41] I think now there’s like a total, like six or seven maybe that are there. And a lot of, a lot of new startups that are starting move to San Antonio. So it’s growing pretty rapidly and the city’s like making a pretty big push to like try to attract more talent, get people stay there.
[00:45:52] Marc Gonyea: I can see that, right? Rackspace was big. Big Salesforce is all out of San Antonio, probably. I mean, there are people that… yeah.
[00:46:04] Deionte Davis: I think there was office, remember I was at memoryBlue.
[00:46:06] Marc Gonyea: They did for a little while.
[00:46:07] Deionte Davis: Like a little small.
[00:46:08] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, they did. So, so, so you’re going to be selling, learn from this new VP.
[00:46:13] Deionte Davis: Yeah.
[00:46:14] Marc Gonyea: And then do, do what you can do, right?
[00:46:16] Deionte Davis: Yeah, exactly. Hopefully, hopefully corporate development.
[00:46:19] Marc Gonyea: Okay. I can see that.
[00:46:21] Deionte Davis: Yeah. I think that’d be fun.
[00:46:23] Chris Corcoran: So looking back, I think back before your first day at memoryBlue, what advice would you give to yourself?
[00:46:34] Deionte Davis: So the first one would probably be, be a sponge, check your ego at the door, like be willing to, like learn from other people. Be willing to know what you’re talking about. Learn learn the client that you’re on. Like, whatever account you’re assigned to you, like, you need to know, you need to know about like their product, know about like their industry, their space, who they sell to. I think one thing I probably could’ve done a better job of is building good report my AEs. So that’s, I think that’s a huge one. And, I mean, how I’ve done that. At the end did pretty good when I was at memoryBlue, but had I done that probably done a lot better. So I’d say that, learn how to just manage like business relationships, like, you know, relationships with co-workers, you know, also not as structured, like the time in your day, to do well.
[00:47:06] Chris Corcoran: Very good.
[00:47:07] Deionte Davis: All those things. And be curious. I remember that was one that Dot told me all the time. Dot never like, “Hey, be curious, ask questions.”
[00:47:13] Chris Corcoran: That’s a great. That’s great.
[00:47:15] Marc Gonyea: That’s it, Deionte.
[00:47:16] Chris Corcoran: This was great, Deionte. We appreciate you coming up.
[00:47:19] Deionte Davis: Yeah, for sure, it was a good time. I enjoyed this.
[00:47:20] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, likewise. Thank you.
[00:47:22] Deionte Davis: Thank you.