Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Glenn Poulos and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Apr 6
- 27 min read
Welcome to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, the show where conversations stop being polite and start producing results. I'm Michael Foreman, and today's episode hits on something every business owner, sales professional, and relationship builder is thinking about right now. How do you grow your business through real relationships without sounding salesy?
How do you sell in trust-based industries where credibility matters more than speed? And how do you use AI as a support tool without turning conversations into canned scripts? My guest today lives at the intersection of trust, sales, and modern tools. We're talking about what genuine relationships look like when they actually move the needle, how trust gets built, one conversation at a time, and why human, why the human edge still wins.
No matter how advanced the tech becomes, if you care about long-term growth, real connection, and staying relevant without losing your voice, you're in the right place. So let's get started. I'd like to introduce or welcome to my podcast, Glen, at I, I am so interested in what you have to say because I speak.
About the very same thing, and I'm really anxious to see your take on all of my questions. So Glenn, if you don't mind, introduce yourself and kind of tell us in the cliff note style how you got here today. Sure. Well, thanks Michael. It's great to be here. Enjoy you know, happy to be on the show and stuff, all that stuff.
So yeah, so started in in sales 40 years ago. I was I failed out of the government. I got kicked outta the government for working too hard and went into sales in 1985. And that's when I started learning about the distribution game of distribution and you know, buying and selling products and what have you.
Right? And in 91 by 91, I'd been at it for five years, five and a half years. And I realized that the owners were doing better than I was. I was doing well as a salesman, but I thought, Hey, if I can. Be myself plus five other guys working for me. I could do even better. So started a my first sales company in 91 and grew that until the early two thousands.
Built it, grew, it exited had a nice exit, but there were some challenges along the way. May maybe we'll have a chance to get into that. And then when I left that company and, I had a chance to start another company in a similar, similar genre, I guess, of business. And in 2007 I started Gap Wireless, which again, distribution high technology products and what have you.
And in nine, in 2022, sorry, I sold that to private equity and then I went to work for them for a couple years. That was a whole. That's another book that I haven't written yet. And we'll get to that later and to be written. But in 24 I finished up with them, but I wasn't finished up with business.
So I bought a business similar to what I was doing in Canada, but in a different technology area so that I was you know, I wasn't competing against my old employer, my old you know, the private equity guys, right? So I moved to Florida and and that's what I'm doing now. I'm running another distribution company in Orlando.
And you know, beyond that, I have my my dogs with me wherever I go. And if I'm not, if I'm not doing either of those, you probably find me doing work in charity as a what I call a charity dj. So, ID DJ a lot of events for nonprofits and, which you'd be, you'd be surprised that the demand for low, for low cost DJs at charity events.
Right. And and that's what I do for fun. That's kind of my little passion sideline. Right. So that's kind of from here to there from, you know, the eighties to today. Okay. I've got a very important question. Yeah. What kind of dogs do you have? French Bulldogs, Frenchies, French. Okay. Good. Good. Yeah. Okay.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump right into the questions. I have everyone says relationships matter, but few build them well. What does a real business relationship look like when it's actually driving growth? Well, I mean, you know, they, they all sort of begin you know, on with, with with trust, right? And, but the first thing about a good relationship is, you know, you have to be, you have to be useful, right?
And so the in business there needs to be kind of a reason for it, right? So you know, you have to share some insights and you have to, you know, identify opportunities. And then start to work together. Right? But when you're, and so along the way, as you're building the relationship, some of the important things that come to mind would be consistency.
So, you know and you know, you, most people show up when you, when they, when you need something or they can sell something or what have you. But you want it to be more than that, right? You want to be there on that day when the equipment breaks as well, and it's like, oh, you're in the building and the stuff's broken, and you can actually get a chance to help them, right?
I mean, and you wanna really know their business. And in, in my book, I actually spend a bit of time going over this, that the best way to sell to a company is actually to learn how they, at the deepest level, how they make their money. Because it really gives you insight into the way your product may be used, right?
And oftentimes you might have the as my dad used to say, the emphasis on the wrong sable, right? And where you don't really understand what they do, right? And so you're not really sure how to position yourself and as a winning formula for them, right? So you need to know their business, what drives their budgets, you know who approves the spend, right?
If it's a 50 k deal. Does that get signed by the manager or does that go to a vp or is it a small company that goes to the owner? Right. And that's super critical when you're trying to figure out about where your deals are in the, in the process. Right? And you want to be telling them the truth.
Even when it hurts, right? Sometimes the truth hurts. But short-term pain, long-term respect, right? Is is what I say. And you want to think about things, you know, over a longer time span, right? You know, relationships should be last. Something that lasts years. And and people ask me, why'd you write the book?
And I wrote the book never sit in the lobby on, 'cause I want people to learn how to get, act and stay in front of customers and how to be a pleasure to do business with always. Right? And so how do you get in front of clients? How do you stay there? How do you act there and what do you do so that they want to keep asking you back even when there's times when they don't give you business.
Right. And I guess that's my. So on, on that part. So well, in, in essence, you're saying. A person needs to bring value to the relationship. You know, you have to show that you can give something without the, without the thought of receiving anything. Right? Right. That's called having a servant's heart.
So when you go to a networking event or meeting somebody one-on-one, you go in with a servant's heart, what can I do for you? You know, and then you work from there. So yeah, that, that, that feeling of trust has to be there. And there's an old mantra know you, like, you, trust you. They'll do business with you.
Well, you have to get through the know you and like you before you get to that, even that trust factor. Yeah. But the trust factor is the most important. Speaking of trust in trust-based industries, people buy the person before the product. What behaviors earn them trust the fastest and which ones quietly kill it.
Okay. So, yeah, that's a good one. Right? So the first thing that jumps to my mind, you know, is the is the lack of genuine rapport, right? Is jumping ahead in the, in the life cycle of where you sit in the, the pecking order of the relationship, right? But you know, you need to, you know. You need to show up prepared, right?
You need to know their systems, their assets, their past issues and knowing what's, what's going on with them that, you know, that's sort of what signals respect, right? Sloppy preparation kills respect faster than anything, right? It's kind of like you go in thinking you know everything and you're really.
Again, you don't, you don't have a, you're not in sync 'cause you're, you know, you, you're just not doing the work, right? You want to do what you say. So if you promise a quote on Friday, you want to send a quote Friday, and as I like to say, never fax the facts and never ship the shit, right? So someone asks for a quote, if at all possible.
You want to drop it off every time they ask. For something, you want to use that as a door opener to get in back in front of the customer. Right? And because every time you get there, you get a chance to, as I love to say, ask for a mini tour where you can get behind the curtain and look at what they're doing, where your stuff's being used, how it's being used, and so that you can, and also you get to see where the competitors lie.
Right? You know, are they. Maybe you're competing against IBM or Hewlett Packard or someone like that, and it's like, are they all walking around with with HP t-shirts on and IBM coffee mugs? Right? And and we all know nobody ever got fired for buying IBM or hp, right? And and so these are things, you know, you, you find out by dropping things off.
So, you know and then further along, you know about this relationship ideals. Staying calm under pressure. Right? So, you know, deals can stall, tariffs can get changed. What a surprise, who know anything about tariffs right now. Right? Which is the story of my life right now. The you know, lead times can slip, production slots can move, things like that, right?
And you have to be able to manage that with a responsibility like. And, and a, and a, and a sense of truth and what have you, right? And you have to be able to handle it responsibly. A lot of times that's where the real. You know, the guys who are not a players, they kind of crumble under the pressure, right?
We're gonna miss the production window. We're not gonna hit the delivery date, you know, and how you manage those kind of things, right? Anything that's a hard truth, tell it early, right? And, and get it out. Make sure it's, and I always say, you know, bad news does not age well, right? And so if a unit will ship late, say it now, if the spec's not gonna pass.
Say it now, tell 'em now and what have you. Right. And so know your limits. That's another thing. Like, so don't be overpromising and under-delivering. Absolutely. You know, that's a common one. You know, keep your ego in check. Humility you know, be humble, you know, and and you want to be show, showing yourself to be protecting their interests, right?
Is it the right tool? Don't, you know, don't have them buy more than they need, less than they need or what have you in order to, because it might be a financially incentive to you. Right? You know, and those are some of the rules I follow when interacting with my customers that align towards.
Maintaining the relationship of trust. Yeah, that's very true. You, you never oversell your, your product. You know, one thing comes to mind, and I use this all the time you know, people love to buy, but they hate to be sold to. Right? And you think about that. Good point. Anything, you know, any product, anything.
But listen, we're all human and we, we'd love to buy things. But if, just like imagine yourself in a car dealership, you hate to be sold to. Yeah. And you use both sides of the coin in a car dealership. So I don't have to go through that. But even still, it makes you wonder. It's like, well, okay. And you think about all different times that you are selling and you're like, oh, well maybe I came across just a little too hard, you know?
Yeah. But yeah. What's the biggest mistake professionals make when they confuse activity with connection in networking and sales? So the diff So sorry, could you just sort of repeat again? So the difference between activity and, and sorry, and results or Biggest mistake. Yeah. The biggest mistake professionals make.
Okay. When they confuse activity with connection in con in networking and sales. Okay. Yeah, that, that, that's, I'm actually gonna take a second just to sort of ponder that. Right. But, you know, you know, people, people often think that being busy means they're being effective. Right? Like, wow, I had a busy day today, or something like that, right?
And, and that doesn't necessarily mean you're you know that you're being effective, right? You know activity can look like sending emails. You know, you, you're messing around on LinkedIn, you're attending a bunch of events, but connection can often look like, you know you know, one solid connection that day where you've, there's a follow up, there's an opportunity, and it's, it's real, and it's in your, your, it's in your lane or something like that, right?
You know, the biggest mistake I think people make is they're chasing numbers instead of trust. Right. And which will then breed the. The long-term you know, the trust. Based markets you know, like the one I'm in now, which is like utilities, right? People, people remember how you make them feel and not how many times you called them or how many emails you sent them, or how much marketing material you sent them, right?
So, you know, it's easy to measure activity, but connections are not as easy to measure, right? So you, you can easily say to your boss, Hey, I made 40 calls today, but. How do you tell 'em? I moved one relationship forward in a genuine manner where I built a sta you know, genuine rapport with somebody, right?
And so these are kind of the, the mistakes that people make in the way they think about things. It's not about, oh, I, you know, I, I nailed it. I got the 40,000, I got the, you know, this many emails, et cetera, et cetera, right? So. Yeah, so I would definitely go for quality over quantity and yeah, there's a difference between busy work and being busy, right?
I used the pandemic as a line in the sand right before the pandemic business was really transactional. You know, you have a widget. I have $3, I'll trade you. I'm a customer. Oh, I put you on my customer list, and that's great. After the post pandemic, you know, it's more relational. So instead of going out I, I was in a mortgage business and I used to go to a networking event.
I used to come home with a shoebox filled with business cards, and I'd say, look how good I did. When in essence did I really connect with any one of those people? Not really. So now when I go to, or what I teach or coach, I tell everybody, try to concentrate on 15 people, 15 business cards instead of 200.
Try 15 because that will tell me that you created a relationship with that person. And of course, follow up, right? The follow up is so, so very important, but that will set you. In a much better place to follow up than if you have all those business cards. Okay, so you work in spaces where credibility is everything.
How should someone show up in a first conversation so they're remembered for the right reasons? Yeah, that's a good one because I'm just giggling because of the having shown up and you know, and, and leaving the, leaving the opposite. Right. And that's where you kind of learn it through the school of hard knocks.
Right. But but for me, I, it's always about like knowing your stuff cold. Right. So and I have a kind of a funny. Kind of helpful chapter in the book called Greed Based Learning, right? Which, where you have an op where you get a nice financial incentive about something, it, it, it increases your ability to retain facts, right?
So you can know the product, you can know its limits, its risks and what have you. And you can retain it because there's a financial incentive. But when you try to do that, when there's no real win in it for you, it's hard to retain it. Right? And the, and people are like. What are you talking about? Kind of a thing.
And so the way I, the way I often explain it to people and how you can kind of gain the system if you have a lot of things to, with, with customers to remember, you know, is when you're, when you're out buying a car, right? And you're looking at four different cars and you're going home to the wife and telling her which one you want to buy, why is it you have the ability to memorize and know every spec in the car across the entire spectrum, right?
And then she brings up three other cars and you know, all the specs for those ones as well, right? And that's this, the effect of greed based learning coming into effect, right? Because you've got this, you know, such an ins in you know vested interest in the outcome, right? And so, you know, you want to try to create as many vested vested outcomes so that you can learn more and then leave the other stuff behind until it's relevant, right?
So, know your stuff cold. Sorry, I'm, I'm drawing going in and out of the, the nuggets, but I like to share these things because, the, you know the, these are the things that I've written about and that, that I follow every day, right? So, you know, you want so know your stuff have a point of view. So proof both, you know, real proof and social proof.
You know, is also extremely valid, right? Like these other people are using it, they're getting 20% more productivity or 20% better throughput, or their costs have gone down 20%. Or just showing them, you know the, showing the results in some sort of a manner which demonstrates that this product will do and create the outcome that they're looking for.
And hence also show 'em the feeling that, that they're gonna get, having achieved the outcome, which is the one that they want. Right. And oftentimes you kind of bring in, when you're, when you're demonstrating or presenting things, you either present all the products, features and benefits, but you should really try to figure out which one is the one that's the game changer for the person that you're visiting that day.
Right. Because they, they, the other ones might be interesting and nice, but they, they don't, they don't matter. Right. And so like, like I, we all like to drive a nice car or whatever. I mean, it's nice when you have a, a nice engine in your car, but you know and you can, you know, you can pass quickly or whatever, but some guys are like motivated by what's the horsepower and the torque and the right, whereas I'm, how smart is the cruise control, right?
Like, how can I just set it and forget it? Right? And then just, you know, and every 20 seconds touch the wheel so that it doesn't shut off on me, right. And do the, you know, and of course it's getting to the point now where it'll, it'll drive you there automatically, but. But I'm talking about, you know, the last, the last 20 years.
Not, not, not the next 20, but, but yeah, you know you know, I, I, I, I, I, I think about my, my kids. I have two boys. One that, I think they're 34 and 31, and if you ask them about anything they did in college, any type of history lesson or anything else like that, they'll kind of. Stammer and kind of fumble around.
But if they ask them the specs on a baseball or a football player, they'll give you the stats immediately from five years ago. Right? Yeah. So all of that is front and center in their minds, and the stuff that they really didn't care about is back there. You know. Right. So that's exactly what you're talking about.
That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta be worth it for them. So, so, yeah. So I, I, I thought of them immediately while Gbl, while you were describing it. Yes, yes. Gre greed based learning. Yeah. That's, they wanna look good in front of their friends. They wanna look smart about sports in front of their friends.
Like they wanna think that they're, you know, and that's very important to a lot of people knowing that, you know, that they're participating in this. It's this, this, this whole spectrum of sport. Right? And how, and, and it's a big part of it, right? Otherwise it wouldn't be, they wouldn't have so many spec specs out there if they didn't, if it wasn't important to people.
Right. And, Right, right. Yeah. So interesting. Okay. Yeah. 'cause we could talk about that for like the next hour. Yeah. Where does networking stop being helpful and start feeling transactional and how can you help people course correct in real time?
Yeah, so well. So when, when it's being transactional, you know, there's off, you're often like asking for things. You, you know, like you might want to like just drop the immediate ask, right? So, you know, and you know, you don't want to meet someone to say, okay, you know, what's in it for me? And then try to move towards getting something out of it for yourself, right?
You wanna say to yourself, like, why do they care about it? And start to inquire inquisitively about what's, what's the deal? Like, why, what. Why is something of this important, you know, you want to be following up with them without selling. Right. And you know, the, you want to maybe talk to them a bit longer and the stay in the conversation longer.
And look, that's where some of the magic will come out, right? Where they'll drop a name about a VP that's gonna sign off on it or something like that. Or, you know, whereas, you know. Some people you know, some people, they're just sort of going for the jugular right away, and, you know, and they're not, you know, they're, they're not allowing the networking environment to, to flourish or whatever, right?
And so you know, I guess I like to say, think in seasons not events, right? And you know, one coffee doesn't mean anything, right. But when you're, when you're seeing them, you know, multiple times over six months, that's where a, a connection can grow and start to turn into something that's real. Right. I found that, that asking questions when you're networking with somebody or trying to get to know anybody.
If you ask questions, ask the right questions, but ask questions, be inquisitive about them. You're getting all the information, plus you're having them talk about themselves. Listen, you and I both know that people love to talk about themselves, so once you're asking them questions, they're talking about themselves, but they're answering your questions and you're getting the facts and information that you need to go to the next step.
So asking questions is very, very important. AI is everywhere right now. Where does it genuinely help relationship driven professionals, and where does it get in the way? Hmm. Okay. Well, obviously you're not, you've gotta be careful not to let her try to replace the human side, right? So it should support the human side.
Not, not replace it, right? So where it helps is, you know. Preparing for the meeting, right. So summer, you know, you can use it to, you know, like I said, you wanna learn as much as you can about the company. AI now is an amazing tool to really dig down into the, into the crux of what the company does, how they generate income, what their profits and and losses are, things like that.
Recent news perhaps even if they're public, you know, budget tr trends, maybe pain points that they're having corporately and whatever, like that stuff you're gonna pull out of ai, you know and. Allow you to walk in sharper and have a meaningful conversation with them. Right. And you know, it also then allows you to, on the other side of the call to follow up better.
Right? So you can, you can perhaps either be recording it or some other kind of a note taking system, which then can be turned into. Into notes automatically that gets put into the CRM system that keeps some of the managers happy and stuff like that, but also triggers and flags, action items, follow ups, quotes, todos you know, reminders later on what's required.
So you're kind of like, you're in the middle of it on either on, you know, either side. It's helping you as a tool you know, to do more. Right? It's like building a deck in your backyard. You can bang nails into. Two by sixes all day long, or you can power drill them, you know? And we know both know which one's easier.
Right. And it's, you know, it's not a better deck because you bang nails in and it took longer and it was harder. Right. Well, I look at AI the same way, right? You know, the, you can use those tools to schedule your check-ins and stuff like that, but you need to be the one to check in. Right. And and so in a way it's kind of common sense.
Common sense is not that common. So some people like really nowadays, they're literally, 'cause you can, as you witness it yourself, you know, in business, you know you're getting these emails and you can see a lot of them were just AI driven and not curated or not. Edited properly with a human. And some you could say, Hey, maybe this guy used AI to come up with these ideas.
But there's definitely a human element to it. It's just too, it's too specific and that's where the, you know, the good and bad sort of line up for me. Right. And yeah, AI is a tool. You know, it just like any of your other tools, AI is a tool, but as you said, you can never replace that human element.
Right. I too, I, I recognize in an email whether or not somebody used AI or not. I can tell just by the looks of it, whether or not it's AI driven. You know, you should really take ai, you should ask it a question properly, ask it a question, get your results, and then formulate it with your human touch. You know, because otherwise, anybody like myself, I can see whether it's AI done or not.
I could just say, well, you don't really care because you just threw this right out. Yeah. So, yeah. Absolutely. What parts of networking should never be handed off to technology? What we're just talking about, no matter how advanced it gets, never handed off to technology. That's a good one. So, well, I guess the final decision, right, of something would, would, would, would or shouldn't be, be handed off to technology, right?
So it can help you to, to, sort of create all the all, all the calculations and come up with all models and situations that you can, but then someone has to come in and make that final decision, right? AI can analyze it for you, but you have to decide, right? So that's, that's one thing, right? You know, big hires, I wouldn't do that with ai, right?
Like that's something that has to be handled. Major contracts, it's both a huge help. That's immeasurable how much help it can be. Then, then there's a piece of that that you have to be, you know really, really honed in on, because, you know, a lot of contract can be 80 pages long and there's no question that a lot of it is boilerplate and it's just sort of run of the mill boilerplate.
And you're like, some guy probably 200 years ago wrote the boilerplate and you know, lawyers have been using it ever since. Right. And so there's a there's a, you know, an assumption there that you can. You, you or some other junior lawyer reads it and says, it's boilerplate. You can move on. It doesn't matter.
But when it gets to the indemnification, the terms of payment, the warranty clawbacks for such and such, the delivery, you know, the price, the margins, those kind of a things, it can interpret and explain to you what they are. But those are the ones where you need to focus in on as the person and, and the rest of it.
You know, it could say, Hey, you might want to tweak something here or there, but it, it analyzed 80 pages. You only have to focus on six or seven things and not even read the 80 page contract because without AI, before you had to read it and absolutely. Man, if you ever wanna fall asleep quickly, you know, read an 80 page document that, you know that, that's written in legalese, right?
Legalese. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The, yeah. The other thing you don't want to do with ai, of course, are like the hard conversations, right? Like firing somebody telling 'em their performance is bad. You know, disputes with your vendors you know. Complicated conversations with your customers, things like that, right?
Yeah. And something you wanna have, it's gotta come from you. Yeah. Personally, because if you're unhappy with it, you can't just have a boilerplate email and send it off, because that's pretty cold if you do that, you know, you have to keep professional, stay professional because a, you never burn britches.
And B, you have to, you're, you always have to be aware of who you're speaking to and their network of people because you might, in frustration or in your, your anger, fire somebody, but they may be connected to somebody bigger and better. Yeah. So you have to be very careful. Yeah. The one last thing I wanted to say that popped in my mind as I was finishing off there as well, was.
I had the experience in the last few years of having experienced both in creating a value culture and you know, the mission statement and the core values of a business, having it been done, what I feel is the right way, which is, which is getting a group together for not, you know, a semi extended period of time, meaning like a full day or a two day.
Thing on developing the core mission, culture and core values of a business. And then having another one where A CEO came in, having Googled them on the weekend and brought them in on Monday and said, our core, here's our core values. Right? And like, you know, it doesn't take rocket science to figure out, you know, which ones resonated more with the staff than the, you know, and it was such a huge learning experience for me.
Right. And I, 'cause I, I actually was literal, literally challenged the guy and I said, what did. Did you like just Google these on the on the way in? And he goes, well, yeah. And I'm like, you're joking, right? He is like, no. And I'm like, that's not how you do it. And, and so the, it was a real sore spot for me.
And people, people often joke about it, that, you know, the you know that they just weren't, they, they just weren't real core values because they weren't developed with a, with a core component of the staff to come up with them. Right? And when we developed the core values at Gap Wireless, it was a two day affair.
It was like brutal process, but at the end of it, we all believed in the core values and then we hired, fired, motivated, bonused rewarded. Yeah. Everything you know, was, was if you, and we had everyone got money every month that they were able to give to people in the business for doing good things, but they had to have a call, core value, call out, you know, and and so don't use AI for that.
You can use it to come up with the stratum of, of ideas that you're gonna use and to curate ideas. But you have to argue and fight it out with your staff to say, no, that's not, you know, you can't just say people first. Customers are, you know, are the best and you know, those nonsensical things. Right. And yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. Anyways. Absolutely. Alright. Alright. Looking back, which relationships created the biggest turning points in your business, and what did you do differently with those connections? Well I guess. You know, in the beginning, you know, the when as I was changing careers from, like, I joke about being government into sales, right?
The sales mentors that I had, you know re you know, really showed me how doing certain things, certain ways. You know you know, can make a difference, right? Like following sales mentors is a, was a great thing for me. And I wrote down everything. And that, that's the genesis of the book too, right? Was all the rules I learned from all the people along the way.
Right? You know, getting involved with. Business partners along the way that sort of became turning points and you know, and especially when the, the partnership or Allegiance Alliance or whatever where there was shared risk in the, in the outcome. Not just somebody that had a you know, a say or someone that had a, you know you know, some sort of a, a respect in the thing or whatever.
Right. Another. Sort of turning points and issues would've been some tough customer you know, interactions and learning from that, right? And where, how they played out and how we were. You know, managed, treated, punished, and or, or rewarded you know, forthwith for, for, for what had gone on. Right.
And you know, those are, those are some of them. Right. You know, and e you know, when I sold the business to private equity and I, I, I came together with a whole group of, of new kind of business people I'd never met before. That was huge for me. I mean, I was always in a, you know, kind of the small business world, you know, owner operator kind of businesses and private equity operates at a completely different level, right?
The way they, you know the way they're put together and then the, and the, the, their, their people are top notch, right? So, absolutely, absolutely. Let's, let's bring this podcast full circle. And if someone wants to grow their business through relationships this year, what one mind, what one mindset shift would change the way they approach every conversation.
One mind shift would be from, from, you know, how do I close a deal to, how do I create a deal that can compound, right? So getting one deal at the, you know, for in by hook or crook through one means or another seems, you know, might be a big deal and it might be rewarding, right? But what if that deal could be compounded and turned into a 10 year annuity?
Right? So that's one way, right? As I always like to say, you know, you, you want to go from pitching to diagnosing, right? You don't always wanna be pitching. You wanna be looking under the covers of what's really wrong so that you can present something in a manner that's going to solve the problem and create the, the feeling.
That the customer's trying to achieve by virtue of the problem that got you in the door in the first place. Right. And you know, the other thing is stop sort of thinking about it from volume and think about it in terms of like the depth, right? So, you know, the, so in other words like 500. Like small clients or whatever, versus 10 strong ones that are repeatable and multi-year, you know, is what I mean by that, right?
The margins, right? Like, you know, most, a lot of people don't understand what gross margin is, and you know, they, oh, I got a a hundred thousand dollars deal. I'm like, oh, what was the margin, right? And they're like, what's that? Right. You know, and so, you know, I mean, and like, that's so common. And I'm like, okay, well forget it.
We, we don't need to have this conversation. But, you know, but some people say, oh, well, you know, I don't know, it's like six points or whatever. I'm like, okay, well that's, that's, that's not a hundred K deal to me. Right. That's like a 10 k deal to me. You know, and Right, that's right. Right. And so, you know, and if there's no gross margin, if there's no gross margin there, it wasn't a sale.
And oh, well, you know, it gets us in the door. No, no, no. Right. And you know, and then of course you, you want to try to go from being a vendor to being a partner in their decision making process and to being integral to their you know, to how they run things in them, respecting your decision, not your decisions, but your your inputs and things on stuff, right?
So, absolutely, absolutely. That, that is so. Correct. When you start thinking of, you know, the net profit, you know, over the, over the sale price, you know, you might sell something for a hundred thousand dollars. The cost was $98,000. So was that a hundred thousand dollars deal? Not really. That was a $2,000 deal.
You know, you have to really look at it from that perspective. Glenn, I thank you so much for coming on my podcast. If somebody wanted to get hold of you, what's the best way that they can get hold of you? Best way just connects me on LinkedIn. Fire me a a message and I'll be happy to respond and look forward to talking to anyone that wants to engage.
Perfect. That conversation right there is why networking still matters. Real relationships still drive business. Trust still opens doors, and technology only works when it supports who you already are. If something you heard today made you rethink how you approach conversations, take it in, take it with you into your next meeting, call or introduction.
Pay attention to how people respond to you when you slow down, listen more and lead with sincerity. If this episode gave you value, share with someone who believes relationships are the real growth strategy. And be sure to follow networking unleashed, building profitable connections so you can never miss a conversation that challenges how business is done.
I'm Michael Forman. Keep your conversations real, your follow up, intentional, and remember your next relationship could be the one that changes everything. Glenn, thank you again for coming on the podcast and I can't wait to talk to you soon. Thank you.
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A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today, and of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses being coached or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect. It's about being present. So take what you've learned today, get out there and make some meaningful connections. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review. Share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website michaelaforman.com/podcast.
Michael is a business networking expert specializing in enhancing professionals' networking and communication skills to drive profitability. As a leading authority in this field, he is highly sought after for his dynamic presentations and workshops. His extensive experience has consistently led to significant improvements in corporate profitability by empowering individuals and organizations to connect more effectively and efficiently.
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