Why Your Founder-Led Sales Strategy is Doomed to Fail

Welcome back to Letters of Intent, the show where we explore how decisions get made before the deal, before the growth, before the outcome is obvious. And today's conversation is about what every business owner focuses on, sales. But we're not going to talk about sales the way most people think about it. This isn't about scripts, funnels, or hacks. This is not Wolf of Wall Street style selling. This is about leadership, accountability, psychology, and building something that truly lasts. Today, our guest is Enrico Perotti. Enrico is an outsourced vice president of sales who helps small and mid-sized businesses build scalable, repeatable sales engines, especially companies that have momentum but lack structure. He's worked across global organizations like IBM and Ryko, and today partners with founders in the $3 million to $50 million price range as far as revenue for companies who are trying to turn their effort into predictable sales. Enrico, welcome to Letters of Intent. Thank you, Pankaj and Sahil. I'm very excited to be here and thank you for having me. So, okay. We love to get to know our guests on a personal level. I'd say that's one of Carbon Law Group's main values is connection and our community. So we want to start personally. Can you tell us a little bit about your early influences and what drew you to sales? As you can understand from my accent, I was not born in the United States. I was born in Italy. I am an engineer by education, but I never liked technical things. So I started really out of the gate in sales position many, many, almost 40 years ago. And the reason why I wanted to focus on sales is really because I like to solve problems, business problems for my clients, right? And I was very successful in the beginning. So they saw potential in me to go to the next level. It was a management level. And that was a great ride. I mean, I moved from Italy to the United States and then went back to Europe and then back to the United States and here since 2001. And so I had a great ride in corporate. I learned a lot about not only selling, but building sales organization and being a sales executive. A few years ago in 2018, I left corporate because I was really tired of the politics. Things, even if you're an executive, sometimes things are not getting done in the way you would like. And so I, now I help enterprises and it's a great opportunity to have impact and to give back. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you for that background. That sounds, I have so many questions regarding your background and how you've kind of traversed both parts of the world and cultures. but I have a very important question first is as an Italian, Italians, we know care about food. What is, what is the best Italian restaurant in LA? This is a standard question. So so listen, I mean, there are, it's like in sales, you need to qualify, right? So the qualification is, Hey, is the owner Italian? Number one, number two are the waiters Italian, because the the experience is also very important. It's not only the food, right? And so my favorite is Osteria Angelini in Beverly Boulevard. That is, I really like the way they cook, but there are many more, many others that are very valuable. I mean, Los Angeles, you can certainly find good Italian food. Yes, absolutely. Well, yeah, it was a critical question. I couldn't wait to get the answer for it because we need to know this is really important information for all our listeners. So, Osteria Angelini, it's in Beverly Hills, right? Yeah, it is Beverly Hills, but it is in Westerly, in reality. Westerly. Okay, wonderful. Between Fairfax and La Brea. Okay, so back to business, back to business. I didn't get that information. No, but that's important because Indians love Italian food. Right, exactly. That's like a fact. That's our, you know, it's right up there with Indian food for us. So, we need to know. Exactly. So, I have a couple questions. So, I wanted to ask first a little bit about like living in both worlds. Growing up in Italy, there's a culture there and oftentimes the American culture can be seen as a bit different than European culture. How did you kind of traverse or manage to kind of work in both different cultures and how has working in America changed your approach to sales as opposed to what your approach to sales was in Italy? Yes, there is a cultural difference. And Italian people are really focused on relationship and not too much on process. And here in the U.S., you find a lot of people that process only, no relationship. And they think they can get things done with just with process and it doesn't work. Right. I was helped because my transition happened in a corporate world. So IBM Italy was an organization when I joined of 15,000 people, but it was a colony, quote unquote, in the totality of the IBM organization. So I started since the beginning to operate with a kind of American mindset. And obviously people before me in Italy were able to adapt it so that entrepreneurs in Italy were able to interact with us. because at the end of the day, you need to talk to the, with the same language of your clients. Right. And so it was not very difficult. I have to say also that the fact that I am an engineer helped me a lot because I have an organized methodology in things I do and beyond the technical aspect, it has helped me. So yes, I had to transition. I had to learn about how Americans think that is different than the way Italian think, right? And you need to learn that. If you don't learn that, it's very difficult to sell. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's interesting just how much of sales also is cultural too, because we have like Hispanic clients too. I'm also intrigued by engineers. My dad's an engineer. I love the way engineers think because it's all a lot of systems and processes. I just look around of how engineers kind of created this world that we live in. How important was your understanding of kind of systems and processes and developing an application to sales? When you are a salesperson, you don't think about that. You think about closing deals, right? And so yes, it can help you in organizing the way you do your work. You need to be structured because if you don't have a discipline, then you forget about appointments. You cannot do that, right? Honestly, especially when it's very difficult to get in front of a grant. But when you move from being an individual contributor to be operating at a certain level of management in a sales organization, you realize that the only way to get scalability without working 26 hours a day is by having a structure. I always say this, salespeople are a little bit like kids. You need to give a structure to your kids, a routine. If you don't give them a routine, they are lost or they do the things that you don't want them to do. So I learned very quickly about the need of having this structure. Now, when I grew up, the first CRMs started in 96, 97. So it was many, many, when I started there, they didn't exist. So you had to scratch it or or things like, or you had your book with your list of opportunities, right? So it was a little bit different from a technology standpoint, but the principle is if you are not structured, you don't scale, I mean, it's as simple as that. So I think one of the most interesting cultural elements of being an American is that the best things come from the mix of the cultures that we have here. And at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned there's a difference between the Italian mindset and the traditional American mindset when it comes to entrepreneurship, sales relationships. And I would imagine that that creates your own special Enrico sales strategy, you know, that maybe combines these elements that becomes something unique. And so I was hoping we could talk a little bit about you personally, given the experiences you've had in Europe, America, globally, from enterprise level to advising now entrepreneurs. Do you have your own system or protocol. You talked a lot about, well, hey, yes, you do need the relationships, but you need some structure. You can't miss appointments. It sounds like you've developed a system for yourself. And I was hoping you could shed some light on that system. Like, what is your kind of protocol, your special system of sales? My special system in sales is really, and this is applicable to me when I sell engagement, as well as when I lead the sales team of my clients, and so they are trying to sell services for their company. You need always to have a number of focus on the customer and focus on providing value. It's all about providing value. And you cannot provide value if you don't listen. And by the way, listening really goes very well with the consultative selling approach. If you try to place products or services, you're not listening, you're placing. But that type of selling is going away. It is going to be replaced or it has been replaced by the web now, right? So the methodology is really clients finding solutions for your clients. And when I deal with CEOs, I really say also the following. It's not only about the technicality of quote-unquote on building a system. It's about creating a different world they can be in from a sales standpoint. And so you have to have that ability. Where can they be? Create a world of possibilities for them and making them comfortable that I can bring them there. So now you talk about listening as being a core value and a core part of the system. In today's age, I'm finding that the media environment, the advertising environment is really saturated. Every morning I open my phone and today I'm scrolling through, you know, and I'm seeing all these products and people and individuals and all these new celebrities that are popping up that I don't even know who they are, but apparently they're famous now. And so I'm wondering how do you, if one of the tactics is intentional listening in this environment that is so weird, where we're so bombarded by voices, how do you cut through the noise and how do you listen at scale? Or is that important? Is the strategy to just niche down or is it to listen at scale? How are you approaching this problem? But, you know, first of all, we're talking about B2B here, not B2C. In the world of B2B, you need to be doing some of your own pre-work that is to identify what is your ideal client. And you have to spend time. Many companies do not have an ideal client profile. They just get everything they can, right? Right. And that translates in, it's difficult to follow these clients. The profitability is not what they want and all this kind of stuff. So when you have an idea client profile, then you want to target, by the way, it matches the value you bring, right? And then when you find those people, they are going to listen to you. So you're getting in front of them. And so you need to be specific. You cannot just address the masses in a B2B sales world. Sales are the lifeblood of any company. And so I think I know all of our listeners will be listening very intently here. And it's a confusing market to compete in. Like you're saying, okay, from a B2B perspective, that's a different challenge. And I think you said something very important, which is building the ideal client profile. And I hope all of our listeners are using that as a takeaway from this conversation so far is, you know, I think people can confuse activity with progress. And many times sitting down and thinking about your customer doesn't feel like activity. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs feel like, well, I'm not doing anything. I need to pick up the phone. I need to call 100 people today. I can't just sit and think about who my client is. Can you talk to us a little bit about the value and what are some tools for, I think we all know that the personality of the entrepreneur is often go, go, go. What are some tools an entrepreneur can use to build that ideal client profile or some steps you recommend? But I think that they really need to have an introspective exercise, either themselves with their collaborator. If there are salespeople, it's even better to have also the salespeople in the room. And they need to start to ask themselves, have we been successful? What type of people do we like to do business with? Why do they like us? What is the difference we make for them? And what's the impact? What type of problems do they have? When do they have this problem? So there are a list. So I usually do a half a day session when I started my engagement with my clients. We work only about on that. And that's important because then this becomes a way of communicating internally, externally. Why are we in business? Right? Yeah. What, what people, right? Why are we in business? Right. And then sometimes what happens, you look at their cast. So this is going to be extremely valuable then. Okay. Now we want to get new clients. Where are we going after? Right. And then you look at your existing clients. You start to look at the clients and say, Hey, maybe we have 100 clients. These 10 are really not the right one. And you will have to phase them out because at the end of the day, if you are not focused, your value proposition gets diluted and becomes very difficult. Yeah, I have found those sometimes with entrepreneurs, ego gets in the way in the sense of, oh, wait a second, I should be serving, you know, XYZ client. And then when you look at the product market fit, it might just not be there or the values don't match. But sometimes I feel like there is the reality of the value that's actually being created. And there's often a lack of recognition of, wait, what are we good at? What are we not good at? What should we be going after? What shouldn't we be going after? What are our values? What aren't our values? These seem like actually very confusing questions because any entrepreneur needs to have the bravado and the confidence to go after everything. And so at least initially, in order to get that energy to pick up the phone and make a call or market yourself, put yourself out there as you're the best in class at what you do. But I think it can be hard to say, well, okay, I'm not the best in class in this segment, but I am in this other segment. Have you found that to be an issue with working with entrepreneurs or how do you think about that, identifying the true value proposition? Companies grow and go through different phases. At the beginning, when the sales are led by the CEO, at the end of the day, they need to she reached the point of sustainability, meaning that they need to have enough business to pay for for the lights and for everybody and they drive the dance. So the point is really they are the voice of their company. The moment in which then there are not enough hours in the day in order to grow the business, they reach the ceiling and they get stuck to that. And then they start to hire people. And the challenge is that it starts to be, okay, these people are going to communicate differently to clients because you don't have a value proposition defined, right? So that becomes very confusing. In addition to manage these people, it's a totally different business than doing sales directly. They do not know that. So they have investments in the people, but there is not too much additional throughput. And so this becomes an inflection point for these companies. Now, people normally try to address it on their own because they cannot certainly afford a situation like that. And I have to say the best environment I see there is where people say, okay, I try to address it. I am not capable because this is not my skill. No one ever taught me about this and I never put it in practice. It's all about practice. You can't say run sales organization and build them if you have done it. If you have not done it, you are reinventing the wheel. And if you try to do it yourself. So this to say, if the ego is there, they have not had enough pain. Yeah. Great quote. That's a great point. After that, they go to a situation where they are open to change and they're open to use experts. Don't do it yourself. Use the experts. At the end of the day, another thing that I see that is happening a lot, people think I do it myself. I don't pay anything. No, you pay for a lot because you pay for your time and your time is very expensive. The time is never factored, right? And by the way, the time is elongating because they go on a trial and error path versus going to people that they know they have done it. And so they say, okay, the best way of doing things is this one. Let's do it in this way. I love it. Yeah, that's so true. Time management. Time, I do believe is your most valuable resource, right? It's what we all have only a very finite amount of. You can always make more money. Money will come and go, but time is just going, right? So how do you leverage that as a business owner? And I think hiring a sales team makes a lot of sense. When's the right time for someone to be reaching out to you about building a sales team out? What size of the company? What are some data points that will say, okay, hey, we really need someone to come in and build out our sales team? I think the scenario that usually happens is a scenario where the sales are either flat for a long time or they're going down. And so that scenario is a challenging scenario because there are constraints in those environments, right? And is that my ideal client? Sometimes. My ideal client is a CEO that recognizes that the revenue is flat, but they are in an environment where their product is successful. And rather than continuing to milk the cow, they say, okay, now it's time to invest, to bring a system here. I am the CEO. I'm not the sales leader. I like maybe to sell and to have a relationship, but I'm not accountable for sales. That's not my job. I am a CEO. So I need to bring someone in to take this position and to build up the right structure. Now, the challenge that I see happening at the time is who is the right person to bring in? So in sales, but this is, I think this concept is also true in other disciplines. From sales management's point of view, there are really two types of people, people that run systems and people that build systems. It's like in a car race, there are people that drive and people that build the cars. People that build the car are very few, right? And the people that build systems in sales are very few. Why? Because you need a specific skill that you can only develop by doing. And you do that in a corporate environment. So you must have been an executive level person in corporate to be able to build a system. So the choice that people have today, hire people that know to build systems. Those people are very expensive. You cannot afford them normally on a full-time basis. So buy them fractionally, they can do the job and then they put you on the right track. And then at that point you hire your full-time sales leader that will run a system that works. Absolutely. So the system that you're proposing, it sounds like it's very mature, very developed. And clearly from this conversation, you've had a lot of experience working with entrepreneurs and scaling entrepreneurs. But we have noted that most of the leaders that we admire have some kind of failure that reshaped how they operate, some kind of trajectory inflection point. And you spoke earlier about, you know, well, if you still have a big ego, it's because you haven't experienced enough pain, which I actually found to be very insightful. And that kind of makes me almost feel grateful for every time I've had made a wrong turn because it gave me the pain to reduce my ego and open the door to something new. I would love to hear in your experience, have you had any failure or wrong turn or some kind of experience that changed the trajectory in your career? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it happened to me in corporate several times and which I was asked to take a position then that I did not want to take because I thought that it was not bringing me on or keeping me on a fast path growth. But at the end, it turned out that was the right move because it opened up other opportunities. So that happened. And then I have to say it happened when I left corporate. I mean, I left corporate and I didn't know about all this market that exists today of fractional executives. And I think it has been a great opportunity to figure out that there is a world beyond corporate. There are a lot of people that need help. I can impact a lot of CEOs. I love what I do. I have a lot of passion. If I had not left corporate, that in my opinion at the time was a step back. Because when you have been 30 years in corporate, you want to continue. Right. In reality, I mean, having impact on people is the, is the driver and there are a lot of opportunity to help. Absolutely. So that's, yes, I had setbacks. Absolutely. I had setbacks and, and you're right. When you have setback, you change your ego, get a hit. And then at the end, if you maybe you're very, very unhappy in that moment. Right. But then after a while you say, Thank God that they had that setback. I totally agree. I feel that way. Now I'm so grateful for my setbacks because they lowered those walls that kept success from coming in. Yeah, I love that. I was going to ask also, you've been in a corporate environment. You have advised entrepreneurs. Can you tell us what's the, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs might be listening to you speak and say, okay, well, Enrico has advised some of the largest companies in the world. How is he going to translate that to my $10 million a year business? Can you tell us a little bit about the difference between advising or working in large corporate structure versus working as a boots on the ground, scrappy entrepreneur? So in the world, first of all, when you work for a corporation, you work for, unless you are the CEO of the corporation or you are the executive vice president of a 300,000 people corporation, if you are not in a position, you run some divisions. You are also to take into consideration what is your business impact responsibility. When I was incorporated, I was responsible for a business in the range of $150 million with 100,000 people across all over the world. At the end of the day, the concept of selling is really industry independent. Selling in B2B and And sales management, so the cost of sales management is really industry independent. And what you learn in bigger corporation can be translated to small companies. You just need to understand that there are less resources, but the things to be done are pretty much the same. If you take a car, a Lamborghini costs more than 10 times than a Fiat 500, right? But the pieces are the same in terms of conceptually. I mean, you have wheels, you have a steering wheel, you have an engine, right? The main pieces are the same. Yeah. Yeah. So you need to scale down. And honestly, if you are in sales, you need to be adaptable, right? If you have been successful in sales, it means you have been adaptable. So you should trust that the people you're dealing with, they are adaptable. They understand that you are not IBM or Apple. You don't have the same brand recognition, but the sales issue could be very similar. Absolutely. So yeah, there's a lot more questions I'm sure we can talk about in terms of sales and getting at the technicalities of it, but perhaps that's part two of our conversation on another day. For now, we wrap up with a rapid fire round where we ask you to have one or two sentences on kind of what first comes to mind on a few of these questions. The first question is, we love to read here. We're both kind of voracious readers of business books and whatnot. What's one book every founder should read about growth or leadership? But listen, I don't know about growth and leadership, but I would say more about sales. Okay. And so the answer to that is read the book called The Go-Giver from Bob Berg. It's a fantastic book. It's a sales story and it makes you think about sales totally different. I really wished I read it 20 years before I read it. I think you might have actually been the one that recommended it to me many, many years ago in ProVisors when you were in a meeting. I think you might've mentioned it. And I read it and I loved it. I've gifted it to a few people. Yeah. It's a fantastic book about... I usually gift it to the CEO, my CEOs, and then I ask them to buy it for their people. So the people think selling is not about you. Yeah. Right. If there's one takeaway from this today, I think Enrico just gave it to us. It's selling is not about you. You're right. And so many people forget that. So many people forget that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Wonderful. What's one, what's a belief about business or sales you once held, but no longer do? Yeah. That's one. That it was about me when I was young, when you are younger, sometimes arrogant, right? It was all about me. And I changed the mentality, right? Sometimes you do think not because there is a payback. You just think because you need to get into a giving mentality, right? If you are, so if you are in a getting only mentality, they sniff it from 10 miles. And by the way, it's not a nice place to be in. So yes, I learned that. So it was, I think it's very cathartic. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. It makes me want to think of, is it kind of related to having an abundance mindset? Because sometimes that's harder, you know, especially in sales where if you're required to hit certain numbers, it can be stressful, but is that kind of what you teach people is more about abundance and having cultivating that mindset? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think you stole my word. Yes. You need to think you have an abundance mindset. If you're there, you have a scarcity mentality, it is a very, What's, what's one habit that keeps you kind of accountable or grounded? One thing that I am very focused on is to be responsive or responsiveness. You think that a lot of people are responsive and says it's not very common. So you stand out, but beyond standing out, I mean, if you are responsive and you exceed the expectations of the, of the people you're dealing with, automatically you don't have to sell yourself anymore because Because you become reliable. People want to deal with people they can count on. If you say something, do it, right? Being responsive to what you said by the time you said it. So responsiveness is very, very important for me. And in these days, if you are not responsive to your clients or even your prospects, you just lose a lot of business. And finally, the last question is what does success mean to you today? success to me means to have impact on the life and the business of my clients. When business is not going well, you don't have too much time. You are overwhelmed. Sometimes you're desperate or sometimes you're hopeless, right? What really I care about is to show that I care about you and help you to move from where you are to a better place so you can spend more time with your family. That's really the measure of success. Then if things go well, the business goes up, everybody gets paid, it's fine. I mean, that's a sub product. To me, the important thing is what I said. So we have more time. I think that's so important. Yeah, absolutely. Enrico, this has been incredibly thoughtful conversation for us. We are, I can speak for myself. I'm pulling away some very important nuggets of information. My favorite has been that if somebody still has a big ego, they haven't gone through enough pain. The second is that practice, practice, practice. If you're going to bring on an expert, you need someone who has experience and practice doing sales. The other is oftentimes an entrepreneur will start off as the salesperson, but you really have to ask yourself, are you the right person to scale your company? You might have been the right person to kick up the initial sales, but you might not be the right person to scale it up. And that's when you need to contact Enrico so he can build you a system and you can equip your army, your sales team to go out and create that success that he's talking about. So Enrico, where can people find you? I am on LinkedIn and so there are not too many Enrico Parodi in Los Angeles or even in the world. So I'm on LinkedIn and I can be reached there or I can be reached by email. My email is eParodi at salesacceleration.com. And sales, it's S-A-L-E-S, letter X, acceleration, right? letter X, C-E-L-E-R-A-T-I-O-N.com. Perfect. We'll add that to the show notes for the audience to be able to get in touch. Yeah, maybe. Super, super helpful. I think we've been members of ProVisors, you know, same groups for a while. And I always appreciate your insights and help. And I know I've tried to refer a few clients to you in the past as well, when I felt like you're the first person that comes to mind whenever some of my clients are struggling with sales or need some help in generating some more revenue, you're the first person that comes to mind. Thank you. And you really have a unique approach to building and selling. And you're not that salesperson that kind of makes you feel a little bit icky when you talk to them. You're the exact opposite, warm and caring. And I think that really shows in your work. We really want to thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us on the podcast. I think it'll be super helpful. Every business needs to get their sales in line. Every business needs to have strong sales. It's been said that sales solves a lot of problems. I think it is true. And I think Enrico is a wonderful resource and person to help you implement a better sales strategy for your organization. Thank you. Sales is not optional, I say. I agree. Exactly. Exactly. But thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. Have a good day, guys. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you guys for listening to Letters & Tents. We appreciate you guys tuning in every week. Please like, follow, share, whatever we're sharing. And We hope to hear you and see you next time. Thank you again. This is Letters of Intent.

Why Founders Fail at Sales: How to Build a Repeatable Revenue Engine

Sales is often a dirty word for founders, associated with aggressive tactics and Wolf of Wall Street energy. But for Enrico Parodi, sales is simply engineering applied to human relationships. In this episode of Letters of Intent, Pankaj Raval and Sahil Chaudry sit down with Enrico, an outsourced Vice President of Sales who helps small to mid-sized businesses build scalable, repeatable revenue engines.

They discuss the critical transition from founder-led sales to a professional sales team, why most companies hire the wrong type of sales leader (a driver instead of a builder), and the Ego vs. Pain threshold every entrepreneur must cross before they can truly scale.

In this episode, you will learn:

* Ego vs. Pain: Founders often struggle to let go of sales because they believe they are the only ones who can do it. Enrico argues that until the pain of stalled growth outweighs the founder's ego, they will not seek the help they need.
* Builders vs. Drivers: There are two types of sales leaders. Drivers know how to operate an existing system. Builders know how to construct the car from scratch. Most small businesses hire drivers when they actually need builders.
* The Ideal Client Profile (ICP): In B2B sales, you cannot target the masses. You must define exactly who you serve, or you will dilute your value proposition and kill your profitability.
* Engineering Mindset: Sales requires structure. Without a defined process involving a CRM, routine, and pipeline management, you cannot scale beyond the founder's personal effort.
* Responsiveness: In a noisy market, the simplest competitive advantage is reliability. Doing what you say you will do, when you say you will do it, eliminates the need to sell yourself.

About Our Guest:
Enrico Parodi is a Fractional VP of Sales with Sales Xceleration.
► Website: [https://salesxceleration.com/advisors/enrico-parodi/](https://salesxceleration.com/advisors/enrico-parodi/)
► Connect with Enrico on LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/enricoparodi/](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.linkedin.com/in/enricoparodi/)
► Email: eparodi@salesxceleration.com

► Listen to Letters of Intent's other episodes: bit.ly/LOIPodcast
► Visit Carbon Law Group's Website: carbonlg.com

Connect with Us:
► Connect with Pankaj: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pankaj-raval/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pankaj-raval/)
► Connect with Sahil: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahil-chaudry-6047305/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahil-chaudry-6047305/)
► Schedule A Call With Us: carbonlg.com

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