
Episode 41 – How To Confidently Start Selling To C-Level Executives With John Gonzalez
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How confident are you in selling to C-level executives?
Selling to C-level executives can make even some of the most seasoned sales people nervous, but it doesn’t have to. In order to make high-end sales and to build some of these relationships, it’s a necessary skill. Luckily, we can look to the pros. In this episode of CEO Sales Strategies, Doug C. Brown is joined by John Gonzales, the VP of Sales for Wireless Watchdogs, which have grown to an 8-figure company under John’s selling skills. Join Doug and John as they discuss building rapport, how referrals can make or break a sale, and much more.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How John has built a career selling to C-level executives, and some of the best skills he has learned from his years of experience.
- How well-thought out humor is one of the best communication tools that can elevate your sales skills.
- Surprising ways to structure your thinking when it comes to finding your confidence in high-end sales.
Episode’s guest – John Gonzalez

transcript
How To Confidently Start Selling To C-Level Executives With John Gonzalez
I’ve got an amazing guest. His name is Mr. John Gonzalez. He is the Chief Sales Officer from Vice President all the way up. He runs the company on the sales side for a company called Wireless Watchdogs, where they do mobility management of wireless services. It’s not so much like the, “We sell you T-Mobile, AT&T, or Verizon,” type of services, but they manage accounts and find fraud, overbilling, security issues, and all kinds of things that happen with companies that are utilizing wireless services. Usually, it’s 100 lines and up or maybe a little bit less than that, but they’re really cool stuff.
You get in there, and it’s not only accounting but forensic security as well. He’s a great guy. John started like everybody else. He started right at the bottom of the sales process of cold calling, door knocking, and doing all the stuff that you had to do. The reason it’s so important to listen to this guy is he’s full of information, and we’re going to talk about how you sell these very large accounts.
Their company has huge accounts, not just 1 or 2 of them. It’s pretty much almost all of them. They’re large accounts. I couldn’t mention names, but they are the size of Dell, HP, or Intuit. We’re talking a lot about how you sell it to a C-level executive and how you do it the right way. Pay attention to how he’s talking about humanization and bringing it in using some light humor and different types of things that utilize all the way along the process of success points.
The success points that he has honed over the years, he drives through his teams. They’ve had mass expansion in the company on the sales revenue side due to it. Also, we talk about how you leverage through other people’s efforts, whether it’s peer-to-peer selling or using the type of networks of referral partners. It’s a great way to leverage your business. You’ve heard me talk about this in the past. Without further ado, let’s go to the interview with John.
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Welcome to the show. Thanks for being on. It’s a great honor.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
For those of you who don’t know, John and I have known each other for a long time. It has been a pleasure as well to know you. I remember when your company started out. They were smaller. They have grown to well over eight figures now. This should be one of the most fun interviews we’ve done in a long time.
Let’s keep it open and honest. Humor is always honesty. I love to laugh and tell stories. Let’s paint good pictures.
What’s great about having you here and supporting the show is that I know your story and where you came from. You were a guy banging the phones when I first met you. What a lot of people will get out of this in a big way is you’ve been selling to some really big companies and well-positioned in brand names of companies. If you don’t mind, let’s go back in years.
When you were hitting the phones, calling into these companies, trying to get to the CEOs, and the people within the company, what do you know now that was successful back then that allowed you to penetrate and get clients? I don’t know if we can name some of the clients, but I’ll name names that are not your clients. These are brand-name companies like Hewlett Packard and McDonald’s. They are big-name companies across the globe. What would you consider the success point to be? It’s for people that are thinking, “I would love to do that. I’d love to get into these types of accounts.” Let them know.
Selling really becomes about the approach—having that human element, professional persistence, and belief in what you're doing. Click To Tweet
The first thing is you got to believe in what you’re selling. You’re going to find a need for that company. When I started out, I started picking up the phone and dialing everybody that could lead me to that person. I would call the director of first impressions, the salespeople who always get to that person. They hold the keys to the gate.
If you can build a friend there, be honest, and talk like a human being, they open up. Make them laugh. They don’t get this from others. That was the differentiator, along with the persistence and the passion. You got to have passion, and you got to believe in what you’re doing. You got to believe you’re going to help somebody out.
Throughout my mission of being that dial for dollars, it wasn’t those, “How are you doing?” It was like, “Tom. You picked up the phone. Thank you so much.” They’re like, “What the heck?” They’re human. Make them feel like, “Nobody ever approached me like that.” It becomes about the approach, having that human element to it, the professional persistence, the passion, and believing you know what you’re doing.
I’ve recognized the humor aspect of what you did a long time ago. That’s one of the reasons you and I make each other laugh so much. It’s not even being differentiated at that point. You’re just being different and being human, which makes you human. I’ve known you long enough to know you want to sell them on your services, but the reality is you want to serve them more than you want to sell them. Everybody is not always having a good day. When we’re calling on the phone like that, we’re interrupting them, and they’re busy. In the humor aspect, I love what you used to do. You were like, “It has been harder to get a hold of you than it is my wife’s boyfriend, George Clooney.”
I’ve had people spit on their computers and call me back after the 3rd or 4th call. They haven’t listened to any of my messages. They’re like, “I’m not calling you back, not because I don’t want to talk to you, but I want to continue to laugh and share those voicemails with my team. Your approach is so hilarious. What do you have?”
It’s building that rapport also. I tell them, “I don’t even know if there’s a fit here, but are you feeling like this too? The others that are coming and asking for help are feeling this pain, and we prescribed aspirin for it, but do you feel like these too?” Let them open up what that is about. It’s not trying to sell them out like, “I got this. I got that.”
You’re creating a good first impression and the connection. A lot of people don’t realize that the connection is the first step to the next step. You’re creating this great connection and building rapport right from the beginning. You use humor, but you use other ways of doing it. You’re going from connection to building rapport. What I love about what you do is you keep rapport through the whole process.
We start talking about what they’re doing that weekend, their kids, and what we have in common. I do a lot of research. I teach my team to do a lot of research on these companies to understand their challenges if any, and where their wins are, whether they acquired something or landed this certification. Maybe the CIO, who was the person that we typically talk to, got an award for something fantastic that he did. Start with that. They would be like, “This person did some research on me.”
See where they went to school. Send them pictures that their mascot and say, “Bringing back old memories. Remember this?” Do stuff like that where they would be like, “What does he want? He’s making me laugh. He has been sending me one sentence things like, ‘Do you feel like this?’ Should we be talking?” I’m leaving it open to them.
I’ll send them some facts, “Did you know 70% of CIOs are outsourcing their mobility because there’s a talent shortage? They don’t have anybody to hire. They hire somebody, an IT person, and six months later, somebody else picks them up for more money. They’re outsourcing. It used to be a maybe, but now, it’s a necessity to outsource.” I don’t want to keep on rambling. I’ve asked CEOs in the past who have signed up with us, and my own CEO as well, like, “What keeps you up at night? What are your worries?” 8 times out of 10, I got back. They are known.

You’re driving on a professional return on their investment through the connection of what’s in it for them on a personal return as well. This is so powerful to sell it to people like this. I was talking with the CEO of a company. They’re growing about 35% to 50% a year. They do fractional outsource marketing. They come in and help the companies with marketing.
I asked him that question. I said, “How do you like to be sold to?” He said, “I don’t. I like to buy, but I don’t like to be sold to.” That’s a key that you learned because I remember when you started. You didn’t have a team. It was you. You were the team. The personality injection, a lot of people are afraid of that. Why do you think they’re afraid to use their own personality in the conversation, especially in the beginning?
It all comes with confidence sometimes. We, as salespeople, or dialers back in the days, and we’ll talk about where that’s at now, but making those phone calls to constantly getting voicemails, and all of a sudden, that decision-maker picks up, and you don’t know what to say. It comes along with knowing how to react quickly, like a comedian coming up with those witty things to say.
It’s like what you did. You told me your story about calling the receptionist of the CEO of Men’s Wearhouse. You were like, “Go get me whatever the guy’s name was.” She’s like, “Who is this? Are you that person?” You were like, “Go get them on the phone.” That person is coming because he’s getting pulled out of a meeting. You better be ready to spit and say something.
I had somebody telling me once, “You got ten seconds.” I was like, “Here’s what I do. I do this and that. Would you be interested?” He was like, “That’s perfect. Send me more.” You got those. There are all different personalities, and if you can adjust, sometimes it becomes difficult for that person selling it. 1) You don’t feel confident. 2) Most of the sales now, you’re not even in front of people. What are they going to do to you? Hang up on you?
Do you know what I used to do? I call them back. I’d be like, “I think we got disconnected.” They’re like, “No. I hang up on you.” I’d be like, “I would hang up on me too if I didn’t know what I was selling, but let me tell you,” and those are the ones that win. They come over. They’re telemarketers per se and not understanding the company or building and seeing where there might be a need. The thing that’s lucky about what we do is we manage mobile devices. Every corporation has mobile devices, so our calls are welcomed typically, but there’s everybody and their mom calling in for, “I’m going to save you this. I’m going to do this.” Where do you stand out? That’s the first, most important question you got to ask.
That’s what I teach people. Let’s do a plug for the company here. We’re talking to Mr. John Gonzalez. He’s the forerunner of the sales division for a company called Wireless Watchdogs. They are out of California and do manage mobility services and much more. If your company is looking for somewhere to not only save money but no longer have the headaches or ripping your hair out when it comes to managing devices, security, and things of that nature in the mobile world, reach out to them. We’ll talk about how they get ahold of you in a bit.
You hit on something near and dear to my heart, and it was comedy. I tell people all the time. If you want to sell to CEOs or larger accounts, learn improv. Go to improv classes. You’re getting people a lot of times who are extremely busy. As you said, you’re interrupting them from maybe a meeting like I did that time, and if you don’t have that first, most important question, it’s game over pretty much right then and there. You come prepared to call.
When they are throwing a curveball, slider, fastball, or whatever baseball analogy, you can see the pitch coming. Therefore, you can adjust your swing, in this case, your first, most important question based on what’s coming down the pipe. I don’t think a lot of people who are selling at that level understand or people who want to sell at that level. You alluded to a change in how sales are done between the older days. By the way, they weren’t too old.
Those that have that sales rhythm still are successful. Now, what we’re seeing is a lot of the money’s going to marketing. Those are the people making the decisions nowadays because we live now in a digital doorstep environment. That’s where that part is going as far as who to get ahold of it, depending on what they’re selling. For us, it’s still the IT department because we’re managing mobility for them. Mobility technology is always changing and getting smarter. That’s where we come in as experts because they don’t teach stuff at Harvard on how to manage mobile devices.
We learned throughout the years, doing it for many years and in the movie industry before that. It’s fun because our sales are a little bit easier than most, typically, because we’re coming in. We’re showing the C-level executives how to create a revenue stream out of a current expense, meaning without switching their carrier or disrupting anything, I’m like, “Let me show you how I can take this $20,000 bill down to $15,000 and save you $5,000 or $60,000 a year. I’ll take this off your guys’ plate because you guys have no people.” They’re like, “My gosh.”
Be confident in selling. Most of the sales now are not even in front of people. The worst a customer can do is hang up on you. Click To Tweet
You increase their profitability immediately by reducing your expense, which is the professional ROI. As important, you’re freeing up time amongst their current team members, so those current team members can now do more higher-level tasks. It’s not that that’s not important to do, but they are always stressed out anyway. You and I know I was in the telecom business. The IT departments are overrun. It’s sometimes a thankless job on their end because if it’s working, they’re great, but the moment it breaks, they’re like, “Hey, you.”
They’re looked at as a cost center. Nowadays, security is the number one thing across every company. Ransomware is happening. A lot of it is happening through mobile devices because they’re not locked down and secured, which we can help with, and then the cyber side of things is at the forefront. Given anybody out there that’s doing any kind of sales, security is the number one buzzword.
CEOs and founders of the company, as they said at Hans and Franz, “Hear me now. Believe me later.” The reality is you’re liable a lot of times for security breaches that happen within a company. I remember you, and I was doing some research one time and finding the percentage. It was crazy. The percentage of people watching porn on their mobile devices is at work. I was like, “My gosh.” It was so high compared to what I thought it was going to be. The reputation of that company is at stake at that point. It always flows back up to the C-level folks no matter what.
A lot of them are only compliances. Healthcare has HIPAA compliance, and banking has FINRA compliance. Those kinds of fines getting hit if you’re found out can be pretty hefty, and then having your company help ransomware. Even if you pay them, who knows when you’re going to get that data back? They can go and sell it to somebody else, and that somebody else gets a percentage of that. It’s so bad with all that’s going on.
These are the things that you talk about. You don’t come in and say, “I want to pluck my products and service.” You’re asking questions regarding, “Are you having challenges, problems, or desires around A, B, C, or D?”
“When was the last time you had a penetration test across your entire environment to see if you have any possible ways to get in? We can show you how many hacks have gone through and narrow it down.” Dataprise is our parent company, but this is where it’s all going. Fear sales. I’m telling you. You’re going to lose this much money, and it’s only going to cost you this now to secure it. They then start thinking about it like, “My gosh.”
You’re doing this before you ever make an offer.
That’s correct.
That’s where a lot of people mess up in sales in general, but certainly, on higher-level sales, they need to understand what they’re doing. If you come in with an offer, it’s like, “That’s great. I heard another offer and another offer. Who do I commoditize?” That’s what happens.
For me, it’s perfect. They go like, “How long do we do this?” I say, “I love that. Let me prove it to you. Let me run a free analysis. There’s obligation or commitment. It takes about ten minutes. Give me the information. I’m going to show you how much money is on the table, where the savings are coming from, and how we are going to get there.” People think like, “Why would you show them the savings? They’re going to take that and try to get it.” It’s not that. It’s just that they’re never going to be able to do this because the device usage goes up.

You have new devices and features, and they’re overwhelmed trying to keep the company up and running. We run that free analysis, and that is about 80% of the close because once we showed them how much we’re going to save them, all the analytics, the accountability control, the security, and how it’s pretty much coming at the expense of the carriers through the bill reductions, we’re helping them realize, then it becomes one of those, “This is amazing.”
I love what you said that it takes about ten minutes. I tell people this, and they look at me like I’m crazy. What is the number one thing that you can deliver consistently, reliable, and measurable that makes them easy first to say yes? That’s step one. In your case, it’s a free analysis, and it takes them about ten minutes of their time to upload whatever you need for the analysis, or you can do it for them. That’s the first reliable, measurable, and easy step that you can show them and quantify not only savings but security issues and/or how they reduce their labor costs and all kinds of things.
It’s accountability. It’s reporting analytics on steroids to show them who’s doing what, where, and when with their devices.
This is where I see people make a mistake. They go after the wholesale upfront without understanding what’s going on and then getting them to a shy yes or a first yes state. In your case, it’s GEICO like, “Would you take fifteen minutes to save 15% on your car insurance?” You’re saying, “Would you take ten minutes to increase your profitability by 2%?” It’s hard to say no to something like that because it’s not a big commitment. It’s a micro commitment. This is where I see people blow it all the time.
They’re going for the total, “Here’s what I do. This is the service. Here are the products. Let me bend your ear for an hour and a half.” What you’re saying is, “Let me spend 5 to 15 minutes with you on the call here, see if it’s a good fit, and if it is, I’d like to take it to the first step, which is let’s find out. Let’s do a diagnostic first before we do the prescription, and then you’ll know once you can prescribe X, Y, Z, or whatever it might be, and then you can make a value-based decision.”
When they start, I told my sales guys, “Learn who you are and what your passions are,” but a lot of times, they want to go for those home runs. It’s always about hitting home runs. Those bats, base hits and doubles all win the game. Those home runs are great, but the ones that win the game typically are the ones knocking it down step-by-step and being strategic about it.
If nine people get up to bat and go to the new round, and it starts all over again at the first one. If they can all hit a single, you’ve scored at least 2 or 3 or more runs. If you did those nine innings in a row, you’re going to be 25 to 30 runs. No team is going to beat you at that point. It’s impossible, but if they’re swinging for the fence or home runs and hit 1 out of 30 every single time, that is a hard way to do sales.
It’s like that realtor that sells one house a year.
I want to go back to something you said, which is it’s shifting from where it was to the marketing department now.
It’s also talking about cybersecurity, everything going on between systems, and all that. It’s hard to send an email through to anybody nowadays without getting it flagged as spam. Do you know what sells that I don’t see and hear anymore? I get these emails all the time. It’s like, “I called you the other day. I did this and said that.”
Not once has anybody sent me a message to say, “I sent you an email. Take a look at it. Let me know what you think. I read a little bit about you. You went to UCLA. I’m a Bruins fan too. How about the game last week? Call me back. I’d love to get to know you a little bit if we get a chance.” I don’t get any of that anymore. It’s just the mass emails coming through. There aren’t like, “I called you yesterday.” Nothing. You don’t even have my number. This is what clogs the market for those real opportunities. It gives a bad name to those that are trying to do right.
Home runs are great, but the ones who win the game are the ones who are knocking it down step-by-step. Click To Tweet
I’m in 100% agreement with you. We made a decision on this show to go after some high-value targets. I said, “Let me see how this works.” We take the same philosophy that you and I are talking about. I put together a small five-part series email. They are highly personalized, doing exactly what you’re saying. I’m bringing this up because I know you do this as a master, and you teach people to do this.
We’re looking at their LinkedIn profiles or Facebook. We’re looking at everything we can get information on. We’re looking at the articles they’ve been quoted in because these are large companies that are the size of companies that you go after. I figured, “Let’s try cold email.” People will say, “It never works,” so I’m like, “Let’s give it a shot.” We’ve been doing this for a while, and we’ve been getting a 23% response rate on cold emails.
I want to talk to your writer. That’s a great open rate. If somebody sends something personal to me or researches me, you better believe as a salesman I’m going to call them back, or if they’re persistent, I will call back and maybe offer them a job. That’s rare that you find that. I’ve learned from the best.
Thank you, and I’d be happy to share my emails with you. We are getting a 23% response rate. They’re not all favorable. I’ve had people say no. I’ve had people say, “Take me off the list.” We come back with, “I would love to take you off the list,” and we explain what’s going on. We’ll then use more personalization in there. It’s one of those things, but here’s the thing. I’m getting CEOs of major companies coming onto this show now.
The reality is that it’s not dead. I’m doing the same thing. You know what to do. You’ve done it. I’ve known you for years and still know you. We talk on a regular basis. That’s why I’m so grateful you came onto this show because I know how busy you are. I was talking to this marketing CEO who does fractional outsourcing. He gave me a statistic. I think it’s pretty accurate, so I wanted to get your opinion on it. He is saying that 80% of the decision to talk to a salesperson now is being made through the marketing departments.
He got that right.
How do you budget if the marketing department is making the decision and doing all the groundwork? We want to talk to the buyer. We want to talk to who has the money. It’s a really important thing for people to understand. In your case, you’re still talking to the CIO or the C-level executives. How is marketing playing into this now?
Our marketing team is playing huge to it because there’s a need for services. Everybody is looking for ways to cut costs. We can do it by their next billing cycle without ripping and replacing circuits or doing anything. We can increase efficiency, accountability, and control. We’re putting that, and we’re learning. We’re asking questions to all these clients who keep coming aboard, which is good for my sales team. We have a questionnaire that they fill out to identify what challenges and pain points they’re having in mobility, and then we custom tailor our presentation based on that.
Most of the responses that we’re getting back, and we put it together, are the top five responses from companies outsourcing their mobility. Number one is time. They have no time to manage mobile devices. Two, they’re like, “We’re not even sure if we’re the lowest cost option. We just pay our bills every month. We have no idea based on usage costing.” We have Tom trying to run IT. At the same time, people are coming to his desk trying to manage his mobile devices, and he doesn’t have time. He’s going home stressed out. We alleviate the stress.
We’re prescribing the aspirin for all these pain points and showing them through this complimentary analysis how we can take this money away from the carriers, pay for our service, and leave a net profit. Now, that IT director that looks at that as a cost center can go back to the C-level executive and say, “I found a way to cut costs by next month and add some staff to come to help us out. They’re going to save us more than what they charge.”
How do you say no? The beauty is we don’t start charging them until the savings start to hit, they’re fully loaded, and they have all their processes in place. They’re fully saving money up and running and ready to go before we send out that maintenance invoice. Before we even do that, we run that free analysis for ten minutes and show them exactly where the money is at and how we’re going to do this.

They’re all of these reports with their data, their portal, and how we’re going to simplify life. From there, it’s up to them to say, “This is amazing,” or, “This has been very informative and educational. We learned some things on our account we didn’t know about. Thank you.” You still look like the hero when you walk away. A lot of times, I’ve had four deals closed to where I’ve walked away and said, “I appreciate it. I’m glad that we’re able to give you one of the best educations you’ve ever had. If you ever need us, please give me a callback.” Two weeks later, they do.
Those are usually your best referral accounts ever. We’re speaking with John Gonzalez of Wireless Watchdogs. I’m sure there are people here going, “There’s my own money. I’m going to have less stress. You take the craziness off me.” How do they find out more about the company? How do they contact your team or yourself?
If you guys have over 100 corporate devices on any carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, or T-Mobile, give me a call. My number is (310) 943-3415, or you can reach me at John.Gonzalez@WirelessWatchdogs.com. We can have an open and honest conversation, see what your environment looks like and what kind of pains or challenges you might be having, and maybe we can run a free analysis for you if it all makes sense.
I always love when we are human on these calls because people think, “You’re selling to these big accounts. You have to be perfect all the time.” I tell people, “We make mistakes all the time, but that goes back to that improv and then being able to recover.” Not making mistakes is the recovery time. I want to get one more subject here if you don’t mind.
A lot of people who might be selling to larger accounts or want to sell to larger accounts are trying to sell consultative sales or products and services in other capacities, but I’ve been saying that a lot of these decisions are made by also peer-to-peer referrals. I know in your company that you guys have made a very conscious shift to going after people who have networks of people who are now making very warm referrals into your business.
We decided to simplify the complicated.
Some people call those referral programs, affiliates, or agent-based programs like I like to speak about or agencies. Could you talk a little bit about that? Is it a different sale from talking to the CEO to building out that network, or is it the same process you used for going after the larger accounts that you do with the referral partners?
I’ll answer that in two parts. On the direct side, which we’ll call salespeople calling into the CEO, you have to be very strategic. It is a long process sometimes. It took you two years to close Men’s Wearhouse. It all depends on what you got. If you’re trying to sell something, it better be something they need because they either already have it or are in contract. For us, it’s a little bit different. Every kind of sales passes differently.
For the agency side, I’m going to give you the difference. We spent hours and months upon times. We always found out maybe between the 7th and 10th touch that if you’re good, you’re going to get somebody to respond to you, but the amount of time taken to dial, call, and try to figure out who is the decision-maker, maybe it’s not the CIO. Maybe it’s the purchasing manager, or it’s AP that’s doing it. All of that reduced the cycle tremendously. Let me tell you why. These partners already have relationships with the people that we’re talking to. They already are selling them networks.
They’ve saved them money to where they have that, “By the way, do you have any mobile devices?” The other person is like, “I do. Let’s go have a beer. What’s up?” The other one is like, “I got this company that can help you cut costs. It’s a free analysis. It’ll save you time, money, and aggravation. It takes about ten minutes. Do you want to go take a look?” He’ll answer, “Yeah,” and then the other one is like, “Here you go.” The sales cycle has now zoomed where now, you have these 30,000 agencies or partners across the US. We’ll use the 80/20 rule. 20% are only active. If we can get to at least 5% to 10% of those guys that are in the grind and making it happen, we would be crushing it when we get that.
We spent years educating, but now, it’s to the point where it’s one of those easy conversations that they just refer us to. They’re like, “They just need three months of bills. They’ll show you how to save money. Sometimes, it’s in the high 6, low 6, or mid-6 figures in savings without switching anything.” Imagine that. What would you do with that money? How much more would you build with your environment here? You might start making them think about like, “What am I going to do with all that extra time? What am I going to do with the extra money?” You’re making them feel good.
If you're trying to sell something, it better be something that your customer needs. Click To Tweet
That’s the difference between calling a CEO direct that if you think about how many businesses are out there trying to fight for whatever business they’re trying to get from that company and approaching that CEO, you need to be super creative and stand out from all that. You got to say something compelling or stop him in his tracks like, “What kind of soup did you eat today?” He’s like, “What?” Sometimes, humor can take you away, but there’s a way to twist that humor into being serious.
At the end of the day, we want them to know that we’re serious about what we’re doing here. Who else would want to know? It’s like, “We feel that. We live too. We all poop the same way. Let’s have this conversation.” That tends to go, but the amount of time it takes to get there directly compared to somebody who already has a relationship is huge.
Thank you for sharing that with everybody. When it comes to humor, we’re not trying to be consistently Kevin Hart on stage. Kevin Hart is a very successful man on or off stage. He’s doing quite well. There’s a business side to that. When you’re using humor to lighten up the conversation or break the ice, the challenge is, if you stay in humor mode, you’re crossing what we would call the friendly line or the annoyance line. You’re going to be annoying. You want to sprinkle in humor. That is the key.
When you’re using referral partners or agency-based networks, the thing is, it’s a very high-leverage activity once you establish it, but it takes a while to build this. It didn’t happen in the first two months when you had all these people. If you look at 30,000 networked units and got 5% out of that 30,000 to work because you said the 80/20 rule, you’re talking 300 to 600 agents that are now selling to you actively on the side, but it takes a while to build them. How long did it take you to get that going from start time to like, “This is amazing?”
Maybe four years. It was mostly educating because these are old-school people that have been in the telecom industry for a long time, and you’re bringing something new to the table. They’re like, “I don’t know what that is.” I don’t want to switch them from one carrier to another. At the end of the day, it’s more than that. It’s something that’s going to make the partners money because they’re doing the introduction, and they love that money.
This is simpler than what they’re selling because they’re selling networks, installing phones, internet, wires, and YouCast, and they have to wait for contracts to expire. They have to send in people to maybe rewire or set up CradlePoint, or whatever that is. All we’re doing is coming over and taking something that’s causing frustration and pain away over the already overstressed IT department so they can focus on what they do best.
Every business is different. People that I talked to are like, “Who wouldn’t sign up for your services? You’re saving people money without doing it.” You’d be surprised because they’re hearing it. They’re like, “I can use this. I can save this,” but the thing is, those people put a bad taste. They have that solution. They know that they can help, and that creates an extra layer, but then, we jump over the actual layer with additional facts, testimonials, and case studies like, “Did you know this CFO said this? What do you think, Mr. CFO?”
It makes total sense. I am appreciative that you told people what the time duration was because here’s the thing. If you’re going to build a partner network like that, especially on a corporate level, it takes time and money. You started making money long before four years, but it’s a new division, and it has to be run separately as a new division. That has been my experience in it. Is that yours too?
One hundred percent.
I’d love to talk with you all day and all night if we could. I appreciate you being on the show. Once again, we’re speaking with Mr. John Gonzalez. The company is Wireless Watchdogs. Check them out. It’s WirelessWatchdogs.com. Do you have any last parting words, or maybe I should have asked you something, but I haven’t?
At the end of the day, it’s just about being human and being appreciative. I appreciate my team. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I’m at. We run on traction. We’re always open and honest with each other, and that has taken us to the next level. I apply the same thing to my family and anything I do in life with being open and honest. That’s pretty much what I want to leave you with.
I want to thank you so much. You’ve been such a mentor and a friend to me. You took me from level 2 to 9. It’s progress, not perfection. I want to wish everybody that has a chance to read this to take care of their loved ones and have a good one. I wish you guys the best. I appreciate you. Thanks to you and your family there. I look forward to many more years to come.

Thanks again for being here.
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I thought that was fantastic. What do you think? It’s one thing to say, “I want to sell to very large accounts.” It’s another thing to have a successful process around doing that consistently over the years, time in and time out. John has honed that. I got to give the whole Wireless Watchdogs company credit to it as well because they not only do it on the sales side. They do it on the operation side, on all the fulfillment, and the customer service side. They are massively working the customer journey so that these very large accounts want to stay. They have a high retention rate of their client base. I thought it was great.
We talked about using improv, for example, because you got to be very quick-witted and quick to be able to train your brain on, “If it zigs in a conversational sales situation, you got to be able to zig too, or if it’s zags, you got to be able to go zag.” Zip Zap Zop is one of the types of things in improv that people do. If you don’t know what that is, look up the exercise. Improv is great and having a system to sell and bring you these large clients expands the sale and opens up new opportunities. It is the key.
I hope you took a pen and paper and you read this episode over and over. If you’re one of those people looking to sell the higher-end accounts or just looking to use the process for selling those high-end accounts, and those of you reading in Europe, Australia, and other places, the process for doing the same. Also, pay attention to using peer-to-peer selling. There’s a great book called OPM, using Other People’s Money. You can also use other people’s relationships or OPR.
That’s it. I hope you got a lot out of this episode. If you did and you’d like to do me a favor, please subscribe to the show. Tell people to subscribe to this. The more subscribers I get, the higher the rankings I get. The higher the rankings I get, the more people we can impart this information upon and help people sell more and be in the top 1% of companies and earners globally. This is the mission of the show.
If you want to get ahold of me directly, please reach out at Doug@BusinessSuccessFactors.com. You could call the company line at (603) 595-0303. You can reach out to me at @DougBrown123. That is my LinkedIn handle. Let me know. What do you like about the show? What are some future episodes you might want to read about? What information do you specifically want to read? I will find that type of person in a source so that you can get your answers and use this as a form of leverage.
As always, if you need help with your business in and around selling more, sales expansion, optimizing your sales process, or how you hire a great quality team, reach out to me, and I’ll see if we can help you. I’m signing off. Go sell something. Sell a lot of it. Make a great profit and build your life to your success.
Important Links:
- Wireless Watchdogs
- John.Gonzalez@WirelessWatchdogs.com
- Other People’s Money
- Doug@BusinessSuccessFactors.com
- @DougBrown123 – LinkedIn
- https://www.Facebook.com/WirelessWatchdogs
- https://www.Twitter.com/wirelesswtchdog
- https://www.Linkedin.com/company/wireless-watchdogs/
About John Gonzalez
As the VP of Sales and Mobile Strategy at Wireless Watchdogs, John Gonzalez is an extremely passionate Mobile Strategist helping companies reduce mobile cost, improve efficiencies, and gain accountability around the entire lifecycle of mobility through Managed Mobility Services.
He believes in people, not titles, to help bring solutions to make life easier for people that have responsibilities over their company’s mobility cost, management, and initiatives.
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