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Guest: Dina Coker, the founder and CEO of Akcel Partners, a groundbreaking company that specializes in providing outsourced sales talent that is tailored to meet the specific challenges of its clients.
Overview: Making BIG Happen requires a sales strategy that’s innovative, adaptable, and capable of sustaining scale. But sales isn’t a core competency at all firms — especially start-ups and companies that are laser-focused on product development. Outsourcing can give CEOs quick access to a world-class sales team while their company keeps doing what it does best.
On today’s show, Dina Coker explains how she deploys outsourced sales teams that complement or replace traditional in-house structures. She also discusses the critical moments when CEOs should consider leveraging outsourced sales talent and the key strategies for turning sales into a BIG advantage.
Dina Coker on two characteristics of successful entrepreneurs:
“Every single entrepreneur has to have just a little bit, just a hint, of arrogance. Not over the top so that it’s offensive, but enough so that I’m completely confident that this is the way we should do it. If you don’t believe in yourself, why is anyone else going to believe in you? So just a hint of arrogance, just a little bit. The other thing is intellectual curiosity. I cannot overstate the importance of that. If you’re simply regurgitating, if you’re simply being reactive based on what someone else has said, you need to think strategically. You need to be curious and really get yourself involved. Don’t just stay within the confines of what your little job says. Try to be curious and drive beyond that.”
Dina Coker on creating her business to fulfill a unique and profitable need:
“The scientists at Dow Chemical came up with this very niche chemical that could be used to eliminate smells with apparel and home textiles. Imagine no smells, no musty odors. And Dow said, ‘This is great, but what the heck are we doing? We don’t know how to sell this thing. We don’t sell here.’ I was working for their marketing agency. So the gentleman who ran the business asked, ‘Is there a group of people who can take this and go to the apparel brands and retailers and go to the people who make towels and things like that and create a pull-through strategy?’ We need this sales force. It’s very unique and Dow of course doesn’t have it. So he and I spent a lot of time looking, and there was nobody out there who could act as this sort of offsite sales team for the Dow group. And so I said, I can probably help. So I got together two people who I’ve known for a very long time who both have a ton of experience in sales and in sales administration. The three of us got together and created Akcel Partners and we then acted as this offsite sales department for Dow. And then we realized, oh my gosh, I think we have something here. Why don’t we go after a couple of other clients and use that same business model? And so that’s what Akcel Partners is here for. We talk to the CEO and we develop a plan to meet that need.”
Dina Coker on helping companies identify their goals and the talent they need to achieve them:
“We spend a lot of time with whoever’s responsible for building the business. So sometimes it’s the CEO, vice president of business development or sales. They think they know who they want. But then after we do a discovery session, it sometimes changes. So that’s the first thing to do is truly understand what the goals are and then what we need to get there. We go through our network, which is huge after 25 years, and we also use recruiters. We find people who are already very experienced and very networked in that business’ category. We don’t want to do a lot of training. We don’t mind training on the particular product or service that this company has, but we don’t want to train on the market. We don’t want to train on the industry. The sales team needs to come already experienced with that. We want to show some very quick success. And then we also need help in planning. What does that long-term plan look like? How are we showing success in not just the ‘crawl’ phase, but also during ‘walk’ and ‘run.’ So we find people who know what the heck they’re doing. We’re not going to find someone just out of college to do the work of someone who really needs the ability to create and execute a plan.”
Links:
How Software Development Outsourcing Can Build a Big Competitive Advantage Against Larger Firms – Fred Joye discusses how companies can use outsourcing to scale their development teams with top software engineers and compete against BIG tech companies that have more resources.
How TaskUs Used a “System Builder” Approach to Drive Nearly $1 Billion in Sales – Jarrod Johnson explains how TaskUs recruits and trains top talent, aligns its sales team to goals and best practices, and promotes a culture of positivity.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, CEO Coaching International has coached more than 1,000 CEOs and entrepreneurs in more than 60 countries and 45 industries. The coaches at CEO Coaching International are former CEOs, presidents, or executives who have made BIG happen. The firm’s coaches have led double-digit sales and profit growth in businesses ranging in size from startups to over $10 billion, and many are founders that have led their companies through successful eight, nine, and ten-figure exits. Companies working with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have experienced an average revenue CAGR of 31% (2.6X the U.S. average) and an average EBITDA CAGR of 52.3% (more than 5X the U.S. average).
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