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Mary McKenna's posterous

ramblings of a constant roamer

Filed under: Sam Barbee

Where have all the sales people gone?

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I’m sitting here this Saturday afternoon wondering why we are struggling so hard to find good business development resource to join our Learning Pool dream team?  Sam Barbee is Learning Pool’s Head of Sales.  That’s him in the photo.  He hails originally from Orange County in California but like so many of his countrymen, he fell under the spell of an Irish colleen and now lives in Derry in the sunny NW of Ireland – California’s loss but Learning Pool’s gain as Sam is a 100% excellent Head of Sales.  He’s easy going but hard working, straight talking but fair.  He makes his targets and doesn’t destroy any of his colleagues getting there.  He’s honest & trustworthy and he’s never let me down.  You can check out what he says about working at Learning Pool here http://www.learningpool.com/jobcasts/

Learning Pool is a company that’s really going places.  Nearly 5 years old we’ve won the Deloitte Rising Star in both 2009 & 2010 (this award really counts as it’s all about achieving your numbers and has nothing to do with how much you’ve spent that year on sponsorship or advertising like many other awards).  Our fantastic team has grown to just over 50 people, all of us focused on success, providing customer delight, building a fabulous business and having a lot of fun on the way through.

Sam and I have been interviewing prospective business development executives now for about 9 months.  We must have interviewed 50 people in person and telephone interviewed a whole lot more.  We haven’t found anyone yet that we’ve wanted to bring into our team.  Admittedly we’re quite fussy.  Over the years at Learning Pool we’ve learned that it really is better to have a hole than an asshole when it comes to building your team.  Bringing the wrong people in satisfies a short term need but the long term fallout is painful to repair and recover from.  We’re in a fortunate position where we have a very engaged customer base and an active online community that’s taken a lot of time and hard work to build.  Our team has very personal relationships with our public sector customers and we want to protect those to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.

So what are we looking for:

·         Someone who’s confident but not arrogant, persistent but not pushy, a person who believes in themselves & their own ability and who is motivated to get up early in the morning & go out & get ‘em

·         A completer finisher who demonstrates the necessary attention to detail but never takes their eye off the big picture

·         People who love working in sales and the challenges that brings; we want a career sales exec who has a successful track record – not someone that wants to be in sales while they wait for something “better” to come along

·         Someone who cares about their colleagues, their customers and the company – not someone that tramples on the post on their way out

·         Someone that understands the UK public sector and its unique challenges – or is prepared to learn

·         A person that thinks and has ideas

·         Someone who isn’t afraid to discuss money with customers or be responsible for delivering a target

·         A person who really wants to be part of something great and who isn’t fazed by having the world as their oyster – at Learning Pool we talk a lot about being at Opportunity Central.

So – if you’re interested or know someone else that might be – there’s a job spec at this link here http://www.learningpool.com/files/2010/10/business-development-exec-Oct2010.pdf

Comments welcome as always.

The night I met Barack Obama...

Sam Barbee & I were in Cardiff getting ready for a Learning Pool customer event the night President Barack Obama was elected.  Sam Barbee is American and I’ve always wished I was – although being Irish is almost the same thing.  It’s certainly closer to being American than any other nationality.  Our Irish diaspora numbers 45m in the USA.  As a child I listened to the stories my great aunts and uncles in Donegal told us about Amerikay – they’d all been to the US many times although they’d never been to Belfast or Dublin & certainly not to the GB mainland.  At the Northern Ireland Bureau St Patrick’s Day breakfast, Martin McGuinness recited a 2 line poem to illustrate our unique relationship with our cousins across the water – I can’t remember it exactly but it was something like this:

Have you been on your holidays yet this year?

No we’ve just been to America again

The morning of our Cardiff breakfast event, we were a bit tired having been up all night following the election results coming in and watching the President’s wonderful acceptance speech.  Neither of us would have missed it for anything. 

It was therefore with great excitement that I received the invite to the President’s St Patrick’s Night party at the White House along with a few others from the Northern Ireland business community (that’s us in the second photo).  The build up to the big day nearly killed me & it was a relief that I only had a week’s notice.  I had to rush out to the shops to buy something green to wear and thank goodness I did or I would have stuck out like a sore thumb (I’ve never seen as much green clothing in my life as I saw in Washington DC on 17 March).  I had an amusing incident at immigration when I was asked the purpose of my visit – the immigration officer asked to see my invite and after studying it for a long time appeared to be most impressed.  From talking to people around Washington DC it seems that the President isn’t much in evidence locally apart from on the tv – although the First Lady has a significant local presence through the many good works she’s involved in.  So what stays with me from the night itself? – the following highlights:

·         Hearing the President and the Vice President speak & being at the front with such a clear view

·         Watching the way the Vice President & the First Lady never took their eyes off the President when he was addressing the crowd

·         Being in the White House for 3 hours and being able to wander round the rooms and freely take photos of the decor, the view from the windows, the paintings and everything else (my full photo set from the evening is at this link http://bit.ly/h8VK1q)

·         The craic in the crowd whilst we were waiting for the President to appear – especially all of us being able to try on the Rose of Tralee’s tiara (thanks Clare!)

·         The mounting excitement waiting for the President – we were almost hyperventilating by the time 7pm came along

·         The pomp & circumstance of the whole evening – the pipe band, the choir, the banquet, the greenness, the beautifully dressed & polite members of the military dotted about everywhere who offered to take photos & were extremely cordial

·         The lovely people that we met who were also there as guests

·         Rather perversely I enjoyed seeing one woman spill her wine on the furniture

·         Glen Hansard of the Frames being joined by Tim Shriver for a rendition of The Auld Triangle

·         Being spontaneously hugged by Michelle Obama when I held my hand out to shake hers – I still can’t believe that – she didn’t hug anyone else and I’m glad she picked me

·         Meeting the President for a few seconds & telling him how glad I am that it’s him that’s there – Jannine’s photo is a bit of a joke but I promise you that’s the President’s nose!!!  You can tell by my face anyway

·         Realising that the President & the First Lady were as good in real life as I imagined they would be

·         Feeling the warmth from our diaspora first hand – doesn’t matter if you’re 4th or 5th generation guys – you’re still ours!

Thanks again to everyone that made this possible – people I knew already (Martin & Stephen & Alastair) & people I hadn’t even met that were so nice and so good to me (Kamala & Grainne).  The Learning Pool team has me down as a people collector but even with Robert Plant in the portfolio, Barack Obama’s a bit of a prize so I may give it up whilst I’m ahead.

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Without selling there is no business...

Last night some of Learning Pool’s #teamlovely were at the Europa hotel in Belfast for the Deloitte Fast 50 awards.  We had a great night and would like to thank Kathy & Claire at Deloitte’s in Belfast for organising and Brendan for being our genial table host.  The speakers last night were great and addressed specific issues around why Irish companies are not more successful, especially in the US where a huge Irish diaspora community and a lot of goodwill exists.  The guys dished out a lot of very practical advice to tech companies like ours that are early stage & ambitious.  We listened to every word.  The absolute star of the lineup however was Niall Olden, Managing Partner at Kernel Capital.  Niall was very clear that many Irish companies do not reach their full potential in either performance or valuation because careers in sales are neither nurtured or recognised as being on a par with professions such as being a doctor, lawyer or accountant.

This was music to my ears and those of Sam Barbee, Learning Pool’s Head of Sales, who was sitting next to me at the table last night.  Sam hails from Orange County, CA – that’s both of us pictured with Niall later in the evening – we just had to go for a chinwag with him and thank him for raising something which both of us fail to comprehend.  In other countries the importance of sales as an intrinsic part of business is recognised and students are encouraged at undergraduate level to understand the benefits of choosing a career in selling.  I work in sales now having spent years working as a commercial accountant.  It’s liberating to work hard in an arena where there’s a very direct link between your hard graft and the company meeting its targets and flourishing.

I talk to lots of early stage businesses and am often horrified when they tell me how much time and effort they are spending chasing government grants or other forms of financial assistance.  How much better off they would be focusing on making sales & building their business from a robust revenue footing.

Many graduates aren’t interested in learning how to sell but what they don’t realise is that this will hold them back later when they start to climb the ladder and they’ll never make it to senior exec or MD level without solid sales experience.  Instead they choose to regard sales as something slightly grubby that they’d rather leave to someone else.  Get over yourselves guys!

And yeah – we walked away with an award last night – Learning Pool was named as the Deloitte Rising Star for the second year in a row.  We’re all absolutely delighted and I’d like to say a big thank you to our team – many of whom are out there selling every day of their working lives.  Great night one and all.

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My favourite sound? - why the kettle boiling of course

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I know I couldn’t live without tea.  It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and I’m quite famous for the amount of tea I consume during the course of the average working day.  I’m always pleased when I arrive at meetings and someone offers me tea – and then sometimes a bit horrified when I taste it and find it’s the kind where you can’t really tell if it’s tea or coffee – this can happen at public sector meetings – it isn’t anyone’s fault – it’s just the way it is and is one of the less pleasant side effects of working in a large organisation.

Late last year, Sam Barbee & I visited Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service in Preston and we were brought a huge, ceramic pot of tea.  Sam commented how delighted I would be and he was right – I’m only sorry I didn’t take a photo of it (it was before my recent obsession with photographing everything that happens each day)!

I often think about what great value tea is and how much pleasure it brings for just a few pence.  I don’t have fancy tastes – just breakfast tea (Irish or English) – although I do have a large number of teapots (most of them still unused, none of them of the novelty variety).

What I’m wondering is – Is tea a drug?  - or is my dependence on it completely psychosomatic?  If anyone knows the answer to that question I’ll be very pleased to hear from them.

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