Troy
My thought on it and it's probably not like super popular is like people will play within the realm of integrity that is the sandbox that they're given at the job that they're at. Within a certain stretch.

Ben
Welcome to the Beyond Quota Podcast. I'm Ben Gould. I work at Scratchpad for Pouyan. Pouyan had an emergency. Can't attend today. We have Corporate Bro, Ross Pomerantz.

Ross 
Who do you really work?

Ben 
The man.

Ross
 It's me, Ben.

Ben
It's Corp. It's Corp. Yeah. And today on the pod we have the one and only Troy Barter out of Boston and Tampa. Sales legend, content creator.

Troy
Thanks for having me boys. I'm pumped. Corp I've followed you for quite a while now. So this is a pretty cool. Excited to be here.

Ross
I am curious what is a gnarlier place a rap battle or a Paychex sales floor? What's grimier?

Ben
Great question. 

Troy 
Oh Rap Battle for sure. I think that's something that's helped me quite a bit is battle-rap. Plus the fact that I did commission-only, door-to-door sales like... you get into tech sales, and everyone's saying that SDR is a hard job. It's like, c'mon guys. It's really not. Like it's hard comparatively. Yeah, it's hard compared to being an AE, obviously. But it's not hard compared to like summer in Florida in a suit and tie getting you know, guns pulled on you at Pawn Shops. Like it's not that hard.

Ross
I would say SDR life is probably harder than raging for four straight years in college and learning absolutely nothing, which is mostly their comp.

Ben
Did you actually get a gun pulled on you at a pawn shop when you were trying to sell something?

Troy
So peers did. My best door-to-door story is [when] we used to like partner up in the field, it really was just to make sure that we didn't like not work. So they'd put us with someone else to go out and -

Ben
Wasn't for safety?

Troy
Yeah, it was absolutely not for safety. So I was out with a female partner of mine. And we went out to a funeral home. And we were representing Verizon at the time. We didn't work for Verizon, it was outsourced sales companies, you know, selling files, whatever. And we had badges, but he didn't believe it. So he said, No, it was kind of pleasant actually just kind of brushed us off. He said, Alright, cool. We left. And he followed us out into like a neighboring field, and was like, I want your badge. Give me your badge. And I was like, Yeah, you can see it and like he wanted me to take it off. So you can photocopy it. And then he like ripped it off of the female partner of mines. Like ripped it and it was on her neck and it was like holy shit. This is physical. And then he left he realized he kind of f'd up. And that was kind of it. And then like two weeks later, someone came into the office and was like, which one of y'all was this? He was joking. And it was the St. Pete Times it said a funeral home owner foils con-plot. And it was a whole article that was absolutely us knocking the door. And then that happening, and he just left that part out. I used to have it. I don't know where that that clipping is. But I thought that was kind of f'ing amazing.

Ross 
So what series of mistakes led you to that though? Like, let's take it back from square one. What's the background that led to door-to-door?

Troy
So I've been it's, it's related to sales, how I kind of got into it. I've been rapping since I was like 11. And I used to battle online and everything like that before it became a big offline thing. And I started to make beats and I started to sell them online. And I realized that I was without knowing it like managing a funnel and a pipeline. I went on SoundClick and oh shit, every rapper's got an email on here, I can get all of these emails and begin to prospect into them and sell them stuff. And I was like, Maybe I should try doing this for like a career. And the only sale I knew of was car sales. So I just got into car sales and started selling. And did that for a bit. I think the reason why I made the jump from car sales to door-to-door was I think I got fired because my [driver's] license was so bad that like they couldn't keep me on the lot anymore. Just from having no money, lapsing on insurance, and I think that's why. And then it was like, alright, I'll just take this marketing job that turned out to not be marketing and they were lying. And it was like a commission on the door-to-door sales role.

Ross
It's like in-person marketing and you're convincing them to buy it.

Troy
Direct marketing.

Ross
No, no it's not sales! It's not sales! It's marketing in-person. Yeah, it's very direct. Could not be more direct. Alright, so for all these SDRs out there that are whining like little baby-backs about their little 60k base and their little 15-20k bonuses. Can you talk about car sales? Can you just like... I think all of us in sales like that - that's the sale - the misconception that a lot of people are probably saying you about sales, MLM whatever, that's their way of saying sales is dirty, blah, blah. They think car sales. Even we, like in SAAS, we've never done that. We think, okay, dirty car sales. Like we're not that. You know? I want to hear about that.

Troy
That's the reality like, I worked at a lot of dealerships. It's exactly what you think it is. It is exactly what what you would assume. I guess the only bonus right is that they are walking on the lot.

Ross
Is it true like, and maybe this wasn't the case, depending on the car lot, but I've heard things where they'll like, you go in, there's so much psychology involved. It's like they want you to walk in and as soon as you approach a car, they'll make a move.  They'll take your keys from you and your driver's license and they'll hold it for an extra long time.

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Troy
They do hold the keys. Yep, I've heard of them, putting them on the roof. All sorts of shit.

Ross
Yeah, they'll like, wait for you to make some sort of move, like, where's my license? And then they'll come out because you feel some sort of sense of relief that you're kind of high strung and then they come out, you're like, oh, there's my guy. Thank god now I'm less stressed. Like, there's all these weird little psychological tricks. Did they teach any of that to you?

Troy
Yeah the thing that was the oddest is you would get in and it'd be like, alright, this person's budget is $400 a month. And your desk manager would write it up and say alright, show them $800 a month and let's just see where things go from here. And it's like, the car's not even at $800. They just want to see what the reaction is and what space they can play with between $800 to $400. And then you might end up at like, 420. And it's like, man, like, we could have got there so much faster. Shout out 4-20. You know, we could have got there so much quicker, though. All of those tactics are real, like holding the keys to the trade, we need to evaluate your trade, we're gonna hold on to it. We're working a deal. We need your license and proof of insurance. Alright, well, now we have it. So you're not going to just get up and walk away. We've got your license and the keys to your trade, we're not giving that back to you right away. Like, all of that shit is real life. And it's kind of funny, you can be like, well, well, why would you do that? And my thought on it, and it's probably not like super popular is like, people will play within the realm of integrity that is the sandbox that they're given at the job that they're at. Within a certain stretch. You know what I mean? Like, there's obviously a level that you won't go but like when you're there and you're like, I want to get into sales. And everybody's like, Yeah, this is what we do. You know, at least myself I was like, alright, well, I guess that's what we do if I want to do this shit.

Ben
And there's no base pay.

Troy
Yeah! There's also no base pay, by the way. So I f'ing have to. I have no money. I'm gonna sell two cars. And then the third sale is going to be you know, convincing, you know, the cable company that I need the internet.

Ross
I let them have their way and I walked with my car about four days later, and I love it. Frankly, I have a limp but I love my car. And now it takes me from A to B. I did what I had to do. It wasn't pretty. It was that or wait like four months.

Troy
Sounds like a Tesla I'm guessing. That would be my -

Ross
No it was a Rav-4 my man! 

Troy
Pushing a Rav-4? Damn son.

Ross
Yes. Yeah. Thanks Ye! Yeah, no, I know. Okay, but here's the thing. Here's the thing I'm making Rav-4's cool. Alright. 

Troy
They are cool.

Ross
The new ones aggressive. Alright, it's aggressive. You went from a director position to an SDR position director. You were a senior director at one point. And so then you decided, okay, I want to get into SAAS. I want to get into tech. So how old were you when this happened? What was that transition, like when you started working in the SDR pit?

Troy
I do tell people if you want to get into SAAS sales, there's a high chance that you're gonna have to come in entry level. Or you're going to wait a long time and you're going to have to hope to get lucky and really game your resume. "I technically did an online demo because I sent an email to somebody with some pictures in it" or something like that. Like it's not reality though. So for me, it was easy. Outside of the title, I was making more as an SDR because it was 100% commission. So even though I had an org of 60 people, like these companies reserve the right to really jack up your pay all the time. You know, like picture a startup, but the smallest startup even though they have all of these reps. So for me, it was really easy. I came in and I started making more money right away. But I always tell people like yeah, you may may take a step back. Luckily, with the SDR role nowadays, it's not even really a step back for a lot of them. Like you said, like 60k base and you're making good money right off the bat. It's worth doing. But it is tough for some of them. But I absolutely recommend that that you know if you want to get into it and if you if you're making 100K now and you can't figure out a way to make 200K, you may need to make 80K for a year or a year and a half.

Ben
Did you go into that SDR role with no expectations? Or were you like, Oh, I'm gonna crush all these SDRs who don't know what they're doing?

Troy
I knew I was gonna whip ass right away. They showed me the script and it was like Slumdog Millionaire. Like they give him a question and he's like, Oh my life experience happens to be exactly this so I know exactly the answer. It was very similar. Like they didn't even know, Fleetmatics, like what they had with their script. So at the end, it's like when would be the best time to take a look at this would later today or tomorrow work? I'm like, this is The Option Close. This is the exact same shit that we did in car sales, except it was for payments. There is no option for no. It's the options I'm giving you. So I knew exactly how to deliver it off the bat without any training, which was good news, because they didn't provide any. You did a couple of role plays for half a day. And you were out there on the on the phone. And they said a couple of things. They said that they close at a 50% closing percentage, which I thought was crazy. And they said 25% of the room makes six figures. And I was like, Dude, I've never been anywhere where I was not in the top 5% let alone 25%. I'm going to kill myself to do this. If I didn't get a booking I dead-ass dialed the phone 300 times the next day.

Ross
There was a there was a headline that I read, like many people I didn't click on the friggin article, I should have. It was something like new college grads overestimate their pay - what they expect to make by 50k. Tthe expectation now coming out, which is hilarious because I expected to make like 50k? Which was - I didn't I made 38K. But they were expecting like 100k right at the school and what are they - they got to do something to get it. So the content. So where did the content come in? When did that like start? Was it TikTok? Was it LinkedIn?

Ben
Well he had the battle-rap background.

Ross
I want to talk about that too at some point more in depth.

Troy
So I battled and I used to do a vlog to hype the Battle. So I had a built-in audience from it's kind of a long story. But people used to talk about the battles on this website called rapmusic.com where I happen to be like an "Internet Battler" which is like kind of an embarrassing thing. Like I only battled on the internet, not in person. Like that's not as cool as doing it in person. But now all of these people that are legit are on this website talking about it in the message boards and I had a built-in audience and now I'm actually doing this legit stuff. So I would post a YouTube vlog hyping the battle up. And it was all  humor-based just like, you know, it's WWE, it's cutting a promo but you're adding humor to it. And it was something where I realized, like, Man, I know, a decent amount of sales from my experience and I could I do a pretty good job of motivating people and get them to adopt something like I do a good job of selling somebody on the idea. It was like, let's give this a shot and really start to run with it. I got lucky with Fleetmatics being acquired for 2.4 billion I had equity. I went to PandaDoc. PandaDoc got, not acquired, but that became a $1 billion valuation. I had equity there as well. And it's like, alright, I can kind of just go ham and start doing this. And if I don't get hired somewhere, it actually doesn't matter for a while. And I had no earthly idea how to make money off of it. I was just like, let's just do it. And we'll figure it out as we go kind of clumsily. We'll start a consulting company even though we don't know what that even means. And then we'll just run with it and figure it out as we go. And I just decided, like, I'm not gonna stop. There's no way I'm stopping. I'm just gonna do it this time and see it through. And then it got easy because like, I'm sure like you experienced this on a higher level. You get really great feedback from people that it matters to them. And it's helpful. And it's like, Alright, now I really can't stop.

Ross
Yeah there's definitely an interesting shift there when you hit a certain point. Like, I think for a corporate bro in particular, we didn't make a cent for probably six and a half years. It was all a cost, right and then -

Ben
And then we just undercut ourselves in negotiation. We still do.

Ross
We still do. We don't even know what we're worth. We can sell software, we can't sell ourselves. We're getting better at that. But I do think there becomes a switch that's hard that I've struggled with is when it becomes... you feel responsible to everybody else that you got to make something and then you start to decide and this is a bit of a tangent, but am I doing this for me? Am I doing this for them? Am I making what I want to make for me or making what I think they want? Which isn't necessarily what I want. And it's kind of a hard balance and it becomes somewhat you know draining I'll say over time.

Troy
They also don't know what they want. No one does right? So that's another part of it where they think they know. Not to go back to like what a dork I am, but that's an old Vince McMahon-ism when it comes to wrestling. Like, hey, if you made this guy the champ we'd all be happy. And then like Alright, cool we're gonna give you exactly what you want. And then it's like, oh shit, this actually wasn't what we wanted at all we thought we did. This is boring. Like that's one real dorky version of it, but it is kind of funny. The feedback that I get sometimes you got to take it with a grain of salt because you got to realize, like, you think you know what you want until you get an alternative that you like, more, you know, so? Yeah, it's, it's tough. You gotta go with your gut, I guess.

Ross
Yeah. Yep. And so now, today, have you figured out what consulting means?

Troy
Barely.

Ross
Nobody really knows.

Troy 
Honestly like maybe in the past week. I think the first thing we technically profited off of is like, someone wanted me to run a morning meeting, and like, hype him up. And I was like, Alright, cool. I don't know what to charge for that. So just check what your budget is and let me know. Dude, they could have said anything and I would have done it. I figured out a little bit from Keenan in gap selling. Like, he saw some of my content and hit me up and was candidly kind of whipping my ass that I still have another job outside of the consulting job and was like, why aren't you all in on this? And he was kind of right. But he made me realize I don't have to like consult Google at a high level of their go-to-market like, I can just train sales teams.

Ross
I want to touch briefly on the rap battle stuff. And then we'll do kind of our final questions.

Troy 
I moved from really small town, Massachusetts, like no traffic lights in my hometown, to Tampa. And it was like a culture shock. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of cool. I like this, let me just try it out and just write stuff in a journal. And that's kind of all I did for probably the first six or seven years. And then I was like, Alright, let's try to like record it and get a microphone and everything like that. And then from there, it started to pan out a little bit online. And it's kind of parallel to what I'm doing now where it's like, now I want like everyone to know that I can do this. I don't just want a few people to know, like, I want everyone to know. And that's what led me to doing it outside of doing it online. Which I was probably mid 20s. Had a really horrible experience before that. I've actually never talked about it really. It's a lot easier, Corp and Ben, when you record something, if you f up, you can just change it. It's no problem, right? When you're face to face with someone, it's much tougher. So I dissed somebody, his name is Krazy. When the [Tampa Bay Buccaneers] won the Super Bowl the first time  he did "The Anthem" so I was in there when they when they won and they did the trophy thing and they played "The Anthem" on the radio and everything. And we had a song with a mentor of mine and we dissed him, and I thought nothing of it. It was just like a diss track thing when we diss a shitload of people and he heard it. And then was like, You need to come to the radio station, and battle me live. And I showed up and his jaw was wired shut like Kanye West. So he couldn't, but he brought a song. So he brought something prepared and I had nothing. And I choked horribly. Live on the radio when I was, I think 19? Maybe 19 or 20? And I was like, Alright, I'm never doing this ever again. This is incredibly embarrassing. Not to mention I told everybody on the internet about it. So it was also online. It was really bad. And it took years and then I went and watched and it's kind of a benefit of seeing people do a bad job that you think that you can do better. I think like comedy is similar. If you go to enough open mic nights and you see people absolutely failure like what should I mean at least as good as that failure? Like so I can give it a shot and it's okay. And that's what I did. And I just worked harder at not messing up and it panned out well only choked once. Funny enough I choked in a loss to somebody who's now an IT guy at Vidyard. It's the only battle I ever lost.

Ross 
You know what happened to that guy?  Fricking working in IT. At Vidyard. Think about that. Think about that! Not even in sales.

Ben
That is unreal.

Ross
You get one pump up song. You got the biggest deal of your life coming up. You get one.

Troy
So I game planned for this already. "Make 'em Say Ugh." Master-P and the No Limit All-Stars. It's not even remotely close. That was the song we used to play when a deal came in on our software on Fleetmatics and that was nice. That's the one I love.

Ben
I was in an AAU tournament once and the team after us was P-Miller All Stars with Lil' Romeo and Demar Derozan.

Ross
Romeo just there. Thanks Dad!

Ben 
He was actually really good. 

Troy
Yeah played for USC. He's really good.

Ben
All right, flipside of that. Lost the deal. You're feeling down. No commission this month. What's your sad song?

Troy
What about Lionel Richie, "Hello is it me looking for?" That's sad enough, right? We'll play that one.

Ben
Hello. Is it me? That's a great one. You know, where can people find you?

Ross
Plug yourself. Shameless promotion. Where can people connect with you? Find you?

Troy 
The best place is TikTok. It's just @TroyBarterSales. LinkedIn is my name: Troy Barter. I connect with everybody. If you send me a connection request, I connect but LinkedIn is really just like the top TikTok that I had. I'm just regurgitating TikToks on there now. So you're gonna get more content if you follow me on Tik Tok than LinkedIn. But yeah, either one. And if I guess the benefit of LinkedIn is TikTok's DMs really suck. So if you DM me with a specific question like I'm answering every time.

Ross 
Well Troy. Great to have you on Beyond Quota till next time. Appreciate you sir.

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