Mike Gomez With Allegro Consulting

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome back to the start of Showdown podcast where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Mike Gomez. He is with Allegro Consulting. Welcome, Mike.

Mike Gomez: [00:00:59] Hi, Lee. God, it’s been a while since I’ve talked to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] I know it’s been a minute. How have things been going for the folks who aren’t familiar? Can you share a little bit about Allegro? How you serving folks?

Mike Gomez: [00:01:10] I’m I call myself a growth specialist. I help privately held businesses, which includes both startups and established businesses. On if you’re a startup and a founder about go to market strategy and if you’re an established business about what strategic plan you have that will drive growth. And so I focus on helping clients figure out where they want to be, what they want their company to look like two years from now and make that the driving destination. If you cannot just grow by letting the market guide you, you have to drive your business that way. And the other focus I have is on on sales and sales process and firm believer that selling is a science selling it can be taught and that in doing so you can dramatically change the way you engage with your customers and and improve your sales win rate.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:02] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this type of consulting?

Mike Gomez: [00:02:07] Wow. It’s an interesting backstory. So I used to sell fighter jets for Boeing and Lockheed. Right now people go, well, that’s an interesting back story. And how does that translate to this? Well, one of the things that most people don’t know about international sales of jet fighters is there’s two elements. One is to prove to the customer that our solution is the best solution for their future defense needs. That’s common. Everybody understands that. The other element that most people don’t know about is there’s the part of it where the governments that we’re dealing with want to see. In addition to the fighter jets arriving, they want to see jobs being created in their country. And and that element where I am basically an economic development specialist, meant that I needed to travel around these countries and meet the business owners to see what it is about their business that made them unique and that might make a good match. Marriage with some of our suppliers. And so what I was basically doing was doing many consulting engagements with a whole bunch of different businesses all over the world. And I began to start seeing some common flaws that privately held businesses tend to not adhere to. Some of the basic standards of business rules have a strategic plan, follow a plan. These are rules that I’ve come to know by working in corporate America, but I was quite stunned. We’re not being adhered to by privately held businesses. And so when I finally got off the corporate treadmill, I decided that I would make this my personal mission to to bring these disciplines in a reasonable way to private business owners and to startup founders so that we can reduce the failure rate of startups and improve the growth rate of privately held businesses. How’s that?

Lee Kantor: [00:04:07] That’s pretty, pretty impressive. Now, is the advice similar to a startup as an established business? Because an established business hopefully has kind of some repeatable measures of success. And they know that if I push this lever up and down, I’m going to get a certain result where a lot of startups hope that that occurs, but they are not kind of quite sure what are the right levers to push and who are the right people to even be talking to about those levers.

Mike Gomez: [00:04:44] All right. So the commonality that exists between an established business and a private I mean, a startup is this when you’re trying to launch a business, the question that has to be is, do you know everything that you should know about entering your business into the marketplace? Do you know the risks? Do you know the competitive landscape? Do you understand who is suffering the problem that you’re trying to set out to solve? And what proof do you have that they’re willing to pay for your kind of solution? Now, all of those things I just described are are the makeup of what is known as a business plan. And that is a necessary first step for any startup. Now, there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to turn off this podcast right now because there’s another strategy consultant talking about a business plan. But the same holds true when you’re an established business, that an established business needs to have a destination that they’re driving the business to. That’s called a strategic plan. And both of these are very common languages in the business world. They’re very well understood. The practices have been around for years. They’re around for years because they’re relevant. Unfortunately, most startups skip the business plan and most established businesses skip the strategic plan. And unfortunately the results are well documented.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:21] So why do you think that is? If something has been kind of tried and true for so long and has so many examples of success, why do both entities, you know, either consciously or subconsciously say, Yeah, that’s for other people, not for me.

Mike Gomez: [00:06:37] It’s not fun. Lee It’s not fun. I’d rather make things. I’d rather do stuff in my company, then work on a plan or I don’t know how to. I’ve tried many times to sit down and start working on it and I get as far as strategic plan on the top of the piece of paper or the Google doc. And then I immediately go, This is not fun and I’m going to go do something more productive. Or Here’s another excuse is I don’t want to be hemmed in. I don’t want to be restricted or handcuffed by a plan. I want the ability to to to move around and be free to make constant, constantly evolving decisions. I’ve written an article called Short Sighted Reasons Business Owners Don’t Plan, and it captures a lot of ones that I’ve heard. But look, I don’t want to get focused on the on the business plan here because the audience that we’re talking about, these startup founders, they want to know, like, what what can I do to improve my chances? And yes, I will argue that if you do a business plan, you will improve your chances substantially.

Mike Gomez: [00:07:45] I’m not failing. It doesn’t guarantee it. But at least you’ve gone through the exercise. I was explaining to a startup founder the other day that in my old world of flying airplanes, we had simulators. And the reason we flew in simulators to practice emergency procedures and conditions of flight that we not would not normally encounter is that we could exercise ourselves so that when we are in that environment, it actually happens. We’re not going to be surprised. And the business plan for a startup is that simulator in the safety and comfort of your home. You can sit down on paper and see whether or not the business that you’re projecting. The idea for your startup can survive on paper by looking at the competitive landscape and how much do you differentiate and and what are all the resources that you’re going to need in order to make this business successful? And can you afford those resources? And how long before you run out of money you can do all that in the safety of the paper.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:50] Now is that your role when you’re consulting is to be this kind of stress test or stress tester for these firms to give them things to think about and to challenge their assumptions and to poke and prod to see where the weak points are.

Mike Gomez: [00:09:08] I find myself doing that quite a bit. I’m an advisor in Atlanta Tech Village. That’s how I got associated with this opportunity here. And I’ve been an advisor for Tech Village for coming on five or six, seven years now, and I’m considered sort of the Simon Cowell tough love judge there. My job is to not be a cheerleader for the founders, and I know I do that very well, but but instead really challenge the the founders about how they thought through everything. And and so are they going to stumble and fall on some of the same traps that have caused other startups to stumble and fall? For example, if we agree, let’s start with this first premise. If we agree that startups fail because they run out of money, can we agree about that?

Lee Kantor: [00:10:12] Sure.

Mike Gomez: [00:10:13] All right. Good. So if you then talk about, well, why do they run out of money? All right. Or what can we do to prevent that? And therefore, it is the founder’s job to drive the business to the shortest path toward incoming revenue. What is that shortest path? Now when I’m advising my startup founders, one of the things that I’ve used, a term that I’ve developed, it’s a Gomez ism. It’s called. Be soda straw small. In pursuit of the first paying customers. Now, what do I mean by that? If you’ve ever looked through a soda straw, you don’t see very much. And what I’m asking of the founder is, who is it that you were aiming at? And the way I help my founders figure that out, because that’s really the most important part, is shortest distance to the first paying customer. Well, you have to know who that paying customer is. What do they look like? And I go, the best way to figure that out is doing your market research while you’re out there talking to the market community about your solution. Which one of that community, when they see your solution, have nothing short of this kind of expression? Wow. This is awesome. Where has that been? And that is your soda store. Small target. That demographic of that individual needs to be the one that you go after first.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:04] And then you help them identify that, help them get clear on on who that is, what they look like and where they’re where they hang out.

Mike Gomez: [00:12:14] That that is that is probably the the one common issue that I have to deal with most often when working with a startup founder is are you do you understand who is going to be your first paying customer? And now, look, this this scares the heck out of a lot of founders about this idea of soda straw small because they’re told, well, Mike, shouldn’t I be trying to reach out to the broadest audience? Because by sheer numbers, if I reach out to the broadest audience, I am more likely to get a sale than if I were so narrowly focused like you are describing. And here’s a great example of that from a founder who had a solution that was designed to serve and help lawyers do their job. And he came to me and I and he goes and he goes, Mike, and this is this is salute. And I go, what? So. So it’s to help lawyers because. Yes, I go, any lawyers? And he goes, Well, yes, any lawyer. I said, I’m a lawyer in Singapore. Is it for me? He goes, no, no, not not international lawyers. Oh, so it’s actually not any lawyer. It’s what? Lawyers in the United States? Yes, lawyers in the United States. So in this one brief moment, I just change his definition, his founder’s definition to his team about who our target market is.

Mike Gomez: [00:13:41] It went from any lawyers to lawyers in the United States. I then ask the next question. How many lawyers are there in the United States? I don’t know. How about 5 million or maybe more? How many people in your company? Well, it’s just me and two others. How well do you think you can communicate effectively to 5 million lawyers? What kind of lawyer are you? Because I imagine the genesis of this idea was to help you do your job better. Well, I’m going to patent an attorney law. Why don’t we focus on patent attorney lawyers? And we kept going through this exercise. Now, he had not made a sale yet, and they’ve been flailing around for about a year or two. But we got to a soda straw small target demographic of patent and attorney lawyers in firms of this size who deal in this kind of patent attorney law. Located in the Southeast because they were an Atlanta based company and more narrowly located in Georgia and Atlanta. And I said, Why don’t you target these companies first? And if you can’t sell your solution in your own backyard. Then maybe we don’t have a viable business here.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:03] Now. Yeah, well, when you’re having that conversation, I’m sure the people you’re talking to are going. It’s obviously counterintuitive to their thinking. And it’s it’s one of those things where I think people underestimate these the power of the niche. You know, they they don’t understand that being focusing on that niche and going deep and really becoming that subject matter expert, that that person who knows everything about it and is paying attention to all the nuance and all of all of the kind of subtleties of that niche makes you that much more valuable. And as a bonus, they’re easier to find. You know what they look like, you know where they are, there’s less of them. So you can do a better job of reaching out to them and communicating with them.

Mike Gomez: [00:15:53] Bingo. It is. It’s one thing to say I have a solution for moms. It’s another to say I have a solution for moms with kids in elementary school. Who live in the suburban environment and those kids go to. I participate in in Little League baseball. Because now when you’re communicating, using all the different tools we use in the world of marketing to target an individual and attract their attention, what you’re using in the language you’re using is intended to speak to that mom. With kids in elementary school whose sons are participating in Little League versus the first one was We have a solution for moms. All right. So and again, we’re talking about the shortest distance, so to straw small to the first paying customer. We’ve got to get our startup founders focused on that because running out of money is what’s going to cause them to go out of business. Makes sense.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:11] Yeah. Now, a lot of startups are very attracted, attractive or attracted to the kind of the SDR model of selling with the sales development rep going, you know, doing what they do. Handing him off to somebody to do a demo. Blah, blah, blah. Everybody’s heard this a million times. What’s your take on that methodology when you’re dealing with marketing in the manner that you’re describing, does that work in that as effectively in that space?

Mike Gomez: [00:17:42] Okay. So I’ve got a pet peeve with SDR, the whole concept of SDR. I think it’s just taking the whole world of sales. It’s already got a bad reputation as it is to be self serving and all about us as opposed to the customer. It’s just it’s just taking it and taking it one step even worse. There’s no doubt in my mind that the audience is listening to this podcast right now has been the recipient of cold emails from people you don’t know who trying to get on your calendar because they want to make a pitch to you. They haven’t bothered to serve you in any capacity. Their email is something you’re going to have to work to delete. They weren’t invited into your email inbox, but they they self invited themselves into it and they gave you work to do to just delete them every time. And this idea of stars where their focus is on volumes. How many emails did you send out? How many cold calls did you make? Not on how, how, how? What was the quality of the engagements that you had with the prospects that we think we can best serve? No, it’s it’s all about quota and all about me and my agenda, the SDR, and not a thing about the customer. And I despise that approach to selling. I believe that if if you are running your business well and this is a message to founders and and business owners and you are clear about the customer demographic that you best can serve with your solution.

Mike Gomez: [00:19:39] Then then you will find a way to be more in the service of that community and engage them in a thoughtful manner, in a useful manner. Then this idea that says, I’m just going to broadcast out to as many people as possible and then see what I what I catch in my net. But look, I’m a professional sales guy. I sold fighter jets to foreign governments. I was taught how to sell. And one of the underlying principles about what I was taught was, are you acting in the service of your customer? Are you helping them? Make a good buying decision. And that philosophy of the service has always stayed with me. Are you acting? Are the tasks and the things that you are doing in the service of your customer and helping them make a good buying decision? And the moment you step away from that and that you’re doing something because you’re trying to meet your company’s quota or your your sales bonus, then you need to stop because your customer doesn’t care about any of that. They’re trying to run their business successfully as they can. And to the extent that you can help them with a solution, that’s awesome.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:10] Well, I don’t think a lot of salespeople look at it that way. Their goal is to sell them something, not really help that prospect find the best solution. Because sometimes the best solution isn’t you.

Mike Gomez: [00:21:23] Yeah, yes. Sometimes it isn’t. And maybe that should be some insight into whether or not that’s the kind of customer you should be communicating with. Right?

Lee Kantor: [00:21:35] Right. Well, that’s why it’s called customer discovery, right?

Mike Gomez: [00:21:38] Yes. And so that’s an insight that says, you know what? After listening to you and understanding the different solutions that help solve your problem, we’re not the right ones. I think you probably should go that direction. But it was a pleasure meeting you and. And learning about your business. Thank you very much. And move your time and attention to a more relevant customer.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:10] Yeah. I mean that in order to do that, you really have to care and not just crank out numbers.

Mike Gomez: [00:22:16] Oh, my goodness. There’s a word that, yes, it’s unfortunately alien in a lot of the sales departments and particularly those with czars. They don’t care. They don’t care about my email box. They don’t care about my day that they may be interrupting with their unsolicited phone call into my cell number or the unsolicited text that I now getting from them. They don’t care. And that shows I mean, as a professional sales person, that just burns my butt anyway.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:52] So. Well, let’s talk about how that transfers to that early stage startup. How do you get these people who who their backgrounds aren’t usually typically in professional selling, they might be technologists. They might be somebody who stumbled on a great solution to a pressing problem. But they don’t understand truly the sales, what sales looks like or what it could look like if it’s done in a more elegant manner. How do you help those people open their mind to a different way of doing something when they’re bombarded with this kind of older? It’s not it’s not even older, but it’s a different, you know, more accepted practice in the startup community.

Mike Gomez: [00:23:35] Yeah, the look, I spent a great deal of time trying to help convince a startup founder to look at the selling. In the same way that they look at accounting. It’s a profession that is learned. It’s a profession that can be that can follow a series of steps. And and sequences and that and that by adhering to specific steps along the sales journey and your serving the customer along that journey, by following those steps, you prevent yourself from falling in the classic excuse that is used to explain away a loss, a sales loss to a competitor or a sales loss to in action. And that excuse is I didn’t know. I didn’t know something about how the decision was going to be made. I didn’t know that, Bob. The CFO had more weighting in this decision than Sally and Operations, and I was focused on John only talking to Sally. I didn’t know Bob how to say. I didn’t talk to Bob. Well, why didn’t you know? Well, because you didn’t have a sales methodology that you were adhering to that made certain that you found this information out. I didn’t know that sustainability was more important than functionality. I didn’t know our software had to be integrated with this. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. It is the number one excuse for why a cell? Loss occurs. And I will argue that a sales methodology rigidly followed prevents you from falling in that trap. That’s how they turn an aerospace engineer me into a very, very effective and successful salesperson because I adhered to a sales process and methodology, and now I teach that.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:03] But you also may be inherently. He had the secret sauce of caring.

Mike Gomez: [00:26:10] Honestly, you know, I never saw myself as becoming a salesperson. I was an engineer. But but one of the things that happened in in the world of Boeing and later in Lockheed was a recognition that simply. Having a pass to flying our airplanes made you a good salesperson. And that wasn’t enough. Well, what we found is that there are a multitude of people that are involved in these making these decisions. And it’s our job is to sales person to understand who those people are and where their mind is. And it’s that sales methodology that I was taught that equipped me with that and now knowledge of what it means to help someone through a sales purchasing decision. Right. I wasn’t I wasn’t born with that. And I wasn’t taught that in school as an engineer. I had to be taught selling. By my company and by like by following a sales methodology. And there are sales methodologies that are out there. Like I said, I teach one, there’s spin selling, there’s, there’s a challenge of sales methodology, there’s the Sandler sales methodology. There are professional sales courses out there. And what founders need to understand that if you are trying to sell a solution, particularly to an A, B to B environment. Then you better be adhering to some sort of sales methodology, or I guarantee you will fall in the classic trap of I didn’t know when you’re suddenly surprised when a customer didn’t buy your product.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:58] So. So Mike, what’s the most rewarding part of your job working with these startups?

Mike Gomez: [00:28:05] Rewarding would be to watch them get through that first awkward startup phase and finding and hearing their story of when they got the first check. That they that they followed my advice. They became so distraught, small in who they went after. And as a result of that, they got their first check. And that I mean, there’s nothing more amazing to see that smile and to see that as a result of that first check. That helped them bridge themselves to the second check and the third, because now they can talk to that customer community and say, yeah, we’ve already sold our solution to this company and this company, and you’re just like them. And these two others have figured out that we are a valuable solution and we’re going to convince you and show you how we are as well for you and then later to see them. And particularly when I come back and see them a couple of years later and I see 25 people now working there. Those are jobs. Those are real jobs. These people are now serving our economy in Atlanta and continuing to grow our employment when there were no jobs in that company before. And that’s that’s pretty, pretty exciting.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:39] Well, congratulations on all the success. And thank you so much for helping this community. If somebody wants to learn more about your practice, your team, what’s the website?

Mike Gomez: [00:29:53] Allegro consultant one word. No. S No. Img after consultant dot com and you can find, I think on my site interviews like this that I’ve done where I talk about a lot of the elements that are necessary to help your company grow. My closing message to founders out there. The rules of business have been around for years. It’s like gravity. You might be able to think you can fight them, but gravity will eventually win. Follow the rules. It’ll serve you well. Leigh, thanks so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:33] Well, Mike, thank you. Thank you so much for what you do. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Mike Gomez: [00:30:39] I am honored to be invited for this podcast and let me know if you need anything more.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:46] You got it. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:30:52] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup showdown pitch competition visit showdown vs that’s showdown dot DC. All right that’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.