The CEO as Chief Salesman
Interviewed by Erica Friedman

Interview with Joel Block, Interim CEO, CFO		 Date Interview: 07/23/2009
Date of Credentialing:
Credential expiration:
 

You started an advisory firm specializing in sales and revenue generation. How did you come to doing interim assignments?

In the mid ‘80s I formed a small real estate firm which later became a syndication firm with a property management division. Over a 3 year period, we acquired 8 different deals and raised about $4 million in equity to control $20 million in assets. Our property management firm controlled another $100 million under fee based contracts. We were consistently returning about 18% annually to our investors.

And then?

I fell into a technology deal and succeeded in raising $10 million for a company that invented the concept of delivering stock quotes by fax to investors. I went out on the road selling our subscription service. I got one of the big Wall Street firms to buy the marketing rights for the entire US and they wrote a check big enough to return all of the cash to the investors. I continued to travel and I succeeded in getting 35 of the nation’s biggest newspapers and radio stations involved in this project. Ultimately I sold the business in 1995 to the Los Angeles Times.

I believe that entrepreneurial success involves significant buy-in from the team. There is no CEO or interim executive that can do anything by himself.

That’s a home run. Was that when your interim work started?

Yes. I was called in to run an electronic publishing firm in Texas that had a broken business model but a cool product that covered the Dallas Cowboys. We took a company that was drowning and made it the most prolific publisher of electronically distributed sports content in the country. I sold my interest in that business in 1998 and went on to deal with a variety of other interim assignments. I worked on electronic media companies in 2000 and in 2001 I opened the advisory firm.

How does a VC guy get into marketing?

Even though I am trained as a CPA, and I come from the world of finance, I really am much more of a marketer and seller. I am unlike most interim guys who are strong operators. To me, the CEO is the company’s chief salesman. I run companies from the perspective of bringing in dollars.


 

 

The CEO as Chief Salesman -- Joel Block, Interim CEO, CFO

Joel Block is a speaker, writer, and former advisor to entrepreneurs once featured in The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Investor's Business Daily. In his current business, Growth-Logic, Block teaches entrepreneurs and business leaders how to be successful.

Any more home runs?

I built a start-up that ended up being sold to a Fortune 500 company. I have been successful in making the first sale in a number of early-stage companies. And to me, a “first sale” is one that puts the company profitably on the map. In one example the first sale was so big that it took 20 people to implement the project. In the Dallas Cowboy’s project, I landed a single account that was big enough to put the entire company to work for a couple of years.

Those are extraordinary.

And for a pre-revenue construction company with a cool invention, I made a first sale that was the largest single first purchase that our multi-billion dollar customer had ever made. This transaction gave the company’s workforce 4 months of solid work. I also secured a $500,000 line of credit so that the company could produce and deliver on the sale that I made.

Describe your ideal interim assignment.

I empower other people and I ask for advice from the leadership of the company on the skill sets of the people that are already in place. I need complimentary skills to mine. I have such a strong sales and marketing background that I look for other people that have strong operating skills. If a company is totally operationally broken, that would not be a place for me. But if a company is operationally satisfactory where I could energize the people to do better – because they really were leaving a lot of dollars on the table in terms of sales and marketing muscle; that would be an engagement for me.

 

 

Is it true that you have 14,000 contacts on LinkedIn?

I am a social media maniac. But it works – in ways that few people really understand. Because I have so much depth on my personal rolodex, and so many social media connections, I can move into multiple industries very easily and get to anybody I need rapidly.

In my experience, nine times out of ten, the company’s compensation and motivation structure is broken. And if you don’t have the right compensation structure you’ll never get buy-in from the employees.

What makes you passionate about entrepreneurship?

I want to empower people, I want to train people and I want people to embrace the same entrepreneurial success that I have achieved. In my experience, nine times out of ten, the company’s compensation and motivational structure is broken. If you don’t have the right compensation structure you’ll never get buy-in from the employees. If you don’t get the team excited about the company and if they are not compensated for the success of the company, it is going to be very difficult to get them to buy in. Every company, big and small, can achieve buy-in and excitement from the team.

Is it always about building teams?

Yes. I believe that entrepreneurial success involves significant buy-in from the team. There is no CEO or interim executive that can do anything by himself. Our job is to put the vision out their and provide the skills and tools for the team to make it happen.

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