The Magic of Thinking Big in Tech Sales

Carter (00:39.558)
Hey Raymond. So give the people a quick intro. Who are you and what do you do now?

Raymond Griffin (00:57.73)
Yeah, thanks Carter. My name is Raymond Griffin. I'm Senior Regional Sales Manager at Numa and I cover everything from Houston to the border and over to the Mississippi State border.

Carter (01:12.03)
You had a lot of success at cars.com, rookie of the year, multiple presidents clubs, multiple MVP awards. Looking back, what do you think separated you from most sales reps early on?

Raymond Griffin (01:25.806)
I would say, you know.

Number one, was extremely lucky. My second cousin, his name is Chris Reno. He is now a director of major accounts at cars.com. So I was fortunate that he was the person who brought me into cars and got me the introduction and got me the shot. another very fortunate just happenstance was he was the person who directed me to take the Midland, Texas territory instead of taking the

Baton Rouge slash New Orleans territory. So I'm from Louisiana. I went to LSU. I was the mascot at LSU Go Tigers. And so the New Orleans Baton Rouge territory made a ton of sense. And he had the, the, the, the wisdom I would say to just say, Hey, don't take that position. Take this other position. Cause it hasn't been worked. You'll do really well and you'll give yourself more opportunity. So he was the first person to tell me that. And when I took that territory,

Carter (02:06.962)
nice.

Raymond Griffin (02:28.36)
I got put on a team, my manager was Lindsay Polarzik and she was phenomenal. I mean, she was just great. I can't say enough good things about Lindsay. She and I are still close today. We still talk regularly and she had a lot of experience and she was going to make sure that I was successful no matter what. mean, ultimately my success leads to hers, but she was a really great mentor, especially early on for me. And we had a really great team as well. mean, once I

made Rookie of the Year and got promoted, I actually took over for one of my teammates. So I had another manager on the team who was able to be there and help me. And you don't know these things as you're kind of going through it, but looking back on it, you're like, wow, I that's such a tremendous gift. And another shout out to Reno was as I was in Midland and I was going for Rookie of the Year, because that was a pretty unique story, he

Carter (03:12.671)
Right.

Raymond Griffin (03:28.08)
I had a lot of success. I was having a lot of success in the month of December and again because of his Experience he was like hey look let me just give you some ideas here Don't you don't want to put all these deals in at the same time? Because what'll end up happening is people will be watching the scoreboard as the end of the year gets closer And then they'll just go to their friends, and they'll just have people sign you know Contracts, and then you'll just kind of get out worked or out kicked at the end if you want to use a track reference It's I was like okay

And so I held on to some of these agreements until later in the process just to have enough steam to kind of get over the edge. without Reno telling me that, I wouldn't have known that because neither Lindsay nor Michelle had made Rookie of the Year. And it's super competitive. There's only one versus all the other markets where you have multiple people in all the other divisions of cars. Yeah.

Carter (04:21.62)
And it's a huge company, right? So yeah, I could see that.

Raymond Griffin (04:24.703)
Yeah, it was a big company. can't speak to it now, but yes, it was a very big company at the time. you had five or six different field divisions. So you had A plus, which is like your large metros, like Houston, Dallas, New York, Chicago metros. Then you had A markets, which would be, you you can think same kind of size, but just a little bit smaller. And then you had B and C and D and Midland Odessa was a D, but you're still competing with all

these other people who are, you know, new reps and all these other markets that are bigger markets. So it was, it was a very challenging experience, I would say. But, you know, in that vein, I would also say that, you know, in December, when I was at, when I was in Midland, I had a really unique experience. It was kind of like a moment of clarity or almost an epiphany where I was doing really well out of the gate, took a monster

cancel, which really set me back a long way. And I was like, at that time in my life, I was still like, man, like this is a sign and this isn't going to go well, or this is the wrong place for me to be or whatever that is. And so, I actually started, I was interviewing for another position with another company. I had not a lot of people know the story, but, I went through a bunch of rounds of, of, interviews with this company, Granger. And if you worked for Granger in Midland, you could make a ton of money because there was a ton of, of

Carter (05:35.903)
Yeah.

Raymond Griffin (05:54.46)
field hands and stuff like that and went through like five rounds thought I had it the LSU people and I had a really good reference didn't get the job and I mean and I remember sitting in my room one night you know in my apartment and I was like what am I gonna do like if I don't win rookie of the year at cars.com I'm gonna be stuck here for forever as ridiculous as that is like this is America you can just get up and move yeah and you can just you can just pick up and move but

Carter (06:18.942)
Right, because you were killing it still, yeah.

Raymond Griffin (06:24.303)
I this thought and it compelled me. is the craziest thing. I've never experienced it any other time in my life. But I literally did a Google search. What is the best, I can't remember what it is now, but it sounded like what is the best book about how to achieve your goals or whatever. And it was this book, it's called The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. And yeah, and it changed my whole life. I read the book in one night. It's not a hard read, but I got

Carter (06:43.605)
Yeah.

Carter (06:47.752)
Okay, yeah.

Raymond Griffin (06:54.223)
so obsessed with this idea of making Rookie of the Year. This is a true story. I just took like printer paper, right? Just your standard letter printer paper. I wrote down every account in the territory, what I wanted the account to end at and finish at, and what I wanted to hit for the year. Okay? And at this time, going into December, I was 33rd on a list of 35. So I was second to last, or 34 out of 35. I was second to last. And I had one month to make all this.

up and

Carter (07:25.128)
Is it just wait for rookie of the year? It's just like by deals closed basically. Okay. Okay.

Raymond Griffin (07:29.739)
Yeah, new revenue, yeah. And so read the whole book. I wrote down every account on a piece of paper. I had it all over my walls. had...

why I'm a the secret. like the power of positive, you know, thinking and those kinds of things. I was watching that I was going to sleep with like money in my hands. was caught. was meditating with money in my hands. Like every single thing was focused toward this one goal and I was so obsessed and you know, that was over the course of the month, but I read the magic thinking big and I put all that stuff on the walls. the next morning I picked up my manager, Lindsay, and she could just, she knew she could just tell some

was different and she's like what what's going on here and I was like I don't know just let's just go because we had a really big meeting that morning and I could tell she was upset and I was like what what's going on it's you know she had a family problem or whatever and I was like hey look we're gonna go to this meeting we're gonna crush this and then you can go home because I got the rest of this and she was like

Carter (08:27.7)
Yeah.

Raymond Griffin (08:35.181)
what has happened here? I don't get this. Cause I was still, I mean, I was only like maybe three or four months in, right? So we go to the meeting and we sit down in this dealer group. said, hey, look, we'll take everything that you have that's co-op eligible, which my monthly quota was 700, 700 bucks in new business. That was the quota. You hit that and you're doing great. And the, it all in all, what they were just asking me for was like $6,000 worth of

Carter (08:41.001)
Right, right, yeah.

Raymond Griffin (09:05.135)
And so we walked out of the room, you know, when she was like...

Okay, something's going on here. What is happening? And I was like, I can't explain it to you, but I'm about to win this whole thing. You just sit back and watch. so I went from 34th to first in one month. And after that, they changed the rules for rookie of the year because of that success. And that has ultimately lent itself to all these other things that I've accomplished in my business career.

Carter (09:36.03)
Wow, so you still are really about the positive thinking, like that went quite a ways.

Raymond Griffin (09:40.045)
100 % I mean I am very big on visuals. I have a vision board in my my in my office I actually have a picture of that vision board on my phone So every time I look at my phone I don't see a picture of where I've been and what I've done or what I want to do I have a picture of all these opportunities and accounts and where my next target or where my next opportunity is

Carter (09:55.552)
Yeah.

Carter (10:02.876)
Okay. Do you, is it like you focus on one goal or there are a lot of things? Like what's the, what's the main secret? Like you're obsessed with the rookie of year thing. It's one thing you really focus on or there's a lot of things going.

Raymond Griffin (10:12.94)
Well, I think, you know, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but you certainly stay focused on the goal and then you work backwards from there, right? So like in the seven habits of highly effective people, begin with the end in mind is one of my favorite in that whole thing because it's true. you, here's the goal.

And then there's a bunch of little activities that you do daily that will actually end up getting you there. It's not, don't focus on the goal. Yes. But it's every single step that it takes in between there and the goal that's going to get you there. The goal is just the goal. I mean, it's like, it's like a wish and a hope like, yeah, I hope I get there. want the goal. Okay. But how are going to get there? I mean, that's, you know, it's the doing that gets you there. It's not the, it's not the hoping and the wishing it's the doing that'll make it happen.

Carter (10:59.77)
So you've moved through several companies in automotive tech between cars.com like we talked about, Tech, Yon, Impel, now Numa. How do you know when it's time to leave a place and go to a new opportunity?

Raymond Griffin (11:10.954)
Yeah, so it's different for different people, I would say.

For me, I did not want to leave cars.com, or Cars Commerce is what it's called now. They gave me my first shot in 2014 in big business, and they were extremely good to me. Alex Vetter, John Clavidacher, Mike Garriua, Lindsey, Michelle, Phil, I had so many great leaders and great people at Cars. I didn't want to leave there, but they acquired a company called Dealer.

Inspire and John Clavidetcher who was our CRO at the time pulled me aside and said hey look man they want you I put you up for the job and you have to take the job.

And I was like, clap, like I just took a promotion into a transition market. Like I can't just take this other job. He's like, no, you have to do it. And the reason is because you're it's obvious you've proven to everybody at every level that you're an expert in digital marketing, but this is software as a service. This is SAS. And by you going over here and doing this for however long, it will change your whole career. And it acts and it did because I went to

dealer inspired and I was doing well there. I mean I had no experience in Google search SEO. I had no experience in any of these things and I was like number four in the country at the time. So I was doing well there but then 10 months later Tekion came calling and you know again I wasn't trying to leave Cars Commerce because they were good to me but at Tekion it was like an opportunity to work on something that was going to disrupt an industry that needed to be disrupted.

Carter (12:51.209)
Yeah.

Raymond Griffin (12:58.926)
And even though I don't work for Tekion any longer, I'm still very passionate about what they do and the disruption that they are working on.

Carter (13:07.036)
Okay, so was a great, a lot of these were just great opportunities and it made a lot of sense to move at that point.

Raymond Griffin (13:10.716)
Yeah, yeah, especially, yeah, especially cars because it was a lot of, look, you

You made Rookie of the Year, you did well at NADA, and we're gonna promote you. And then that was another promotion to DMRC. So then those promotions all happened. Now, where I have left companies is I do think it depends on who you are, who are you, and how much are you willing to tolerate, and then what your situation is. And what I mean by that is, you know, I don't have kids, and I'm not tied down to anything. You know, my girlfriend and I live together.

out to Natalie.

I don't have the responsibilities of like worried about what's going to happen if I leave. How are my kids going to go to private school? How am going to pay for this stuff? I don't have to worry about any of that kind of stuff. Because I don't have to worry about it, I have a very low tolerance of nonsense that I'll accept because I work extremely hard. I will work 14 hour days and that's just kind of a normal day. It doesn't bother me.

Carter (13:57.565)
Right.

Raymond Griffin (14:18.872)
was raised by Barbara Griffin. I'm a country boy. I was raised in Grant Parish, Louisiana. And the only thing that we know is how to work. And so I'll get, I'll do the work. But...

Carter (14:25.907)
Yeah.

Raymond Griffin (14:31.946)
when that work is not met with the same respect that I feel like is necessary, then we have a problem. And I'm not going to give you all this time, and energy. If you're not going to respect me, or if you're not going to listen to me, I'm not going to do that. And then there's some days like there's some, you know, companies who you start out and you, you have the best intentions that you do when they do too. And, you know, and then sometimes those relationships don't work out. mean, I've worked for, for people who are friends of mine and it was like, it's a great fit.

And then obviously it doesn't it it's not a great fit because their day-to-day leadership style may not match up with your you know what you need You know so you you know cars.com has a real our cars commerce has a really good manager training series that's done by Bill Joy and Bill Joy is I Mean he makes it so simple, but you know you you can direct people you can coach them And then you just have to hold them accountable

Carter (15:12.425)
Right.

Raymond Griffin (15:31.742)
And he you know he makes it so simple, but that's just kind of where that is It's like do these things align do I align with you and does your style align with mine? and if it doesn't then maybe it's time to go our separate ways and I put myself in a position to to be able to do that like You know, I'm a big I'm a very I read a lot. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and You know if you're willing to learn

then I think that you're unstoppable. If you can learn and you can put that into practical use, something as simple, you know, I learned this early on in my career, just save $10 a day. If you can't save $10 a day, maybe it's five. If you can't do five, maybe it's two. But just getting in the habit of saving money every single day. And then when it's time to leave somewhere, you're not in a position where you have to stay. You can leave.

Carter (16:22.291)
Right, right.

Raymond Griffin (16:23.689)
Yeah, and I think that's a really big part of it too. I'm not gonna be beholden to someone or some company if I don't feel it's the right fit there.

Carter (16:31.636)
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I, that's how I feel at times too. Yeah. It's good not to be forced into like working paycheck to paycheck. You're forced into saying somewhere you don't want to stay for sure.

Raymond Griffin (16:42.269)
Yeah, yeah. I just think that, you know, it just makes a lot of sense that people just don't do those micro habits. It's just like what we talking about earlier. What is your goal here? What are you trying to do? I want financial independence and I don't want anybody telling me I got to do something.

If I choose to do it, that's one thing. But I don't want to hear you telling me I gotta do it. Now you sign up and you work a job and you actually roll, then that's different. you're not, I'm not gonna be beholden to anybody else's thoughts or impressions about a certain situation. I'm just not gonna do it.

Carter (17:06.894)
Right.

Carter (17:14.912)
So now that you're leading reps, when someone's underperforming, what are the first patterns you notice? And walk me through a coaching session. How does that look at, say, NUMA?

Raymond Griffin (17:24.863)
Yeah, think, you know, so I'm still, I'm still in some sort of an IC role, right? I'm still an individual contributor with some responsibility over reps, but they don't necessarily report in to me. I just help, okay, in this role.

And what will happen because everybody can see the same reporting, Like, Numa's great about transparency and everybody uses the same scoreboard and you'll be able to see it. And the first thing that you see is like, you'll start to see some of their activity or some of their day-to-day stuff will start tapering off. The camera's off for your calls that you're supposed to be on. You know, just those like little bitty kind of nuances that you'll look for and you're just like, man, that's just weird.

usually here on time and he's got his camera on but I ain't seen him with his camera on the last three weeks and he ain't been on time. That's weird and let me just find out what's going on and if you catch it like that that's one thing but there's a part of that meeting people where they are but those are those are small things that I think show up early if you're looking for it and you know who the person is and then I think that the coaching session can be something as simple as what I just said. Hey Carter I've noticed these things over the last

Carter (18:16.244)
Yeah.

Raymond Griffin (18:41.719)
three or four weeks, what's going on? Can you tell me, you're not acting the same? you're usually one of the leaders in activity or you're making your calls or you have a big pipeline, but now you don't. What's going on? Tell me a little bit about what's happening. And you don't know what's going on in people's lives. People are people. They're not a cog in a wheel and they're not a number. They have real life going on behind the scenes and it's important to understand those things too.

Carter (19:09.12)
Yeah. AI is super hot right now. Dealers, I'm sure, are getting hammered with AI pitches from every direction. How do you cut through the noise and get a dealer to listen to you?

Raymond Griffin (19:21.289)
Well, I have to say first that I work for Numa and we have a great product that does a lot to help our dealer partners. So first I have to give all the credit to Tasso, Andy, Joel, Derek, that's our senior executive leadership. They've built a great product and solution. We have some name recognition in the AI space. It's still not too, yeah.

Carter (19:44.96)
Okay, so dealers know when you're talking to them generally.

Raymond Griffin (19:48.82)
Yeah, a little bit. You still have people that are, you know, we're not, we're beyond the early adopters now. Now we're into like the, you know, kind of the average mainstream folks. still, we're, the laggers are still way behind. But so when you walk in, we do sometimes have a little bit of that. I do think there's a couple of ways to go around it or to go about it. I think that you can.

when you're creating urgency or even when you wanna talk to a dealer, what do you know about them and what can you find out before you go talk to them? And then if you can find out what kind of dealer they are, what are their problems, what might their problems be, then you can kind of start to peel back the onion a little bit. So it's something like creating urgency.

I mean, you just kind of got to speak to them on their level and how much can you learn before you get there? I'm really big on preparation. I'm really big on understanding the market that you're working in. You know, I have, we have a dealer in Alexandria, Louisiana, which is, know, it's close to my hometown. was born and raised in a small town called Dry Prong, Louisiana. And, you know, I know those people very well. I know the type of people that they, that they service. And I know what that's like.

in Alexandria, Louisiana is not looked upon very favorably, right? Because that's just like, hey man, I don't even understand that stuff and like you're talking to the wrong team. Well, that's fine. That's fine. But what if I presented it, what if I told you this? What if I told you if you use Numa, you never have to worry about somebody coming in here and saying that an advisor put something on an RO that your customer didn't agree to.

Carter (21:21.663)
Yeah.

Raymond Griffin (21:40.373)
Well, that sounds good because that does happen, right? The socioeconomic situation of a lot of people in Alexandria, Louisiana is that they will try to come in and put you together. It happens every day. And it's now with Numa because we're recording all the inbound calls and all the outbound calls, plus all the messages back and forth.

We have data, have, you can see the data with the dealer where my policy was X before we added Numa and now my policy has gone down by half. I talked to a dealer this morning, we got lucky because he brought in a new service manager also. His policy expense was around $8,000 per month and now it's below 1,000.

because they can, yeah, I mean, that's amazing. Just because you don't have to worry about these people putting you together, even if they try to, hey, Carter, I can understand that you have a complaint. Let's take a look. We've got all these conversations recorded, and then it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Actually, you know what? That was six months ago, and that was somebody else. Okay, that's what I thought. Let's move on. So when you can speak to dealers about the things that are important to them,

Carter (22:27.53)
that's beautiful.

Raymond Griffin (22:54.527)
then that creates urgency and it's like you gotta find the pain and you I know you talked with Ian Grace in an episode recently. Ian Grace is one of those guys man. He does such a phenomenal job of asking questions. It's amazing to watch him talk to people and it doesn't matter if it's in a business setting, a personal or otherwise. He's just really good at asking questions and getting to know what's going on with you, with your business or your problems and then he's just like hammer you with what he's

God that will help you in your problem. He's phenomenal.

Carter (23:28.252)
Interesting. Okay. So a lot of it is beyond being prepared and knowing the ICP extremely well and what they're looking for. It comes down to the quality of questions you're saying is a big part of it.

Raymond Griffin (23:38.193)
Absolutely when you're trying to create urgency because you can't come in here with a blanket kind of presentation what what difference does that make we're talking to people and People different people have different values and different sets of problems and these kinds of things not everybody's problems gonna be the same you a dealership is made up of processes and people

And if you can get the people locked in, that's the biggest one is the people. But if you can lock in the people, the right people, and you get the right processes, then you've got a really good dealership going on. And even with that, there's still gonna be problems and you gotta figure out like.

Maybe Carter's a good operator, maybe he's not. Maybe he's got good people, maybe he doesn't. And if he doesn't, then how is this AI going to help him? Well, with NUMA, you can literally ask the AI questions and it will tell you about how to do your job better. It will tell you what recommendation we're talking about. It'll tell you what objections you might run into when you present this to a customer. It will tell you how long these services are going to take if the customer says that they want to do those services. So the AI...

will allow you to hire people that maybe don't have experience in the dealership, but maybe they have high quality and they're a good character and they can sell. Well, fine, I'll tell you, I'll give you the word track. I just need you and I need to know I can trust you and that you're good with customers. And so it just depends on what the problems are and who they are.

Carter (24:58.816)
Hmm.

Carter (25:05.418)
for someone listening who wants to hit President's Club, wants to be a top producer, what would you tell them? Do you have any final words of advice or things they should start doing now if they want to hit that?

Raymond Griffin (25:17.172)
Yeah, I do actually. I would say how badly do you want it? A lot of people say they want this and they want that and I want the... How bad do you want it? Because if you want it bad enough...

you will go get it. You'll make the question or you'll answer the or you ask the questions. You'll get the answers. You'll understand the business. You know, I've worked in a lot of different areas of automotive. The one thing that's been super helpful to me is, you know, not only working on myself, but also working on my knowledge of the business. And I've gotten books about, know, Joe Castellino was one of the first people I met when I was at Tekion. He gave me this book about service by Terry Carlisle. It's like the

modern dealership service center, whatever it's called. but the book was expensive. It was like a hundred dollar used book. Like, and I, I'm like, I don't know anything about service. And he was like, look, I'm not going to give you my, my copy because it's a lot of money, but go buy this book and it will make a lot more sense to you quickly. I bought the book. I read it in one day, super easy read. And he was right. It just, you know, I just catapulted and what I knew about the service business and the information's out there and you got people around you that know it.

you just have to be willing to go get it. Nobody's gonna bring it to you. It's not gonna be easy, but it's there for you if you really want it. You know, like one of my favorite commercials, I'm a big time basketball fan, is by Kobe Bryant. I don't even know what year it was made, but the saying in the commercial is, if you really want it, live your dreams.

And I just think that there's so much power behind that because if you really want it, you will push past pain. He actually says that in the commercial. You feed everything to your fire because it'll, some things are going to make you mad. Some things are going to make you proud and you got to take all that information and all that pride and all that anger and put it into one ball of fire and just go forward no matter what. Don't let people take you away from the goal. Just go get it and, and just be curious. think that'll take you a long way.

Carter (27:28.096)
That's a really good message. I'm fired up now.

Raymond Griffin (27:31.144)
Yeah, man, it's I mean, this is what I I've been living this for a long time.

You know every day you got a lot of people that wake up and they waste a lot of time in my personal view There's a lot of wasted time I don't have time to waste time like I work a lot of hours and I don't want to waste the time that I do have So like when I go to the gym, I don't listen to trash like I listen to positive Motivational videos in the morning that gets me going I'm working out in the morning that gets my brain going that gets me fired up and then like look when people wake up and they get to work I've already completed half of a day's work because

Carter (27:41.194)
For sure.

Raymond Griffin (28:05.778)
I woke up at four. I wake up at four, do some work, go to the gym, come back, do some work. I've already done half of what everybody else will do in one day simply because I want it and I'm not stopping until I get it.

Carter (28:18.11)
Yeah, nobody's probably bothering you at 4 a.m. either. Like that's, yeah.

Raymond Griffin (28:20.808)
No, they don't even want to wake up. They don't even want to show up. That's half the battle.

Carter (28:26.497)
Cool, well I think we got some good stuff here, I'll end it here.