Joe English Helps the Two Tall Guys Understand How to Build Profitable Growth with Better Sales Management and Sales Processes
Joe English of 360 Consulting DFW joins Kevin Lawson and Sean O'Shaughnessy to discuss how companies can achieve profitable, scalable growth through a four-pillar framework: go-to-market strategy, people, process, and execution. The conversation emphasizes that sales success is a systems problem, not just a talent problem, and highlights common messaging misalignments that quietly stall growth. Joe also shares his three-phase consulting approach and the central role of change management in transforming sales organizations.
Summary
In this episode of Two Tall Guys Talking Sales, guest Joe English, founder of 360 Consulting DFW, presents his structured philosophy for helping companies achieve profitable growth. He opens by challenging the common assumption that sales success depends primarily on having gregarious, high-energy personalities, arguing instead that growth requires a disciplined system built around four foundational pillars: go-to-market strategy, people, process, and execution. He describes execution as the 'straw that stirs the drink,' the element that ties the first three pillars together into a self-reinforcing flywheel effect.
Joe outlines 360 Consulting's three-phase approach to client engagements. Phase one involves embedding as advisors to validate and sometimes reprioritize the challenges a client believes they are facing. Phase two involves a series of workshops centered on three core deliverables: defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), clarifying value propositions around the specific problems the business uniquely solves, and documenting the existing sales process to identify gaps and inconsistencies. He stresses that value proposition work is not about marketing collateral but about enabling authentic, customer-relevant conversations rather than pitching.
Sean raises a compelling observation about companies that misidentify what they are actually selling, noting that customers sometimes use a product for reasons entirely different from how the company describes it. Joe validates this observation, particularly in technology sectors like MSPs, where businesses often try to be 'all things to everyone.' He argues that companies should first identify and double down on their clearest competitive strengths before expanding their offering.
The conversation then shifts to change management, which Joe identifies as the single biggest challenge in any organizational transformation. He discusses using Predictive Index assessments to understand individual personalities and place people in roles suited to their strengths. He draws a parallel to CRM adoption, arguing that resistance dissolves when salespeople understand how the tool makes them personally more effective rather than just serving management reporting needs. Joe also shares that his personal benchmark for success in corporate life was the number of salespeople he helped earn President's Club recognition, not his own revenue generation — a reflection of a coach-first leadership philosophy.
Finally, Kevin and Joe discuss whether sales teams are typically the strongest functional team in their client organizations. Joe argues this is highly dependent on the founder's background: operations-founded companies usually have strong ops and underdeveloped sales, while those led by someone with a sales background tend to have more mature revenue functions. In most cases, structured sales organizations with dedicated roles are absent, and sales is often a shared or informal responsibility.
Key Insights
- Joe English argues that sales failure is most often a system problem, not a talent problem, and that companies need a repeatable, documented process that people can plug into rather than relying on hero-dependent rainmakers.
- English claims that many companies are actively misaligned in their messaging — describing their product in terms that do not reflect the actual reasons customers buy — and that this messaging gap is a primary, often unrecognized, reason growth stalls.
- Joe contends that change management is the hardest part of any sales transformation, and that resistance to tools like CRM diminishes when individuals are shown how the change benefits them personally rather than simply serving organizational data needs.
- English asserts that whether a company's sales team is its strongest functional unit depends almost entirely on the founder's background — operations-founded businesses typically have underdeveloped, informal sales functions while leaders with sales backgrounds tend to have more structured revenue organizations.
- Joe measures his own professional success not by personal revenue generated but by the number of salespeople he helped reach President's Club, framing effective sales management as a coaching function whose output is other people's success rather than individual achievement.
Topics
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