In Part 2 of this conversation on Selling the Cloud, Glenn Poulos dives deep into what it really takes to scale a distribution business from startup to successful exit. From growing Gap Wireless from 1 million dollars in revenue to 84 million over 15 years, Glenn shares the strategic decisions, mindset shifts, and leadership disciplines that enabled sustainable growth in the telecom technology sector.

Glenn unpacks the importance of franchise vendor relationships, why brand positioning determines sales velocity, and how to structure an organization with the right people in the right seats. He also tackles one of the most critical dynamics in distribution: building trust with manufacturers while managing the real risk of going direct.

The episode closes with a practical and grounded perspective on AI in sales. Glenn explains how to use AI as a powerful assistant across departments without sacrificing the human connection that ultimately closes enterprise deals. Plus, stay for the rapid fire segment where he shares hard lessons from selling his first company, advice for his 21 year old self, and the sales habits he still practices today.

What You’ll Learn:

• Scaling from Startup to Exit: The key inflection points that helped grow Gap Wireless from 1 million to 84 million in revenue.
• Brand Strategy in Distribution: Why representing top tier brands is essential for competitive sales positioning.
• Right People, Right Seats: How organizational structure and disciplined hiring drive long term growth.
• Manufacturer Trust Dynamics: Navigating co-selling, exclusivity, and the risk of vendors going direct.
• AI as an Assistant, Not a Replacement: How to use AI for research, prep, legal review, and financial insights without losing the human edge.
• Sales Discipline That Compounds: Daily habits that create visibility, opportunity, and long term career growth.

Key Topics:

• Franchise distribution models in telecom and technology
• Relationship first selling in enterprise B2B
• Organizational design and leadership evolution
• Managing vendor partnerships and channel conflict
• AI in sales operations, finance, marketing, and legal
• Career defining mistakes and lessons learned

Guest Spotlight: Glenn Poulos

Glenn Poulos is a sales expert, author, and serial entrepreneur with over 40 years of experience in complex B2B selling. He co-founded Gap Wireless and scaled it into a multi million dollar distribution company before its acquisition. Today, Glenn leads ProgUSA and is widely recognized for his thought leadership on sales growth, leadership, and the practical application of AI in business.

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Mark (00:31)

So let's move to topic three, scaling a distribution business from startup to exit in the telecom technology sectors, as a whole. So let's talk a little bit about your journey building Gap Wireless. You co-founded it in 2007, hit a million dollars in revenue that first year.

Glenn Poulos (00:33)

Okay.

Sure.

Mark (00:51)

and I believe it was 15 years later, sold to 10 WS. What were the major inflection points or really what were the decisions that enabled you to scale in the way that you scaled?

Glenn Poulos (01:02)

So numerous things. at the end, we were 1 million in the first year when we sold it to NWS and we did 84 million in revenue. So over the 15 year period, we grew from 1 to 84 million. And again, we were a small company, right? So I mean, was, you know, and at the, when we exited, there were 44 people.

Right. So it was pretty good, pretty good growth. Right. So, in a distribution company or in many, I've been into the distribution my whole life. So really can't comment much on any other kind of company because I've never really experienced them. Right. But, it's the first thing is always focusing on the relationships before the transactions. Right. So that no need to really beat that to death.

the people piece is very important. The relationships with the, the customers, the employees and the suppliers is critical, right? when you're a distributor, the key is having the key, the killer brands under your moniker, right? Like you need access, franchise to access.

to the key brands, right? And the kind of world that we were in ⁓ and I've been in is one where it's kind of a, we'll call it monogamy based franchise relationship. Meaning I wasn't, I'm not the Rexel or Ingram Micro that has every brand and I'm a trillion dollar corporation, right? That's not what we are, right? We're a multimillion dollar company. And so, the screws, we would only represent this screw company.

Right. There were other competitors, but our goal and our job was to get a franchise relationship with ABC screw and sell their screws and their screws only no competitive. Right. And so we would build the market for them. We were approached that company. They were maybe in Italy. They make the best screws in Italy. And we'd say we want an exclusive franchise relationship.

with you guys in Canada, the US, North America, Central America, wherever it was we were selling, wherever the territory was available. And so you get that, you wanna build that relationship with the vendor early and that's the most important thing really because you wanna be having the best brands to present to the customers. Then it shifts and the customer becomes the most important, right? But if you, let's say you have the customers but you have the D, E and F brand.

it's game over, right? Like I won't even, I challenge people, sales guys and gals that when they get a job, spend a few months and figure out where you are in the pecking order of the world of your market, right? Are you guys the number three, the number four, the number five, the number two, the number one? If you're below number two, I say quit and get a better job at a better company because you can't, you can't replace today, right? Once today's gone, it's gone. And so if you're trying to promote brands that are well down the stack of

what people want to buy and what have you, you waste too much time selling the company and not enough time selling the solution and the product, right? So you want to have those vendor relationships. and so ⁓ some of the other things about about building the business, you know, is learning how to step back and put the right people in the right seats, right? So ⁓ structure first, people second.

And everything has a process, right? So what do I need in order to be successful? And then do I have the right people in my organization to occupy those seats? And if not, I find the right person and put them in the right seat. I don't say, hey, our finance things are growing. We got more challenges in finance and we've got,

Jack and Sally and you know Sally's been here longer and she's doing a good job and whatever let's give it to Sally. No it's like I need a director of finance now or I need a CFO what are the rules for the CFO? Does Sally or Jack have possessed that? Anyone else in the company? No I have to recruit out of the company.

And I'm sorry, don't, it's nothing personal, right? You got to the right person in the right seat. And so, and that allows the founder to step back a bit and focus on the higher level visionary type functions of the running the company, right? And guiding the direction, knowing that the different, the different roles are well covered, right?

so I'll just take a quick breath and see if there are any specific questions about that or

KK Anderson (04:48)

It's so,

it's fascinating and so interesting. we do a lot of, and I do a lot of work with distribution companies and with manufacturers alike. And so one of the things that comes up a lot is trust, right? Distributors worry about manufacturers going direct. Manufacturers worry about losing control of the customer experience and conversation and getting to talk about their product. So from your perspective as the distributor.

what actually builds that trust with the manufacturers? And is that, from your perspective as well, difficult to be able to trust the manufacturers with your pipeline, with your customer base, going, know, co-selling, if you will?

Glenn Poulos (05:28)

so yeah, that is like the key of it all. Like, I mean, that's really like, that's like a like a masterclass what you're just asking there, right? Like, you can go in so many different directions. But but ⁓ and I hear you so well what you're what you're asking me the the

you have to be a little bit paranoid. You have to be pragmatic, and, sometimes you just have to, you you just have to let it be what it's going to be and accept it and, sometimes move on. Right. In the sense that, the company I'm in now, it's not a huge company. we have 11 franchise relationships. And so I have to balance the needs, wants and concerns of those companies, but some are bigger than others. Yeah. My main brand and what have you. And yeah, I

I if I get them to a certain point, they might go direct, right? So it's a bit of a balanced mediocrity, right? If you grow them to a certain value, it's cheaper for them to open an office in that country and put in direct salespeople. But the thing is, it'll happen, right? And so you always want to be using that brand to leverage new brands coming on board.

in the possibility that you might lose it. Because you can't defend against an inevitability, right? And so I sort of like trust.

KK Anderson (06:36)

to you before

where lost like a manufacturer's gun direct

Glenn Poulos (06:40)

Yeah, so essentially we sort of, unless they're a company that's pure distribution focused, ⁓ where they only sell through distribution, it's just about doing a good job and stuff. But if when it's a difference between going direct and distribution, if they might go direct, then if they hit 5 million, you can, you can basically count your days until they go direct.

because mathematically it's cheaper to go to rec at 5 million. So if you can get them from one to 5 million, you're kind of in the sweet spot making lots of money. They got a lot of ifs and buts about whether they will or won't go to rec, but above that, it starts to get risky, right? In terms of...

like sharing the information and what have you, I believe in, like I call it humble bragging early and, and always. Right. And so I like, for instance, with my guys, they'll, they'll call me and they'll say, Hey, I'm just on the way home from, you know, XYZ. And they're looking at a new, discombobulator 50 grand, like blah, blah, blah. I go, that's amazing. Did you tell the vendor?

Right. And they're like, no, I said, you should have called the vendor and told them. And I said, you got a humble brag, right? and, what I mean by humble bragging is like, you don't want to do it in a, in a way that's like negative in, in any kind of capacity. You want to say, you know, Jack, my God, I just had an amazing call. I just had to share it with you. We're in an XYZ. They're looking at a discombobulator. They might need two of them. It's 50, a hundred K. my God. I might need your help with the demo, And so what's the vendor doing? He's thinking, ⁓

Mark (07:37)

Thank

Glenn Poulos (08:03)

Bob's in at XYZ, Bob's got two discombobulators on the go. That's a hundred grand. I could really use that towards my quota. What can I do to help Bob get the deal? And also what's happens is, that Sally from the competitor who maybe there's two distributors, right, calls and says, I got wind that there's like a week later calls. got wind that XYZ might be looking for some discombobulators. Nope. That's covered by, by Glenn's company or whatever, right? Stay away.

And they, because that's what just manufacturers often do. They divide up the landscape, right? It's like, nope, we've already, we're already working with someone there back off, right? And, and so I believe in being very liberal in my new company here, small as we are, my ERP system, I had custom programming done so all my vendors can log in and look at the funnel and see only their

funnel items, obviously they can't see my other vendors, but, and, they can see most of it, but not all of the records, right? Like the internal chatter box notes they can't see, but there's a more generic note section. can, they can see probabilities, dates, products, who's involved in center, et cetera. Right. and so I'm not sure I directly answered your question, but I mean, Oh, okay.

KK Anderson (09:08)

For good, you absolutely did.

You did, thank you.

Mark (09:11)

Beautiful.

All right, well, let's move to our final topic. you know, this is a popular one or maybe popular is not the right word. It's it's just out there everywhere we look. AI and technology and sales. how do you use tools without losing that human connection that you've shared within your book and within a lot of the work you do online? What's what's great about what you've achieved in the

social media world and the media world. you're a LinkedIn top voice. your focus and a lot of what you do today, you describe yourself as an AI and sales growth expert. But after spending 40 years building relationships, mostly face to face and mostly over the phone, how are you thinking about AI's role in sales with all this new capability we all have?

Glenn Poulos (09:58)

Okay, so my, and of course this is my opinion, right? Obviously. And, and so some people might argue or they touted it for different, there's so many things on social media now about using AI and I'm like, yeah, no, no, I don't think so. But, so I, I think of AI and I want to use AI to remove friction and, not replace the connection. Right. And so I treat it like a strong assistant in every department.

Right? Finance, marketing, operations, sales, legal. And so it can help you with research, with prep, with summaries, with drafts, with ideas. Right. And but not to replace it. Like, for instance, I know I didn't try this, but I mean, we have.

you know, we, in my organization, have like BDRs and they're actually in the Philippines and they phone customers and they try to get new names onto our list. And do you use the stuff that prod sells? Right? Yes or no, blah, blah, whatever. Then they pass our insight guys who try to massage it any opportunities that it goes to the outside people. Right? There's literally no way that could be done by AI because maybe in a few years it might be able to, but,

But not right now because I mean the stuff we're selling is to like super geeky guys that drive pickup trucks and climb towers with 500 kilovolts on it and it's just too There's no way you can have a meaningful conversation. It's very very specific, right? So It can assist you but it can't replace right? We like we don't get appointment setting or anything like that. So

It's like building a deck, right? You can screw the screws into the deck with your, with a hand by a screwdriver, you can get a power drill, right? I mean, you're still building the deck. It's still your design and whatever the other area, for instance, you want to do some social media posts, right? And it's like, okay, well, you know, this, this week's topic is on this or this month's topic is on that. I mean, if I say to myself, Glenn, give me 30 ideas that I can talk about this month on sales growth, right? Or on funnel management.

I mean, I could come up with two. If I need to come up with 30, I would take a month, right? But AI can give me the 30 in a few seconds, right? And you could even say, write all 30 posts for me. And I mean, people would all unfollow me if I just posted those. You have to then humanize it, right? And you have to socialize it. And so the research and prep part is amazing.

But also the other areas like any new contracts we drop into a legal element and it looks at all the points, insurance and terms and termination and liability and it says, look at this point, look at this point, this point's one way, it's not a two way clause, et cetera. And I mean, I don't really wanna read 80 page documents ⁓ and so it helps with that.

And so, and also I'm not a strong financial accounting guy, right? Like, mean, I'm generic knowledge, but I'm not a CFO. And so you can put your financials for this year and last year and your cashflow state and everything. And you can say, can you give me some advice on, and it comes up with amazing insights into that, that you'd have to hire a $250,000 CFO.

To give you right and nor do you need them full-time? But you can still get the value right and so so it's an amazing assistant and And that's the way we're using it and that's and we've gotten incredible ⁓ Incredible value out of it, right and so Yeah

KK Anderson (13:12)

love that analogy. it's Mark and I talk often about how it's almost like sales is in a giant pendulum swing, right? It's, you know, we've always heard people buy from people they trust, right? Over the last, 10, 15 years, the AI sales tech world has exploded. have every kind of engagement platform, CRM, MarCom.

Glenn Poulos (13:24)

Yeah.

KK Anderson (13:34)

every kind of tech you could possibly want to support sales and marketing. And it almost got to a point where everything was so automated and so robotic that, you know, we lost the humanness, right? And now here we are on the other, we've swung all the way back thanks to AI. And, you know, it's like AI can speed things up, but trust still closes deals. And so, you know,

Glenn Poulos (13:46)

Yeah.

Yeah.

KK Anderson (13:56)

I love this analogy, this idea that AI should be your assistant because what must always stay human is the connection. I've quoted him before, but Rory Baden who runs Brand Builders Group, he always says that your humanness is now your greatest uniqueness. That's awesome. Yeah.

Glenn Poulos (14:00)

Yeah.

That's awesome. awesome.

Yeah. The, saw an interesting spec this morning where.

And it really resonated with me is that YouTube now is spending the most of its time filtering out all the AI clips because, and, and I'm like, really? And then it went on to say like, you're probably still seeing a ton of them, but you have no idea how many they're filtering out of the babies in danger. You know what I mean? And all the baby dancing and, and the, there is obviously the AI stuff, right? Or like people lying with tigers and bears and things, and it's all AI generated and it's just polluting YouTube.

to the point where they're seeing some of their core user base like log off because there's no longer, there's no longer a value. It's just like, this is all AI. I'm not getting anything from it. It's not even real. Like I don't want to be a part of it. Right. So YouTube's like, uh, addressing that as much as they can, but you, individual can use AI to create an amazing content that isn't babies dancing on gorillas or whatever,

you know, and get a lot of value out of it, right? But it has to be human. Yeah. Yeah.

KK Anderson (15:12)

and you make it human, you make it human and it's super powerful.

I couldn't agree more.

Glenn Poulos (15:18)

Yeah.

Mark (15:20)

All right,

well, we're coming towards the end here and we're moving to the area that KK and I love the most. And that's some of the rapid fire questions that we do with every guest. They're all almost always the same or very close to the others. So first one, what was the first product or service you have ever sold?

Glenn Poulos (15:23)

Okay.

So the first product that I sold was probably when I was nine, I got a job at my parents' motel. We lived in a motel. Our house was attached to the motel. And I sold rooms to strangers coming in off the street that needed a place to sleep. my second job as a teenager was I worked in a jewelry store selling jewelry and stuff like that.

KK Anderson (15:59)

Natural born salesman,

Glenn Poulos (16:00)

so.

Mark (16:00)

and what Glenn, that brings me and makes me think of the show Schitt's Creek. So if you haven't seen that.

Glenn Poulos (16:06)

So yeah, exactly the motel was exactly like Schitt's Creek, except our

motel, our house was at the end, not in the middle. ⁓ but that's, that's where we, that was my life growing up, was living at Schitt's Creek. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark (16:17)

That's fun. That's fun.

KK Anderson (16:19)

That is awesome. Okay,

what is the biggest mistake you've made in your career and what did you learn from it?

Glenn Poulos (16:25)

So, well, the biggest mistake I made in my career was I sold my first company on an all stock deal. And before the stock, before I had a chance to sell the stock as an insider, the company went bankrupt and I lost millions of dollars and gave them my company for free. So I realized that when you sell your business, you need a mostly cash deal. So.

KK Anderson (16:46)

it's hard to hear that.

Glenn Poulos (16:46)

Yeah. So that

was why I started Gap Wireless because I sold my first company for quite a bit of money and we had three partners, but we only took stock and the company ended up having a lot of problems that we didn't realize or investigate, I guess. And they went bankrupt before we had a chance to sell our shares and we ended up broke basically. yeah, horrible story. ⁓

Mark (17:05)

Yeah, but I'm

KK Anderson (17:06)

like you redeemed

Mark (17:06)

sure it was the baseline of all your success afterwards. So cool. Best piece of advice you have ever received from a mentor or a business partner?

KK Anderson (17:06)

yourself.

Glenn Poulos (17:17)

I guess, you got to learn the skills you want to learn how to follow up, ⁓ you know, you want to do research and rapport and whatever ⁓ the tools evolve over time. ⁓ But the base skills stay the same. You need to be good at the basics, right? it's

Mark (17:32)

Yeah, you know that

that really resonates with me. I kind of remind people of that and remind myself of that. Maybe too much, but it's I mean the basics really drive everything else from there.

Okay, I can't take this one from KK because it's our favorite one. Yeah.

KK Anderson (17:45)

I know, it's my favorite question. You've tried to take it from me, Mark. I'm getting in there. Glenn,

Glenn Poulos (17:50)

Okay.

KK Anderson (17:54)

advice you would give your 21-year-old self.

Glenn Poulos (17:56)

so the advice I would give my 21 year old self is that my favorite saying is you only get forever to make another impression, right? And my 21 year old self would say, no, mom said, you got to make a good first impression. And I'm like, yeah, that's right. Me. But every impression in your career needs to be treated as a first impression because imagine you're sitting beside your adversary at work.

Mark (18:15)

Mm-hmm.

Glenn Poulos (18:19)

sales territory and a growing expanding company, that's growing rapidly and people are moving up the ladder, right? You're sitting amongst your, your cohort of peers and the boss walks in and he sees you on Facebook, alt tabbing over to the CRM when he walks by and Sally's beside you and she's on the phone cranking out deals, right? A week later,

CEO walks by quietly again notices you're on Instagram you look over you see me all tab into the CRM, right Sally's bringing the bell book in another order. Who do you think is? He's moving to senior sales rep, right and so Next thing is they send you to the trade shows, your feet are sore. You're whining It's kind of slow, you sneak away from the booth for a few hours. Nobody'll notice there's enough people there blah blah blah

what you need to be doing is going into the aisle, pulling people into your booth so the boss can see it. When the, when it's slow, you want to be talking to the executives that are at the show with you, figure out, Hey, what makes, what are the five things I need to know about your product? Why are you here? What's so great about your stuff? What, how do I, how do I dominate and kill it? Right. And always be, always be making a good, first impression because that every impression is an impression and it's there,

And so, and, and that's how you go from being a tow motor driver in the warehouse to being the CEO 40 years later. And there's many examples that we see all the time in the news and whatever of people that started in the warehouse and ended as the CEO of a major fortune 500 company or huge company, right?

Mark (19:44)

Yeah, very cool. All right, let's final finalize with our last question here. And what's that one sales habit or practice that you do every day or week without fail?

Glenn Poulos (19:50)

Sure.

well, one of the ones would be, yeah, never fax the facts and never ship the shit. Right. And so if somebody asks me for something, and of course I made this up in the eighties, right. And so now I have to argue with all the other people like, well, don't think it's a fax machine. Yeah. So I'm like, well, whatever email doesn't rhyme with facts. Right. And so, but when someone calls me up and looks for something,

KK Anderson (20:11)

What the fax with you?

Mark (20:13)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Glenn Poulos (20:21)

I try to turn that into an opportunity to go visit them. Now, of course, I'm the president, I'm in the head office and I, United States is a big place or whatever, but it's, but generally speaking, it's a philosophy, right? Like if, if they're within driving distance and the guy from Duke energy asked me for something, I'm saying, you know what, I'm actually going by Duke and in a couple of days, can I drop it off?

And so I never fax the facts and they say, we need a demo. Can you ship it in? I go, no, no, we're not allowed company policy. We have to deliver all demos. You have to set them up, plug them in and make sure you can push the buttons. Then we'll leave it with you. Right. And so, because what ends up happening is, is that you ship those demos. And oftentimes when you go to pick them up or they ship them back, your, your packing tape wasn't even opened. Right. And so never fax the facts and never ship the shit.

Yeah.

Mark (21:09)

Great.

Well, Glenn, this was a pleasure and thanks so much for taking the time with us. Thank you again for joining. Thank you, KK, for being my co-host and thank you to our incredible audience for being here every week like you are. All the best.

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