Inside Clay's Sales Playbook | Becca Lindquist

Becca Lindquist 0:00 How do you read a LinkedIn profile?

Harry Stebbings 0:02 Oh, wow.

Becca Lindquist 0:02 Which pulled up people's LinkedIns. We pulled up yours. It was actually really weird. We're like, "Don't hire this guy." No, I'm kidding.

Harry Stebbings 0:07 [laughs] Today, we have Becca Lindquist, head of sales at Clay, one of the fastest growing companies to scale to $100 million in ARR.

Becca Lindquist 0:14 Our quota to OT ratio is, like, seven and a half. It should be heavily weighted towards over performance. If I'm giving you a big quota and you're hitting 110% of that, I want you to be making good money.

Harry Stebbings 0:24 This was an exceptional deep dive that goes very granular into how to scale a sales org.

Becca Lindquist 0:29 When you have 60% of people over 100%, 80% over 80%, I think is best. You're building a winning culture. People are successful.

Harry Stebbings 0:36 Get your pen and paper out. You'll be taking a lot of notes in this one.

Becca Lindquist 0:39 Hire two at a time because you hire one, you're like, "Is it good? Is it not good? I don't know." You hire two, it's pretty clear. Outbound will never be dead.

Harry Stebbings 0:47 Ready to go? [upbeat music] Becca, it is so good to have you on the show. It's so nice to do it in person. I went for a walk around Hyde Park with Varun and he said so many wonderful things. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Becca Lindquist 1:08 Thanks for having

Becca Lindquist 1:09 me. It's fun.

Harry Stebbings 1:09 Now, I think a lot of sales leaders and salespeople are looking at themselves, they're going, "Am I in the right place?" You're in a SaaS company, and you're like, "That's not an AI company," and you're seeing-

Becca Lindquist 1:19 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:19 ... a load of friends make a lot of money at AI companies. How should people actually think about the decision of should I leave my SaaS company and join a hot AI company, or should I actually just stay?

Becca Lindquist 1:30 So I have a lot of these types of conversations, both with, like, peers and, and with, uh, folks that are, uh, having this, like, kind of evaluation, and I think there's, there's two ways to approach it, right? A lot of folks that I talk to are at software companies. They've been there for, like, four years, five years. The learning curve is kind of flattened out, and, like, the, the phrase that I use to describe how they might feel is like, "Hey, do you feel like you're kind of, like, rotting?" Right? Like, you're, you're not, you're not learning a ton more. The, the, the learning curve is flattened for you. You're not in an AI space, which, like, I think is, like, the next, uh, the next phase of things to learn. And actually, almost every time they're like, "Yeah, that's exactly how I feel." And I'm like, "Okay, let's, let's fix that then," because that, it... Once you stop learning, like, you actually as, as a person, I think, start to settle, and then it's just a, um, like, a process of settling all the way down to the bottom.

Harry Stebbings 2:26 So what do you do when you feel, as a sales rep or leader-

Becca Lindquist 2:29 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 2:30 ... that you are rotting? What, what do you do then?

Becca Lindquist 2:32 You gotta go f- You gotta go find something else, right?

Harry Stebbings 2:34 You can't reinvigorate it?

Becca Lindquist 2:36 I mean, maybe you can move, maybe you can move into, like, a different role or, like, a different sub-sector of the company. But usually, like, if you've been there for four or five years, the company's pretty big. There's a lot of structure. There's a lot of process. Like, there's, there's not much more for you to, like, innovate meaningfully. I mean, maybe you could, um, I don't know, maybe you could go run the company's, like, VC fund or something, right?

Harry Stebbings 2:59 [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 2:59 Like, but, but, but at the end of the day, like, if you leave a company like that and you move to... This is, like, partially why I joined Clay, right? Like, if you leave a company like that and you go to a next gen AI startup, like, you're gonna learn way more. The surface area of, of what you can actually go and impact is much, much higher.

Harry Stebbings 3:18 Hmm.

Becca Lindquist 3:18 And I think that's what those types of people are excited about, right? Like, if you've been at Salesforce for 12, 13, 14 years, like, you've probably had an incredible run. You probably really enjoy that, and you're probably gonna stay there. But, like, most people are at companies for, like, four or five years, right?

Harry Stebbings 3:31 Dead comment. If you've been at Salesforce for 12, 13, 14 years, I automatically think you're not great. I'm like, "You got stuck in your ways. You've been there for way too long. Seriously? You are happy just in this kind of melee of mediocrity for 12, 13, 14 years?" Is that a bad read?

Becca Lindquist 3:48 I don't think it's a bad read. I actually... So we're, we're recruiting a lot right now at Clay and, uh, you know, I, I see a lot, I see a lot of profiles. I actually ran a training for my team on, on recruiting last, last week, the week before. And one of the things that we talked about is, like, how do you read a LinkedIn profile?

Harry Stebbings 4:05 Oh, wow. I love this.

Becca Lindquist 4:05 Right? And I... We just pulled up people's LinkedIns. We pulled up yours. It was actually really weird. We're like, "Don't hire this guy." No, I'm kidding. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 4:12 [laughs] Terrible. Look at that picture. Egotistical, arrogant. Why would I hire-

Becca Lindquist 4:16 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 4:17 He's a team player.

Becca Lindquist 4:17 Terrible rep.

Harry Stebbings 4:18 Next. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 4:18 Um, so we pull up the LinkedIn profile and, and I'd be like, "Okay, what do you like? What do you see that you like? What do you see that you don't like?" And it's actually, there's a certain amount of time that if you spend at any company, it's, like, kind of a red flag because it's like, can you, can you do something new? Can you operate outside of the bounds of what you've, what you've built and what you've done, right?

Harry Stebbings 4:39 But what is that amount of time? Because I also hate the bouncer, and the, the, the biggest red flag for me is 13 months here-

Becca Lindquist 4:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Harry Stebbings 4:46 ... 15 months here.

Becca Lindquist 4:47 That's, that, that, the, there's, there's a lower bound too, and, like, I think, I think it's two years, right? Like-

Harry Stebbings 4:52 I, I was thinking four to five years is, like, optimal.

Becca Lindquist 4:54 Yeah. I mean, that's... I, I've spent the last decade at two companies.

Harry Stebbings 4:57 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 4:58 Right? And, like, I've built something. I've learned a ton, and when that learning curve starts to cap off, like, okay, you start to think about what's next and what's new. I think it's probably, like, seven years. Six to seven years. After that, if you've been in a company for eight, nine, 10 years, it's like the company's kind of built around you probably.

Harry Stebbings 5:16 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 5:16 And you, you've built so much of it to, like, uh... I don't know the best way to describe it. It's, like, maybe, like, putting on someone else's shoes, right? Now, now I'm giving you, you're giving me your shoes. Now, like, I gotta, like, I don't know, redo the laces, and the insole's all s- you know, screwed up. Like, I think it's really tough for someone who's been at a company that long to, like, adjust. And, and prove me wrong, right? Like, I, I have a friend who was at, at Heap, which I was at two companies ago, right? He was there for, like, eight or nine years, and I'd actually, like... Every time that, you know the LinkedIn anniversary?

Harry Stebbings 5:46 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 5:46 Where it's like-

Harry Stebbings 5:46 Oh my gosh, yeah

Becca Lindquist 5:47 ... your friend has been there for this many... I just, like, one year I, I screenshotted it. I sent it to him. I was like, "Yo, blink twice if you need me to save you."

Harry Stebbings 5:53 [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 5:54 Because, like... But he was like, "Look, I'm learning," and, like, yes, there is an end date. There is an expiration date. But, like, when I see something like that, especially at a company like Salesforce, I'm like, "Okay, you, you have your thing. You know what you're doing. You probably have great hobbies outside of work."

Harry Stebbings 6:08 [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 6:09 [laughs] Don't open that up.

Harry Stebbings 6:12 That is so denigrative. I love that. That's so funny. Yeah, yeah. Um, training and recruiting. Take me to that day. On, on the LinkedIn specifically, is there anything else, like, we watch out for? Don't laugh, one of my big red flags is someone who has, like, a picture of them speaking at an event.

Becca Lindquist 6:27 Okay. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 6:28 It just tells me that they have great self-importance.

Becca Lindquist 6:30 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 6:31 Like, you're just a dick. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 6:32 Well, well, well, actually, actually, I, when I see that, I look at it and I'm like, "Okay, either you're like, I don't know, you're at SCO, or the vast majority of them are, are them speaking at a wedding," and you can tell.

Harry Stebbings 6:44 Oh, wow.

Becca Lindquist 6:45 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 6:45 That's, that's bleak. That's really sad.

Becca Lindquist 6:48 And then, like, you know, look, I don't know. I don't have the per- I don't have the perfect LinkedIn. I should probably invest way more in that. You know, y- everybody at Clay is, like, a social media star.

Harry Stebbings 6:55 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 6:56 I'm, like, actually very averse to that because I think that, I, I'm, like, always terrified of saying something really stupid. And like, you know, you look at my LinkedIn, it's like-

Harry Stebbings 7:04 Lucky you're on a podcast. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 7:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, great, great, great job here, right? Um, but like, you know, I look at my LinkedIn and it's like I'm very critical of everybody else's LinkedIn profiles. I'm the most critical of mine. Like, I need to take a new LinkedIn picture. I, like, have, like, a lazy eye in my picture, and it really bothers me every time I look at it. And so when I look at other people's LinkedIn profiles, I'm like, "God, what do they think about mine?" But some of, some of the things actually, uh, I... When I look at a LinkedIn profile, what's a red flag? Obviously jumping around. Um, I always... Like, here are some of the other tips. Like, you discount recommendations, right? Like, I don't give a shit about how many recommendations I have, but, but some people do.

Harry Stebbings 7:44 Yep.

Becca Lindquist 7:45 And, uh, [clears throat] I, I just discount that, right? Uh-

Harry Stebbings 7:49 Any, any big green flags? Like, for me, data centricity is really helpful. So if you talk about your Heap experience-

Becca Lindquist 7:55 Of course

Harry Stebbings 7:55 ... and you're like, "I drove 387%-

Becca Lindquist 7:57 Yep

Harry Stebbings 7:58 ... increase in-

Becca Lindquist 7:58 Yep

Harry Stebbings 7:59 ... SDR volume-

Becca Lindquist 8:00 Yep

Harry Stebbings 8:00 ... whatever it is-

Becca Lindquist 8:01 Yep

Harry Stebbings 8:01 ... or pipe or.

Becca Lindquist 8:01 Yeah. Like, you know, people love to put like, "Oh, I was at President's Club," or like, "Here's what I did on quota," right? That's, like, a, that's a green flag. Um, I, when I look at someone's, uh, LinkedIn and I can't tell the story for them. So, like, I'll give an example. Um, all, all companies that, like, I think are great, I love, but imagine you're looking at someone's profile and they're like, "Yep, [clears throat] I did two years at Snowflake, uh, and then I did four years at Lattice, uh, and then I did three years at Marketo." And you look at that and you're like, "This is kind of a mishmash of, of, like... It's kind of a mishmash of companies." So, like, what's the story? Where's the ex- the, the expertise that you're building, right? Versus-

Harry Stebbings 8:41 W- w- can you explain that to me? You want aligned companies where you see aligned knowledge growing in that sector?

Becca Lindquist 8:48 A little bit. Like, think about, um, there was a guy that worked for me, uh, I actually think I gave you his, his, uh, contact info. His name's John Dalton.

Harry Stebbings 8:56 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 8:56 And we worked together. We built dbt, I mean, gosh, for four, four and a half years together. And if you look at his, if you look at his LinkedIn from the outside, you can see a very clear, "I'm becoming the data, the early stage data sales expert." So, like, he was very early. He was, like, the first rep at Cloudera. He was the first rep at StreamSets. Then he went and did, um, he did, he did something, it was, like, the head of sales. Then he came to dbt. So, like, all in, like, the open source data transformation space. Now he's at ClickHouse, right? Which is obviously, like, in the cl- in the data warehousing space. So, like, he's kind of built his career in this particular space. And if you're, let's say I was a recruiter at ClickHouse and I saw everything before that, I'd be like, "That is, that is our person. We are going to go do everything we can to hire that person."

Harry Stebbings 9:44 So that's so interesting you say that. I, I really like that, but I have so many sales leaders on the show who say, "I don't care if you don't have the domain knowledge. We can teach that." But it's much harder to teach the knowledge on contract size. I'd rather someone who's dealt with large enterprise before-

Becca Lindquist 9:59 Mm

Harry Stebbings 10:00 ... than someone who's worked in databases before.

Becca Lindquist 10:02 I don't know about that.

Becca Lindquist 10:03 I mean, like, so think about everybody, think about everybody that we've hired at Clay, right? Like, we've hired kind of non-traditional sellers. And, and actually the thing that you can't tell from a LinkedIn profile, but you can from things like back channels, having a conversation with someone, is, like, how high slope are they, right? So I think about someone like, um, [clears throat] I had a, I had a rep, uh, at dbt who worked for, for me. Um, he spent six years at Bloomberg, right? And we hired him in as a commercial rep. It may be... I can't remember if it was six years. Yeah, whatever. He came from Bloomberg. We hired him in as a commercial rep, and, like, almost immediately, like, in the interview process, I was like, "Oh, this kid, this kid gets it. Like, he's super smart, he's driven, he's super coachable. Like, let's go." Brought him in as a commercial rep. I was like, maybe a year, a year and a half later, we moved him into the enterprise segment and sat down with him. I was like, "Hey, what do you wanna work on together?" And he was like, "I'm really screwing up in the sales cycle. Here. Can we work on that?" And we, like, did it, and it was like a quarter later, he, he was, like, doing it in every single deal. And that, like, just gave me the confidence to say, like, "I'm gonna invest in this person." Came to me, like, a year and a half later and was like, "Put me into this role. I'm gonna, I can do it." And I was like, "Okay, let's go do it together." And, like, I think he was top three reps worldwide at dbt. So, like, that's, that's actually what I look for outside of, like, you know, like, domain knowledge is helpful for certain areas and certain profiles or certain levels. So, like, John Dalton, who I called out, like, I would hire... I, I'd hire John Dalton anywhere, but I'd hire him as, like, the first rep if I was in the data space. Like, that's the kind of person you need early on with, like, a little bit of ex- he has a lot of expertise, but, you know, expertise, the drive to do it, the has done it before. As you get to rep, you know, 100, domain expertise becomes a little bit less important, but the high slope is, is the most important

Becca Lindquist 11:53 thing.

Harry Stebbings 11:53 When you've made a bad hire, what did you not see that you should have seen?

Becca Lindquist 11:57 You know what? We actually, uh, I incorporate this into, um, my hiring flow for leaders. I give them feedback, or I have someone else give them feedback. Ideally the recruiter. And you know why?

Harry Stebbings 12:10 Why?

Becca Lindquist 12:10 Because if I give them feedback and they push back or they're, you know, they're kind of a dick about it, I'm like, "Oop-Okay. Probably not gonna work, right?

Harry Stebbings 12:16 So this is feedback in the job interview?

Becca Lindquist 12:18 Yeah. I'll, I'll say, like, I'll give an example. I hired, I hired a guy in San Francisco who I'm really excited about. He went on a walk with Varun. Varun called me after, gave me a voice note, and gave me, gave me s- like some feedback. So I just called him and I was like, "Hey, how, how do you think it went?" And like, you know, "Okay, great, great, great." "Hey, this is something that, like, this is something that I got. Like, this was part of the feedback that I got. What do you think about that?" And you just listen, and it tells you everything that you need to know about what it's gonna be like to work with that person, right? If they're like, "Oh, well, like, oh, uh, he, he didn't really say it that..." "Oh, interesting. Okay." But if they're like, "Okay, yeah, that's fair. How do I go, how do I go and overcome that?" And they're like, "Yo, what do I do?" That's actually very interesting, especially in, in a company like Clay, where we're like, I don't know, building something new. There's a lot of, like, open white space, right? If someone's really defensive, that's actually the biggest red flag, and I... We need to incorporate it into the, into the rep interview. Um, but, like, that's... I, I made a hire one time [clears throat] and, and ever since I've kind of just said, "Okay, I'm gonna give you the feedback and let's see how you react." And actually, it's even better if the recruiter gives them the feedback. It's sort of like when you take someone to a, you know, you take, take your girlfriend or your wife to a restaurant, and you see how they treat, you know, the hostess and the waiter.

Harry Stebbings 13:35 One of the biggest signs I look for.

Becca Lindquist 13:37 Right?

Harry Stebbings 13:37 If it's bad, I'm out.

Becca Lindquist 13:38 Right? Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 13:39 100%.

Becca Lindquist 13:39 It's the same, it's the same thing. So if the recruiter gives them feedback, and they're just, they treat the recruiter a certain kind of way, I'm, I'm out.

Harry Stebbings 13:45 Instead, mine just beats me. But you know, the one thing I've learned on hiring as well is when they push on title, they're bad. When they push on s- salary, they tend to be good-

Becca Lindquist 13:53 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 13:53 ... and know their worth.

Becca Lindquist 13:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 13:54 So really all my mis-hires are when, "I'm not happy being a EA. I wanna be a chief of staff."

Becca Lindquist 14:01 Ah.

Harry Stebbings 14:01 But you're, you're an EA, right?

Becca Lindquist 14:03 I agree.

Harry Stebbings 14:03 You, uh, you're happy with the salary, so you're not agreeing to that, but it's actually that. Always a mistake.

Becca Lindquist 14:08 Oh, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 14:08 When, "Oh, I don't care about title, but I'm worth more."

Becca Lindquist 14:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 14:11 That's when I make mistakes.

Becca Lindquist 14:12 That's, that's actually, that's... If you think about, so, like, we talked about Todd, right?

Harry Stebbings 14:16 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 14:16 Same, same, me and Todd, we agree on that. Like, I was like, "I actually don't really care what my title is. I do care how much you pay me. I do care how much equity I have, and I do care about scope. But, like, fuck, you can call me Go-To-Market like every other AI company."

Harry Stebbings 14:29 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 14:29 Like, I don't really care. I actually think, um, I... And I tell people this. If, if you're joining a sub $50 million company and you're the CRO, I'm like, that's, that feels, uh, my, my, my opinion, feels like an ego play, and it feels like you are a little bit shortsighted because eventually you're gonna stumble. And then what are they gonna do? They're gonna say, "Oh, we need to hire a CRO. You're out," right? Now you're not gonna learn anything because you've, you've shot your shot, right?

Harry Stebbings 14:59 I think it's also indicative of founder. If you've got a really strong, solid founder who's able to hire incredibly well-

Becca Lindquist 15:06 Mm

Harry Stebbings 15:06 ... they're not gonna give premature CRO titles out.

Becca Lindquist 15:08 Yeah, that's fair.

Harry Stebbings 15:08 Uh, it's a real sign of a immature founder, respectfully.

Becca Lindquist 15:11 Interesting. I didn't think about that, but that's fair.

Harry Stebbings 15:14 You, you protect titles like that because you know it will lead to-

Becca Lindquist 15:17 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 15:17 ... them likely being demoted in two years and then leaving.

Becca Lindquist 15:20 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:20 And then you've got another shit situation.

Becca Lindquist 15:22 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:22 Doesn't-

Becca Lindquist 15:22 Versus, versus if you come in as, like, I don't know, head of sales or, like, uh, go-to-market leader, whatever, right? There's always room to go up.

Harry Stebbings 15:30 How fast do you know when someone's shit that you hire?

Becca Lindquist 15:32 If it's an IC, and actually I listened to one of your pod- uh, podcasts you were doing with someone else, and, uh, you were talking about this. How do you know a big enterprise rep, big deals person, how do you know? Like, they have a nine-month ramp. How, how the fuck are you gonna know in month three if they're good or not, right? Um, you know for an IC, like, within probably three weeks, right?

Harry Stebbings 15:52 What are those signs?

Becca Lindquist 15:53 The signs are, uh, can they think critically about someone else's business? So, like, if, if... And, and that would be, like, the sign of a mis-hire, right? You put a, you put a prospect in front of them, or you say, "Hey, here's your target account list. You've gone through boot camp, the two-week boot camp. Here's your 100 accounts. How do you stack rank them?" And they c- just completely whiff it, or they're like, "I, I don't know," right? Like, ooh, that's a big red flag. Um, the second thing is, like, what are their activity metrics, right? Like, okay, you just exited boot camp. First I wanna know how they did in boot camp. Like, were they engaged? Were they, were they failing alone, right? Were they asking questions? Were they leaning on other people? Um, once a- once you get out of boot camp, it's like, okay, uh, are you thinking critic- critically about your prospects, their business, how we can help them? Are you fucking hitting send? Are you doing the thing, right? Are you picking up the phone? Are you hitting send? If you're not, you're not generating pipeline. It means you're not gonna be successful, right? So, like, those are the early flags of, like, hm, this person's not gonna work out.

Harry Stebbings 16:52 Totally get you. You said that boot camp quite a few times.

Becca Lindquist 16:54 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 16:55 I, I presume we're not talking about Pilates, which is what my mother will think about.

Becca Lindquist 16:58 [laughs] Yeah, I take my whole team down to Barry's Bootcamp every week.

Harry Stebbings 17:00 Yeah. [laughs] It's like, "Whoa."

Becca Lindquist 17:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:01 Peter Boyle will be pleased. Um,

Harry Stebbings 17:03 no, like, a lot of founders really struggle with, especially early founders, like-

Becca Lindquist 17:06 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 17:07 ... "How the fuck do I train my reps?"

Becca Lindquist 17:08 Ooh.

Harry Stebbings 17:08 "I've, I've never run a sales org. What, what is boot camp, Becca?"

Becca Lindquist 17:11 So, so, well, that's, that's a little bit later stage thing. Um, when I joined Heap and when I joined cl- uh, dbt, we didn't, we didn't have a boot camp.

Harry Stebbings 17:20 So how should early stage founders train reps?

Becca Lindquist 17:23 So here's, here's what we did at Heap.

Harry Stebbings 17:24 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 17:25 Um, basically Mateen and Ravi, it's like they showed, they did the thing. We rode along, and then that shift started to sh- kind of, like, happen of, like, okay, now we run the call, and maybe you're on a few. Now you have Gong, so you can actually send the people that you hired all of your Gong calls before. Like, that's... All the founders that I work with, I tell them, like, "Yo, do you have Gong?" And if they don't, I'm like, "Ooh, red flag. You gotta go, just go get, just buy it," right? Um, and then send whoever you hire all of the calls that you've done because they're gonna... One, they're gonna give you feedback on, like, how to sell, but two, they'll hear how you talk about it, and that's actually the most, like, that's the most important thing to me is, like, how do I take what's in my brain and put it in your brain, right?

Harry Stebbings 18:09 So if I'm a founder hiring today, early stage company, under 10 million

Harry Stebbings 18:14 in revenue, what should I look for in the people that I'm hiring? Just people that press send and have a lot of energy? And remember, this is really early stage. Like, what is that profile?

Becca Lindquist 18:22 I keep coming back to, like-Thinking critically about your customers. So like I'll give an example. Maybe you're selling an AI widget.

Harry Stebbings 18:29 Sure.

Becca Lindquist 18:29 Right? Does this person come in and talk about the widget, or do they talk about how, I don't know, uh, JPMC would use it, or the company that they're currently at, how they would use it, and the impact that it has? And like what I, what I mean by impact is like, I'll give an example. [clears throat] Whenever we talk about AI tools, I feel like we talk about like the art of possible, like pie in the sky stuff, and I'm like, "Hey, hey, hey. We're, we're ... Bring it back here," right? Why don't you give me an AI tool that automatically tells my reps when they have a close date in the past? The basic shit. When we're single-threaded, let's start there. Let's help people do the basics well before we get to like, oh, it, it, it automates, it automates the outbound, and then it automates the first deck, and then you know what? It automates the rest of the sales process. I'm like, "Okay, great, great, great. We can get there. Let's start with the basics." So like do ... When they talk about your widget in the context of their company, are they talking about pie in the sky, or are they like, "This is actually the real problem that it's solving for us, and the impact of that real problem is that, I don't know, our forecast is, is, is screwed up," or, "We miss our revenue target," or like, "Our rep productivity sucks because of it," right? Can they tie, can they tie your, your thing to a real business problem that they are facing and other people are facing, and then tie a dollar outcome to it? Like those are the types of people that I want, and then I test for, okay, do they have the drive? And like obviously I bias towards having college athletes because they've, they've learned how to work hard. All you gotta do is teach them how to work smart. If you teach them how to work smart, it's really tough to teach someone how to work hard.

Harry Stebbings 20:03 I think they also have the discipline to do the work when no one is watching.

Becca Lindquist 20:07 Yeah, that's-

Harry Stebbings 20:07 Like-

Becca Lindquist 20:07 ... that's true

Harry Stebbings 20:08 ... you're an athlete, and I like to think that I am. Um, like-

Becca Lindquist 20:11 [laughs] Well, you ... I don't know. You show up with those pretty cool M frames.

Harry Stebbings 20:13 Thank you so much. Um, but like most of the time is spent in a gym with no one else in-

Becca Lindquist 20:18 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 20:18 ... at 5:00 AM in the morning, and, [laughs] you know, that black tie dinner where you hopefully look relatively athletic is once every six months-

Becca Lindquist 20:25 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 20:25 ... where the world might see that you're fit.

Becca Lindquist 20:27 Yeah, that's right.

Harry Stebbings 20:27 But that's it.

Becca Lindquist 20:28 That's right.

Harry Stebbings 20:28 So those six months of shit.

Becca Lindquist 20:28 The posts and things you post on Instagram. Yeah. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 20:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah, of skipping donut time and skipping everything else.

Becca Lindquist 20:35 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 20:35 Uh, I totally get you. On the flip side of that, what you look for, we, we were going back earlier. We were like, oh, the FOMO of like, oh, should I join an AI company or not? There are so many well-funded AI companies today.

Becca Lindquist 20:46 I know.

Harry Stebbings 20:46 And they all have shiny VCs, and they all have people-

Becca Lindquist 20:49 Uh-huh

Harry Stebbings 20:49 ... who are pronouncing themselves to be replacing work for every large profession.

Becca Lindquist 20:54 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 20:54 What would you advise those sales reps who feel like they've plateaued, rotting, that's a good-

Becca Lindquist 21:00 If they're rotting, yeah

Harry Stebbings 21:01 ... nicely. Um,

Harry Stebbings 21:03 which one should I choose? [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 21:05 That's ... Honestly, it's, it's really tough, and like I obviously like, uh, I, I hadn't intended to leave dbt, if I'm, if I'm honest. Like I was like, "I'm gonna finish out the fiscal year, and then maybe I'll start to think about what's next." Um, and I, I met Varun, and you know Varun.

Harry Stebbings 21:21 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 21:21 We went for multiple walks around ... He lives around the corner from me in Brooklyn. And so I, I, I feel like I got a little bit of the cheat code because I, I do think that Clay is like the most compelling company on the planet right now. And like when you think about AI companies, a lot of people have ... We, we just hired a RevOps guy. He's fantastic. He has this phrase. He's like, "Everybody has the Claude spookies." And I'm like, "That's a really good way to describe it." The, the-

Harry Stebbings 21:47 That's a cool phrase

Becca Lindquist 21:47 ... feeling of like, well, why wouldn't Claude just do this? Is Claude gonna overtake this market? Is Claude gonna put you out of business, right? And it's like there ... it's ... there's a lot of companies out there that I look at it, and I'm like, "Hmm, I got the Cl- I ... Yeah, I think that that could be a thing for you." And so like, uh, the real answer is I don't, I don't really know, but I think about is there something that's not just AI that's defensible, right? Like Clay has this data marketplace. It's really ... It's tough to build that. Like you could go, yeah, you could go do that. You could go buy 180 different data providers and build your own, but that's a lot of work when you think about [laughs] just buying software to do that for you. And so like I would look for some sort of other defensibility outside of just we're automating this, or like, you know, we're, we're gonna automate this profession away or like a workflow, and that's a really tough thing to find. Like there's not ... Like I can't even think of a company that I would shout out that's doing that, right?

Harry Stebbings 22:45 I totally get that. I would say like just look for a company with unwavering product market fit.

Becca Lindquist 22:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 22:49 It's pretty hard to sell shit no one wants.

Becca Lindquist 22:51 That's, that is 100% right.

Harry Stebbings 22:53 And it's pretty easy to sell shit that everyone

Harry Stebbings 22:55 wants.

Becca Lindquist 22:55 Yeah. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 22:56 Is it?

Becca Lindquist 22:57 It ... [laughs] As someone who is currently selling shit that everybody wants, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:02 Is it easy?

Becca Lindquist 23:04 Uh, it's ... It is easy in the beginning, right? Because you could grow as a company 1000% just by, you know, just by doing the thing.

Harry Stebbings 23:15 Mm-hmm.

Becca Lindquist 23:15 Like, you know, having a, a moderate execution on, on your, on your sales process and, and if you have a really great product, it's gonna fly off the shelves, right? But as you grow, it becomes very challenging to grow 1000% year over year-

Harry Stebbings 23:29 Sure

Becca Lindquist 23:29 ... 250% year over year, right? So like a lot of what I focused on when I was evaluating Clay was like, great that you're landing these, these logos. How many stick around? How many, how many double their spend with you? And like the metrics that I got, I, I think I can share. Um, like they were like, "We haven't churned a customer. Our NDR is close to 200%." Like those are the types of things if you're talking to an AI company, that's a ... that's the biggest green flag, right? Because it's not just can you sell the thing, it's can you make the customer successful and successful enough that they wanna go do more with you?

Harry Stebbings 24:02 The hard thing is today, I don't know if that matters as much as top line revenue growth, as ridiculous as that sounds. But if you're thinking about like actually like personal wealth accumulation, especially in the short term, if you can go from 1 to 200 in a year-

Becca Lindquist 24:16 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 24:16 ... like some of the AI companies-

Becca Lindquist 24:18 Uh-huh

Harry Stebbings 24:18 ... with shitter NDR and-

Becca Lindquist 24:19 Yeah, yeah

Harry Stebbings 24:19 ... shitter churn metrics.

Becca Lindquist 24:21 That's fair.

Harry Stebbings 24:22 If you can carry that out for two to three yearsOn a comp basis from stock-

Becca Lindquist 24:28 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 24:28 ... you'll have secondary opportunities to sell 10, 20, $30 million worth.

Becca Lindquist 24:32 Maybe. Maybe, right? I- that's ... When I talk-

Harry Stebbings 24:36 I'm building a really secure business-

Becca Lindquist 24:38 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 24:38 ... that grows three, four X, which by the way, is amazing.

Becca Lindquist 24:40 Which is great, which is incredible.

Harry Stebbings 24:42 Yeah, but it's just like not that.

Becca Lindquist 24:43 [laughs] So you're like, it's amazing, but it's, it's actually-

Harry Stebbings 24:46 Yeah, it's not that

Becca Lindquist 24:46 ... ah, it's amazing for 2011, right?

Harry Stebbings 24:48 Yeah. Right.

Becca Lindquist 24:48 Like, people, people get caught up on this like-

Harry Stebbings 24:49 We, we did Ligora and we did Lovable. Like-

Becca Lindquist 24:52 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 24:52 ... I mean, I had 13 months to 100 million in revenue.

Becca Lindquist 24:56 Yeah. It's, it's impressive. It's impressive. Here's like, here's how I ... When people come to me and they're like, "Should I, should I take this offer? Should I ... How should I think about this?" You know, uh, a company, let's call it Acme Co, right? A high-flying, fast-growing AI startup, they might give you, let's say they give you a million dollars of stock, and you're like, "Holy shit, I'm rich." And, and by the way, this is growing so fast, it's gonna be $20 million soon. There's like a coefficient that I apply to that of liquidity. How liquid is that? Do they actually do tender offers? 'Cause I think everybody's kind of been bit, right, by a company that's like, "Oh, we're growing so fast, and we really care about employee liquidity, so we're gonna do tender offers," and then never does a tender offer, right? And so now you're sitting on however much stock you have that is probably life-changing for you. So, like, I actually just tell people, I'm like, "What have they done, not what they say, what have they done that's shown that they're gonna provide liquidity on that, on that equity?" And just apply a coefficient to that. If they give you a million dollars of equity, but they haven't done anything to allow people to ... You know, there's definitely people who've been there longer than you. What are they doing with those folks? Just apply a certain ... Maybe you apply .3X to that, right?

Harry Stebbings 26:07 I'm a founder, and you're an angel investor in my company. Thank you. You're advising me.

Becca Lindquist 26:11 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 26:11 Um, I, I, Becca, I don't know how to do sales comp. How do I pay salespeople? What would you advise me in terms of genuinely how to think about salary, comp? You know, we had a guest on the show that said before, you know, 20X quota.

Becca Lindquist 26:26 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 26:27 Um, how would you advise me?

Becca Lindquist 26:29 Well, so actually

Becca Lindquist 26:30 we, we just rolled out a variable compensation plan at Clay, right? Before everybody was just being paid a salary, whether you're the top performer or the bottom performer, right? And, and, uh, as a, as a salesperson, I saw that and I said, "Huh, okay." And like, you know, there's a lot of companies that have, have ... That have done that in the early days, like Stripe did that in the early days. And I think, uh, you're a founder-

Harry Stebbings 26:52 In other words, no bonuses done.

Becca Lindquist 26:54 No bonus. No, no cash compensation tied to any performance in a, in a, in a structured way.

Harry Stebbings 27:01 Yeah, yeah. OpenAI did this too. It's fucking-

Becca Lindquist 27:03 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 27:03 ... stupid.

Becca Lindquist 27:05 I, I saw that and I said, "Incredible that it's gotten you this far."

Harry Stebbings 27:10 [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 27:10 "Let's figure out how, how you, how you reward and attract and retain the right talent." 'Cause like I'll give an example. We just hired a, a, a GTME, our, our version of a rep. S- you think of it as like a rep and a sales engineer, uh, rolled into one. We just hired a GTME out here in London, and, and I got off, I got off [laughs] a red-eye jet from JFK, got breakfast with her, and the conversation was, "How do we go make a million dollars here? How do I W-2 a million dollars at Clay? Walk me through the math." And that's what the best reps wanna know, right? They're like, "I, I have a target. I'll run as fast as I can towards it. Tell me how to do it." And then, and then they're like, if, if you don't have the right math, if you're like, can't walk it, walk them through it, or you don't have the right percentages, they're like, "Mm, you, you know, maybe you don't care about salespeople." But in this scenario, you're, you, you're hiring what? Your first, first two salespeople?

Harry Stebbings 27:59 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 28:00 Here's what worked at Heap, and like, I actually really-

Harry Stebbings 28:02 Can I push you?

Becca Lindquist 28:03 Yeah, yeah. Tell me.

Harry Stebbings 28:04 Do you agree with me it's fucking stupid not to have-

Becca Lindquist 28:05 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 28:05 ... tied to performance?

Becca Lindquist 28:07 I, uh, I, I do.

Harry Stebbings 28:09 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 28:09 I do. I, I do, just because, like, I'm, I'm an athlete, right?

Harry Stebbings 28:12 I also think it's arrogant to be like, "Oh, don't worry. You're paid in the equity too, so, like, just good luck."

Becca Lindquist 28:16 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 28:18 Well, again, to your point-

Becca Lindquist 28:19 Well, I think-

Harry Stebbings 28:19 ... if there's no tenders-

Becca Lindquist 28:19 I, I-

Harry Stebbings 28:20 ... we're like, "Thanks, but I still need-

Becca Lindquist 28:20 I think what it does-

Harry Stebbings 28:21 ... to pay the mortgage."

Becca Lindquist 28:21 I think what, I think what, well, I think what it does is it just, it, it, it allows people to just, like, hide.

Harry Stebbings 28:26 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 28:26 Right? And, and, and the way that ... I actually say this to people when they're like, "What? Oh, well, the variable compensation plan. What if..." And I'm like, "Hold on here. You have a number today. You are being judged against your performance to that number. If you don't hit that number, I'm going to fire you. And if you over-perform on that number, I'm not going to pay you more. Do you think this is a good deal for you?" [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 28:49 [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 28:50 I, most, most salespeople are like-

Harry Stebbings 28:53 Huh

Becca Lindquist 28:53 ... "Yeah, if I over-perform, I wanna make more money."

Harry Stebbings 28:55 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 28:55 And like, you know, that's, th- those are the rules of the road. If I don't hit my number, you're gonna fire me. Um, and so I, I understand. I think actually maybe the genesis of this is that, that, um, a lot of these companies are like, they don't know how to do comp plans, or they're like, what if, what if, what if? And so they're like, this is actually just easier.

Harry Stebbings 29:13 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 29:14 And I think that's maybe okay in certain areas, but, like, I'll tell you the thing that Todd, Todd, who I just hired at Clay, um, we, we were the first two reps at Heap, right? Um, and we had a compensation plan that was dead simple. It was, we had a base salary, and like, I don't know, this was like 2015 San Francisco. I think our base salary was, like, 60K, right? It was, it was, it was pretty low, I guess, by, by most standards. Um, and then every deal that we closed, and you know, we had to pay back our base salary, so, like, every month it was like, I don't know, five grand. So the first five grand of revenue was a wash. Beyond that, every dollar that we closed, we got 25%. And if it was a two-year deal, every dollar in that two-year deal, we got 33%. And I have never run harder at a goal in my life than when I knew that I was gonna make 25% of every single deal that I closed. It, it was just, it, it aligned our incentives with the company's incentives very, very directly, and we just, like, sprinted at it. And then we'd compete with each other. It'd be like, who could do the first $100,000 deal? Oh, I got the biggest deal now. I got the biggest deal. And it was like everybody was celebrating. Everybody was making good, you know, good money. Uh, and that, and that was it. It was simple to administer. It was, like, very direct. Like, I ... When we, when we built our comp plan at, at, uh, at Clay-You know, I feel like it's really easy to make it really complicated and like, "Oh, 20% of your, 20% of your variable is this, 30%..." And I'm just like, "Just make it fucking simple," right? 'Cause then it's easy to understand and it's easy to administer. Everybody understands the rules of the road, and we have accelerators.

Harry Stebbings 30:54 So can I ask, what, what do you have then?

Becca Lindquist 30:56 So we have a quota, obviously. Uh, our quota to OT ratio is like, I think it's like 7.5, which is, like, quite good, right?

Harry Stebbings 31:04 Quite high.

Becca Lindquist 31:04 And, and if you compare it to the internet-

Harry Stebbings 31:05 I, I was always brought up in the enterprise world by 3 to 4X was kind of where you were.

Becca Lindquist 31:09 [laughs] Well, I think below 4X it's like, mm, yikes, right? Um, I was, like, I've always, always taught four to six.

Harry Stebbings 31:17 Yeah, sure. Mm-hmm.

Becca Lindquist 31:17 Like, four, four is kind of shit. Six is like, "Wow, you're doing great." I think in the AI era, right, like, you have 20X, 20X your base salary is your quota, like, that's, that's pretty wild.

Harry Stebbings 31:27 Punchy.

Becca Lindquist 31:28 Right? It's [laughs] it's punchy.

Harry Stebbings 31:30 Punchy. Punchy. But I hit the ground running for that one.

Becca Lindquist 31:32 Maybe that's right. It's punchy, but like-

Harry Stebbings 31:34 You've had the first 12 minutes. Now sell. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 31:36 Yeah. In, in, in the AI era, I feel like, you know, we're, we're seeing somewhere like six to, 6 to 10, right? Depending on, on the business, the types of deals, the size of deals, who you're selling to. But, like, we're at 7.5X quota to OT ratio today, and, like, if it doesn't make sense, we're gonna make it make sense, right? If it doesn't make sense to have that, we'll change quotas, right? Or we'll change pay, that type of stuff. Um, we have accelerators, like you would imagine. Normal. Uh-

Harry Stebbings 32:03 So sorry. I'm, I'm, I'm ... This is where I, I mentioned I'm, I'm not too fast, which is why I'm a venture capitalist.

Becca Lindquist 32:09 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 32:09 Uh, so like I need to hit 6 to 8X my, my salary. Yeah?

Becca Lindquist 32:13 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 32:14 And then what happens? And then I get what?

Becca Lindquist 32:16 And then you get paid more on every dollar that you close. It's accel-

Harry Stebbings 32:19 Only then?

Becca Lindquist 32:20 It's, it's accelerators.

Harry Stebbings 32:21 Only then?

Becca Lindquist 32:22 Only ... Have you worked at, have you worked at a company where they have accelerators before you hit 100% of your number?

Harry Stebbings 32:27 I mean, 6 to 8X is quite a lot, and only then I get it?

Becca Lindquist 32:31 [laughs] Well-

Harry Stebbings 32:32 Jesus fuck.

Becca Lindquist 32:33 [laughs] So what I'm saying, what I'm hearing is you don't, you don't want-

Harry Stebbings 32:36 This feels like a b-

Becca Lindquist 32:36 You don't want to come work for me. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 32:37 No. This feels like be the perfect husband, bring me coffee and tea every day for 365 days a year, and only then you might get lucky on the 366th day.

Becca Lindquist 32:49 No, no. Well, well, so it, it depends-

Harry Stebbings 32:50 I'm exhausted.

Becca Lindquist 32:51 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 32:51 I've cleaned the house for a year, I've made you dinner every night, and I might get one shag?

Becca Lindquist 32:57 [laughs] No.

Harry Stebbings 32:58 It's exhausting, Becca.

Becca Lindquist 32:59 It's look, look, you have your OT, and you get ... And, and we've, we've, we've, uh, we pay, we pay, we pay, like, you know, pretty competitively-

Harry Stebbings 33:06 Mm-hmm

Becca Lindquist 33:06 ... I would say, um, above and beyond your quota. And, and this is actually the, this is the argument that we're actually having right now. Like, I spent probably two hours in the last two days with my rev ops leader, Varun, Kareem, our finance leader, right, our strategic finance team, on what are the accelerators. Because my perspective is if you're overachieving, like, it should be heavily weighted towards overperformance. If, if I'm giving you a big quota and you're hitting 110% of that, I want you to be making good money, right? If you're hitting 150% of that, like, we come back to, like, what's the percentage of quota attainment to make a million dollars? That's the number that we're fighting over, because if you have, let's say you have 100 reps, right? 60% of them are hitting their number. Great. Like, just, just hitting. They're, um, they're, you know, they're, they're making their OTE, but-

Harry Stebbings 33:58 Is that a good amount to hit?

Becca Lindquist 34:00 The culture that I think is best is when you have 60% of people over 100%, 80% over 80%, right? You're building a winning culture. People are successful. People are telling their friends they're having so much fun, very successful. Come work here. You get the best talent. Like, that's, like, a, a rule of thumb that, like, I like. You know, our, our strategic finance guy was like, "Oh, it was 50 over 100 at my last..." Oh, great. Whatever. You should have some percentage, you agree on some percentage of your team is over 100%, and a certain percentage is over 80%. And if those things are true, it builds the right culture, which is actually really important in sales, right? Imagine you're in a boat-

Harry Stebbings 34:36 How do you know when you are setting the wrong goals versus have a shit team? 'Cause two different people could go, "Oh, we've got too high expectations."

Becca Lindquist 34:44 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 34:45 Or it could be you're just hiring shit people.

Becca Lindquist 34:47 Yeah. I, and, and usually, uh, you can tell by the reaction, right? Uh, so actually coming back to Heap, they hired both Todd and I at ri- roughly the same time. I think Todd was, like, three, maybe three, four months before me, and they told us, like, a year later, they were like, "We hired you two at a time." I tell every founder this. I'm like, "Hire two at a time," because then you'll actually see is one ... You hire one, you're like, "Is it good? Is it not good? I don't know." If you hire two, it's pretty clear whether one's good and one's bad. They told us, like, a year later, they were like, "Yeah, we hired both of you," and we were like, "We'll probably have to fire one and keep the better one, but you both were really good, so we kept you both." [laughs] And I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, thanks." But, like, that's, that's how you do it, right? You have, let's say you have 100 reps. There's gonna be five that just bitch about quota and blah, blah, blah, but if you, if you dig under the covers, they're probably not doing the work to go and be successful, right? And those are the people that you probably don't want on the team.

Harry Stebbings 35:40 Well, I'm an ambassador as well. Um, and I was in, uh, Vienna the other day to try and lead a Series A, which I-

Becca Lindquist 35:48 Sounds fancy.

Harry Stebbings 35:49 Yeah, thank you.

Becca Lindquist 35:49 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 35:50 Um, we lead a very glamorous life. Uh, not just short shorts. Uh, but, uh, we went into this office and there was this sales leaderboard.

Becca Lindquist 35:56 Mm.

Harry Stebbings 35:56 And it had, you know, whatever, eight reps.

Becca Lindquist 35:57 Mm.

Harry Stebbings 35:57 Kind of a Series A early stage company, so eight reps. Um, and me and my partner in the firm were like, "Oh, yeah, we like this."

Becca Lindquist 36:05 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:05 Like, we felt the competition.

Becca Lindquist 36:07 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:07 And we felt the, like, they are looking at their numbers.

Becca Lindquist 36:09 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:10 And they are on every new deal.

Becca Lindquist 36:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:12 Every pipe.

Becca Lindquist 36:14 That's, that's coming to our sales floor, right? We hire- we've hired nontraditional salespeople, so you kind of have to, like, incrementally introduce some of these concepts. But, like, you better believe we're gonna build a sales dashboard of how much revenue have you closed, how much pipeline have you generated, what's been your activity this week, who's at the top? Probably the person who's at the top bottoms up is gonna be at the top on the revenue dashboard, right?

Harry Stebbings 36:36 100%. Is there anything that we can do to inspire that competitiveness within sales teams to make themIncentivized, encouraged to kind of fight between them. Hunger Games of sales

Becca Lindquist 36:48 Well, I don't... I, I actually think, uh, that's why, that's why if you create like a zero-sum game, right, everybody's kinda just looking out for themselves and they're very scared versus that's why I was like 60% over 100%, 80 over 80 creates this culture where people are excited to help each other and they're excited to celebrate everybody else's success. So, like, you think back to me and Todd, it was like, uh, to be fair to, like, for the record, I closed the first six-figure deal at Heap, and then he was like, "Awesome. Fuck, I wanna go do that too. Okay, I'm gonna go get a bigger one. Go get a bigger one. Go get a bigger one." Right? And, and we'd be bouncing ideas off of each other the whole time. It's like we wanted to help each other because we knew that we were building this thing together, but we were like, "I, I wanna go beat you."

Harry Stebbings 37:31 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 37:31 Right? And I think even, even at dbt, right, which is, like, open source, open source product, open source company, very, like, open source-minded. So, like, you, you have... It's, it's a different, um, it's, like, a different approach. Um, you're giving away software for free, and then you're also trying [laughs] to charge for it, which is kinda weird dance to, to do. Um, i- i- once you get big enough, you do, you do teams, right? So, like, the last year that I was there, the central team closed the biggest deal in history, and then the EMEA team's like, "Well, fuck. We, we need to go get, you know, Siemens or Allianz. We need to get... We need to go get a bigger deal there." And you kinda just cut... You, you pit people against each other in a, in a fun way or, like, you know, me and Alistair. So Alistair ran EMEA for me, um, at dbt, and he would always say, "Here's the percentage of the r- of the g- of the company's revenue that comes from EMEA," and you're, like, fighting over market share.

Harry Stebbings 38:22 Huh.

Becca Lindquist 38:23 Right? And then I would go to the, I'd go to the Americas team and I'd say, "Hey, make sure that, make sure that he doesn't get any more points," right? "Hey, your goal is actually that he goes from 34% to 33%."

Harry Stebbings 38:33 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 38:33 Right? And you just kinda, like, you put a little chip on people's shoulder, but in a fun way.

Harry Stebbings 38:38 I totally get it. Just kind of demoralize them in a really fun way. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 38:43 [laughs] It's not demoralizing-

Harry Stebbings 38:44 No, no, I'm trying to-

Becca Lindquist 38:44 ... if the company's growing. If the company's growing 3 to 4X, which you've just told me it now should

Harry Stebbings 38:48 I, I totally get it. You'll become inherently less important, but feel good about it.

Becca Lindquist 38:51 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 38:51 Um, so we have 6 to 8X quota and, and then what happens? So, like, I'm your rep saying-

Becca Lindquist 38:56 Yeah, yeah

Harry Stebbings 38:56 ... I did join.

Becca Lindquist 38:56 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 38:57 Um-

Becca Lindquist 38:57 Did you join? [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 38:59 No, ew.

Becca Lindquist 38:59 Sounds like you have some reservations. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 39:01 Yeah, yeah, you're on a high base. You don't need to whack it up. Um, but 6 to 8X, what happens then with the accelerators?

Becca Lindquist 39:08 So, like, if I pay you a dollar-

Harry Stebbings 39:10 Yeah

Becca Lindquist 39:10 ... if I pay you, uh, if I pay you 10 cents on the dollar before-

Harry Stebbings 39:13 Yeah

Becca Lindquist 39:13 ... it, it should jump pretty significantly.

Harry Stebbings 39:15 But for every new deal at Clay now, do I get 25%?

Becca Lindquist 39:18 Uh, it doesn't jump up that high.

Harry Stebbings 39:20 Oh.

Becca Lindquist 39:20 You know what? You [laughs] ... I know, very disappointing.

Harry Stebbings 39:23 Why, why, why did it at Heap and not at Clay?

Becca Lindquist 39:25 Uh, I mean, we did it at Heap because we were the first two reps-

Harry Stebbings 39:29 Mm

Becca Lindquist 39:29 ... and they were like, "Just go fucking close this."

Harry Stebbings 39:31 So you can't have that high a width scale?

Becca Lindquist 39:33 I think it, I think it depends on the economics of your business.

Harry Stebbings 39:36 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 39:36 So, like, if you think about Clay, right, like, we pay for the data that we sell.

Harry Stebbings 39:40 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 39:40 Right? So, like, we pay per credit in the same way that, like, we charge for a credit of, of data. Um, and, and actually our, our, our economics are very, very good. Our, our head of finance is really smart about, about all that type of stuff, but, like, in some businesses, you have shit margins.

Harry Stebbings 39:57 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 39:58 Uh, and I've worked for companies that have, you know, less, less than ideal margins, and it kinda puts a, it kinda compresses what you can actually pay. So, like, maybe that's something that you look for in the AI era, right, is, is good margins.

Harry Stebbings 40:09 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 40:09 I don't actually know why, why we can't do that. Like, there sh- there's, there's a flat, there's some sort of flat pay that you have a base commission rate and then on top of that you get accelerators, right? All that Heap did was just jump straight to the accelerators and say you have an artificially low base.

Harry Stebbings 40:22 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 40:22 Right? Now go, now go work your ass off.

Harry Stebbings 40:25 I, I, I like it. One thing that you said there kind of about, um, not great margins with AI companies, and-

Becca Lindquist 40:30 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 40:30 ... a lot of them don't have great margins 'cause they also give a lot upfront.

Becca Lindquist 40:33 That's right.

Harry Stebbings 40:34 And inference is their kind of sales and marketing cost in some ways.

Harry Stebbings 40:37 How does your job change when kind of people have tried the product already, uh, they've got usage already, and it's not the SDR outbound that it used to be?

Becca Lindquist 40:47 Well, I think, I think if you... You're talking about, like, a PLG motion.

Harry Stebbings 40:51 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 40:51 Right? Um, and if you have usage, your, your job then becomes what are the next use cases, what are the next teams? You're fighting over, like, workloads, right, rather than going and landing a logo. Because if you think about, think about, um, I don't know, think about Salesforce, right? How many places, how many entrances are there for different AI tools, right? And then how much market share internally at Salesforce do they have? So, like, if you go land a logo, let's say Salesforce is on, is on a PLG motion for your company, your AI widget, right? And that, you know, you got, like, I don't know, three people in the marketing team using it, three people in the sales team, whatever, right? Your job then as the rep becomes how do I go take that market share in that company faster than any other AI company or any of our competitors can come in and take some of that? Because once they're in, then you're fighting with them over workloads versus fighting with inertia. So it's almost like can you go into an account and suck the oxyg- oxygen out, right? And that's actually how I think PLG businesses do really, really well, right? Someone comes in, they, you know, they, they're dabbling in the product, right? And you as a seller, you're like, "I'm gonna go market that internally at that account to all of the other people and pick up all of the other use cases and secure, secure that, that, the borders of that," not to be too American.

Harry Stebbings 42:10 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 42:10 But secure the borders on that account from anybody else. It's like Risk, right?

Harry Stebbings 42:16 [laughs] Trump would be proud. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 42:19 [laughs] No. But, but, like, you think about, you think about going and securing, securing your land in that account so that other competitors can't come in. You see, I saw this with Snowflake and Databricks, right? Snowflake would own everything, and then Databricks would get one small foothold somewhere, and suddenly now they're fighting over the same workloads, and someone's gonna win

Becca Lindquist 42:37 that.

Harry Stebbings 42:37 How do you build internal champions within businesses? What's your biggest lesson?

Becca Lindquist 42:43 Okay, so if you actually ask anybody, uh, on my team, uh, I hope that they don't listen to this because they're gonna groan. I, I will oftentimes just sayOkay, who, do you have a champion? And they're like, "I have a, I have a, yeah, I got a, this person's my champion." I'm like, "What are the three characteristics of a champion," right? And all of them know it's they're selling for you when you're not in the room, they have access and influence over the EB, and they have a personal win. If you focus on those three things, right, if you, if you focus on honestly just the personal win, like, yo, why are you doing this?

Harry Stebbings 43:12 The personal win is they personally gain from your tool benefiting their company.

Becca Lindquist 43:17 Yeah. So, like I'll give an example of, of, um, a champion of Clay at a, at a company that, that we all would know. [clears throat] Her win is she's like, "Hey, I'm becoming the AI person. I teach this AI course at the university in this large city, and I'm talking about how I'm using Clay and I'm building my personal brand, and like I kinda wanna get into like venture and investing and advising companies on AI, and like I'm leveraging what I'm doing with Clay to show that I'm that person." And I'm like, "That's an, that's an incredible personal win," right? Um, at dbt like you would talk to folks and you'd be like, "Yo, why you, why you care so much about this? This is just data transformation." And they'd be like, "But I wanna be the data guy. Like, I wanna be the guy that owns the entire data stack and does all this cool shit. And then when I leave this company, I can go to another company and be the data guy and come in, you know, a higher salary, get more equity," whatever. If you focus on that, if you could get, if you can get to that, you probably have a champion and like they're probably gonna go to war for you and they, and, and if, they have to have the other two things.

Harry Stebbings 44:26 Becca, I'm one of your reps. Um-

Becca Lindquist 44:28 Mm.

Harry Stebbings 44:28 I'm sorry, Becca. It's, it just slipped to next quarter. I know I said this quarter.

Becca Lindquist 44:32 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 44:32 I know I said this quarter, but Mitsu-

Becca Lindquist 44:34 That never hap- That never happens

Harry Stebbings 44:35 Never happens.

Becca Lindquist 44:36 No.

Harry Stebbings 44:36 But Mitsubishi, they just, ah, it just slipped to next quarter. What do you say to me?

Becca Lindquist 44:41 Well, I'd start with why. Why did it slip?

Harry Stebbings 44:44 Honestly, they took longer to get back to me than I thought-

Becca Lindquist 44:47 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 44:47 ... and we just didn't get it over the line in time.

Becca Lindquist 44:48 Ah. Here's, here's a big one. Uh, oh, uh, this actually happened to, to one of my reps. "Oh, uh, you know, the, uh, I didn't know how many approvers needed to sign this big expansion. The signer is actually the CEO of this big company. He's on his island in Hawaii. Fuck." And I'm like, "Okay, well, like let's, let's break this down. Is there someone internally that could have told us that?" Yes, probably, right? So then did we talk to that person? It's like, did you talk to that person? Did you ask the right question? 'Cause they're, those are two different things, right? You might be talking to the right person, but you just didn't think to ask the question, and they didn't think to tell you 'cause their job is not to buy software. It's to... Sometimes it is. Fair procurement, right? Um, and then I go to, "Okay. Well, who's your champion? Do you have a champion?" And oftentimes what I'll hear is someone mistaking a coach for a champion or a person who's dabbling in the software as a champion. They assume it's the champion versus I always use this when I say like, "And what have you seen with your two eyes that tells you that this person's a champion," right? That they have those three attributes. What have you seen with your two eyes? And people make fun of me, but they remember, right? And now they've gotten better at it. So, like I, we, we just opened a London office. I was talking to, to one of the GTMes out here, and she was like, "Oh, well, yeah, yeah, he's a bad champion." I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on here," right? And you kind of have to be meticulous and like kind of an asshole about when people say like, "Qualify champion." I'm like, "No, no, no. It's, it's binary," right? Like, if you're a bad champion, is it, you're really your champion?

Harry Stebbings 46:20 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 46:21 Right? You're either a champion or you're not a champion. Like, let's be really clear about it, and if you're, if you say they're a champion, what have you seen with your two eyes tells you that they're selling for you when you're not in the room, they have access and influence over the EB, and there's a personal win, right? It's, it's pretty simple. If you don't have a champion, you're probably not gonna get a deal done, or if you get a deal done and you're like, "I didn't have a champion," you had a champion. You just didn't know that they were your champion, and you probably didn't do the best job.

Harry Stebbings 46:43 When we sit down and we do postmortems and we do like collaborative forecasting on what we've done-

Becca Lindquist 46:51 Mm-hmm

Harry Stebbings 46:51 ... and what we've got ahead of us-

Becca Lindquist 46:51 Mm-hmm

Harry Stebbings 46:52 ... how often do we do that?

Becca Lindquist 46:53 Uh, every, every week on Thursdays, every one of my frontline managers goes and does a forecast call with their team, and they either do it as a team or they do it individually. I actually don't care how it gets done, but I do care that you're sitting down with your rep and saying, "Okay. Walk me through what's the pain we're solving," right? And then it's like, okay, what metric is attached to that pain? And then who gives a shit about that metric? Are we talking to them, right? Like, these types of questions that help us understand do you have control of the deal? Is the deal in the right stage, right? Are we, are we making assumptions? Do we need to go back and actually... You get to the end and something happens and you're like, "I have a bad champion." Well, actually, you're back here and you skipped a couple steps, right? Let's just be real and move it back there now and go do the work to actually build the right deal. So we do that once a week. I do that with my frontline leaders on Fridays, and the way that I do it is I just model the behavior that I want them to be doing in their forecast calls, and I expect that they're in the deals in the same way that like I'm running a couple deals with reps, and it's a lot of fun.

Harry Stebbings 47:58 What are the biggest mistakes sales leaders make in forecasting?

Becca Lindquist 48:01 I think it, it, at the frontline, not being in the details, not being in the deals with the rep. So, like, uh, I'll give an example. I talked about John Dalton earlier. I- John Dalton is like one of my favorite people. I, I would love to work with John Dalton for the rest of my life. Um, he also lives in Santa Barbara, is very chill. John Dalton, if you asked him, "Hey, what's going on with company," he knows because he's in the deal with the rep doing the work, showing the rep, "Here's how you do a good deal. Like, let me teach you how to run these types of deals." He's in the deal, so he doesn't need to look at his notes. He's like, "Yeah, this happened. This is the immediate next step that we're doing to get to the EB or to, you know, we have a call on Friday to talk about all the approval processes and the signing process," versus, you know, you might ask, uh, you might ask Stacy, right? "Hey, what's, hey, what's going on with company?" And she's like, "Ah, let me check, let me check my notes. Ah, the last update..." And I'm like, I can read the update in Salesforce, right? This, the, the, the rep has specific, we have a specificLike, standardized way of writing your next steps. I can go read that too, but what are, what is your perspective on the deal? Are you in the deal? And like, not every frontline manager can be in every single deal, so you have to choose which ones are the most important, right? And it's usually a factor of like, how tenured is the rep? How, like, how good is the rep? What are we trying to develop with them? Is it a high-profile deal? Is it a great logo that we know we can go and expand? Is it the biggest deal, right? Like, there's a, you know, you, however you decide, you decide. Um, but that's probably the biggest mistake that I see for frontline leaders.

Harry Stebbings 49:35 We get that big logo.

Becca Lindquist 49:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:37 I'll never forget what someone told me on the show once. You never want your farmer going against someone else's hunter. How do you think about the maintenance of that-

Becca Lindquist 49:45 Ooh

Harry Stebbings 49:45 ... relationship with the rep-

Becca Lindquist 49:46 Mm-hmm

Harry Stebbings 49:47 ... who's a hunter-

Becca Lindquist 49:48 Mm-hmm

Harry Stebbings 49:48 ... versus like handing off to cushy, cushy nice CS.

Becca Lindquist 49:52 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 49:53 And then one of your competitor's hunters-

Becca Lindquist 49:55 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 49:55 ... is going-

Becca Lindquist 49:56 'Cause they're competing-

Harry Stebbings 49:57 Pray

Becca Lindquist 49:57 ... for the same workflow-

Harry Stebbings 49:58 Yeah

Becca Lindquist 49:58 ... in your account because you didn't secure the account.

Harry Stebbings 50:01 And you've got cushy CS who's now like-

Becca Lindquist 50:02 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 50:03 ... oh, softly, softly, and the hunter's going ...

Becca Lindquist 50:05 I mean, look, there's, uh, you're kinda getting into the, the question of like, wha- what's the model of the go-to-market team, right? And like, I've been in models where you do a full handoff. I've been in models where you do a handoff, you keep it for 12 months, whatever. My favorite model is you sell the deal, you're renewing the deal, you're comped on net dollars. So what that does is that incentivizes the rep to have, to sell a good deal, right, and protect your unit economics. Someone on John's team sold the deal that was slightly above list price, right? Wow, they had a much easier time than the rep that discounted 40% and is trying to go and claw that back now, right? Um, so it, it helps protect the unit economics because you know that you're gonna have, you wanna go and expand that. But two, you sell a shitty deal, you're gonna renew that shitty deal, and you're probably gonna take some churn or contraction, right? And like, that's actually the model that I love because it incentivizes you, the hunter, to go and secure the border in that account, right? And not let anybody else come take your workflows.

Harry Stebbings 51:04 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 51:05 Uh, and you look at, like, a Snowflake or a Databricks, that's their model, and it's because they're competing over workflows in the account. It's the same for us.

Harry Stebbings 51:13 You, you said about like, oh, the discount and then you gotta make it up over time.

Becca Lindquist 51:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 51:17 Discounting is a great way to stop what I said earlier about, oh, it slipped into next quarter. It encourages urgency. I'll give you a discount if you sign.

Becca Lindquist 51:24 Ugh.

Harry Stebbings 51:24 We, we, we don't like discounting at all. We don't-

Becca Lindquist 51:26 I, I think that's a shitty way to incentivize people. Here's why. Uh, I, someone said this at, uh, when I was at dbt. This was a long time ago. We were talking to a buyer, and they just, like, straight up called us on it. They were like, "Is my money not green on April 1st?" And I was like, "Fair play," [laughs] right? Like, I think everybody knows at this point that if I'm giving you a discount on, you know, the last day of the quarter, it's, it's, um, you're probably gonna be able to get that same discount on the first day of the next quarter. And like, when we, we, we buy software, right? Like, I don't know, the rep was like, "Hey, I can only do this if you do this by next Friday." And it's like, actually, I don't give a shit about your timeline. I need this software today, so like, yeah, I'm gonna move fast because I need like, you know, we bought like a, a forecasting tool, right? Like, I need this because I have no control over the business. I have no visibility into what's happening. Like, I need this more than you need to sell this deal. So like, sure, I'll take your discount, but like, we're gonna try to get this deal done before next Friday, right? So like, if you find that, that's why I'm like, what's the metric that we're attached to? Who cares about that metric? Now go talk to that person and say, "Hey, how do I help get this in your hands faster?" And if they say, "I don't really care about it," you probably, you know, you probably skipped a step. Let's go back and let's, let's figure it out.

Harry Stebbings 52:40 You said you buy software. I am friends with Jason Lemkin from SaaStr.

Becca Lindquist 52:44 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 52:44 And he's like, "I just got rid of a lot of my team, including a lot of my sales team, and we have AI SDRs. We have Artisan, we have Qualified, we have Monaco now."

Becca Lindquist 52:52 Oh, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 52:53 Like, fuck, I don't need them. I'm doing-

Becca Lindquist 52:55 Ah, maybe not

Harry Stebbings 52:56 ... I'm doing more, I'm doing better-

Becca Lindquist 52:57 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 52:57 ... with less. How does the world change with AI SDRs? Are SDRs dead? Is outbound dead?

Becca Lindquist 53:05 Absolutely not. No way. So, so it's funny, people, people ask this question. Uh, when, when I first started Clay, they were like, "Oh, uh, yeah, SDRs, what's your perspective?" And I was like, "I'm building an SDR team. I'm building a Clay DR team," right? Because outbound will never be dead. You can't reach every single company and every single buyer with whatever marketing you're doing. Or if you do, it's less efficient, right? It might be efficient when you're, you know, when you're trying to generate $40 million of pipeline because you have a, I don't know, 10 or $15 million revenue target. But like, when you get into having to build, you know, a quarter billion dollars of pipeline, like, it's actually probably a little bit more efficient to just put some, you know, hungry, scrappy 24-year-old on the field, pay him, you know, a certain amount of money, and say, "Go run at these accounts," right? That's the first thing. The second thing is like, hey, you don't have an SDR team. Who the hell are you gonna promote into your, [laughs] into your closing roles? It's really, it's, it's, it's completely de-risked if you have an SDR that you're promoting. Those are the best people.

Harry Stebbings 54:10 So outbound is not dead.

Becca Lindquist 54:12 No. Outbound is not dead.

Harry Stebbings 54:14 Should AEs be responsible for pipeline generation?

Becca Lindquist 54:16 Everybody should be responsible for pipeline generation. Everybody owns pipeline. I'm out here, we, we have a, uh, we call it Clay Day on Tuesdays. You might know it as its former name-

Harry Stebbings 54:26 Yeah

Becca Lindquist 54:26 ... PG Tuesday.

Harry Stebbings 54:27 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 54:28 Every Tuesday, I ask my team, "Hey, who can I reach out to for you?" Right? "Who can..." We have, you know, we have a whole channel called multi-threading requests. Who can Varun, who can Kareem, who can our chief of staff, Julia, who can she have our VCs reach out to for you, rep? Because everybody should own pipeline generation to help make the rep successful. That's it. And like, it's, it's funny, you know, uh, it's so funny that, like, just the same message coming from a different mouth-

Harry Stebbings 54:59 Totally changes everything

Becca Lindquist 55:00 ... it, it, yeah

Harry Stebbings 55:01 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 55:01 It gets, it gets a completely different response. And so, like, I encourage people to think about it. The, one of the GTMUs that I was talking, talking to, um, out here in London, you know-Tuesday rolls around, we kick off Clay day. I'm like, "Hey, what's working well?" She's like, "You know what? I'm just doing the basics. I take an account and I think about what are all of the ways that I can go and, and make contact with them. So is it a VC? Is it me? Is it you? Is it our partners," right?

Harry Stebbings 55:28 You get a Sequoia partner to LinkedIn message a CEO-

Becca Lindquist 55:31 Yeah, dude

Harry Stebbings 55:31 ... 100%, there's an increased chance of that response.

Becca Lindquist 55:33 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 55:34 100%.

Becca Lindquist 55:34 100%.

Harry Stebbings 55:35 One, one of our portfolio companies, the CRO comes in every, uh, month-

Becca Lindquist 55:39 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 55:39 ... and gives me like the top 10 targets, and I just go with them to the CEOs on LinkedIn.

Becca Lindquist 55:43 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 55:43 I have a blue check mark and lots of followers on LinkedIn. I get like-

Becca Lindquist 55:46 Very important

Harry Stebbings 55:47 ... No, very important.

Becca Lindquist 55:47 Yeah, I heard, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 55:48 Very important. Channing shit on LinkedIn.

Becca Lindquist 55:50 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 55:50 Uh, nine out of 10 respond.

Becca Lindquist 55:52 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 55:52 Uh, they're like one out of 10.

Becca Lindquist 55:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 55:54 Totally different. I completely agree with you.

Becca Lindquist 55:56 That's right.

Harry Stebbings 55:56 So yes, 100%. You said about, really interesting, everyone at Clay is a social media star.

Becca Lindquist 56:03 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 56:04 Do you encourage your reps to be public online? We had the head of growth at Lovable on, and she's like, "The best form of marketing is employee-led marketing."

Becca Lindquist 56:14 Yeah, yeah. I, I think, uh, we... I, I tell people... I, I need to be better at this. Like, I need to follow my own advice. Like, we do really cool shit at Clay. So, like, I'll give an example. Um, you can, if you work at Clay and you wanna try out a new AI tool, you can just go into a channel and say, "Can I have a ramp card to try this tool out?" And they'll give you a ramp card, like no questions asked. They'll, you're like, "I wanna try this AI widget. Can I do it?" And they're like, "Yeah, get after it," right? Versus like a lot of other companies are like, "Ooh, that needs to go through-"

Harry Stebbings 56:50 Needs years of approvals

Becca Lindquist 56:51 ... "Oh, it needs to go through our AI council, and they need to evaluate it, and we'll get back to you never. How's that?" Right? And so, like, things like that, I'm like, "Whoa, hey, you should actually post about that," because one, that's something that no other company is doing, and anybody who's out there and sees that and is currently rotting at their company, they're like, "Holy shit, I wanna do that," right? Um, we do a lot of, you know, we talked a lot about like the cultural things that we do that are, that are fun, right? I think that it should have some sort of learning or training. Hey, I'm getting better at my job, right? Like, I think, I think that's a great way... Like, that's kinda modern marketing.

Harry Stebbings 57:24 You said AI doesn't change SDRs, it doesn't change outbound. What does it change?

Becca Lindquist 57:29 Well, I wouldn't say that it doesn't... I, I didn't say it doesn't change it. I just said it doesn't replace it.

Harry Stebbings 57:34 Hmm.

Becca Lindquist 57:34 Right? I think about this, like, if I can... And, and this is like my thesis with the Clay DR team is like, let's say, uh, let's say 20- 2018, um, uh, an SDR can book, I don't know, in a, in a given month, say they're booking 15 meetings.

Harry Stebbings 57:49 Mm-hmm.

Becca Lindquist 57:49 Right? If I can arm that rep with Clay and a, you know, a Claude seat, maybe a Lovable seat, I don't know, I can tool them with some sort of AI stack, right? And now they can book 40 meetings a month. I'm gonna say, "Yes, please. Thank you." Okay? Now I wanna grow my team of SDRs from eight to fucking infinity, right? Because I see a ton more productivity. Anybody that's like, "Oh, well, you know, we're just gonna cut our SDR team in half," I'm like, "Hmm, okay. That's an interesting move," right? That's a, that's a scared play that you're making because you're saying, "I can get the same productivity for half," versus saying, "I can get this productivity and now I'm gonna go multiply that into infinity and take all the space, all the oxygen out of these accounts."

Harry Stebbings 58:38 Unless you... Well, one assumes that you need the SDR for part of the work, and the other assumes that you can replace it entirely and just hand off to an AE. If, if you think you can replace it entirely and just hand off to an FD, you can get in infinity with-

Becca Lindquist 58:53 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 58:53 ... one tool.

Becca Lindquist 58:54 Uh, well, I think, how many, how many businesses do you think out there can actually replace the entire SDR process-

Harry Stebbings 59:01 None

Becca Lindquist 59:01 ... and just hand it off to an AE?

Harry Stebbings 59:02 Uh, right now, none.

Becca Lindquist 59:03 Right?

Harry Stebbings 59:03 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 59:04 So it's like, okay, you're gonna have, you're gonna have some number of SDRs.

Harry Stebbings 59:08 What's been the best AI tool that you've brought into the company from a sales perspective?

Becca Lindquist 59:12 I don't know that I have particularly found the AI tool and brought it in.

Harry Stebbings 59:16 Okay.

Becca Lindquist 59:16 But here's, here's like two tools that we use pretty aggressively. Like, everybody uses Lovable, everybody uses Claude, right? Like, I was talking last night with a bunch of, a bunch of my team about like, you know, on the plane back to, to New York, I'm probably just gonna look at the Claude saved projects and just like steal a bunch of ideas. Um, the two tools that I'm obsessed with right now, Granola. Everybody's obsessed with Granola. Great... You know, they just rounded, raised a big round. Happy for them. Um, the other tool is Whisperflow. Had... Are you familiar with them?

Harry Stebbings 59:44 No, that's very personal. So, uh, Granola-

Becca Lindquist 59:47 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 59:47 ... and Granola, I was the first VC they met, and I turned them down. I sent my partner a note saying someone should set up a JustGiving page for them 'cause no one will give them money.

Becca Lindquist 59:54 Oh. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 59:55 Yeah, Chris is a-

Becca Lindquist 59:56 Well, they, they gotta think what, like, uh-

Harry Stebbings 59:57 Chris is, Chris is a, Chris is a friend of mine, and he basically came to me and he was like, "AI and notes, it's gonna be a thing." I didn't have any clue how, what, where, when, but like that's the thing. I'm like, I've been in Rome Research, I've been in all these-

Becca Lindquist 1:00:10 Oh

Harry Stebbings 1:00:10 ... you know. So that was-

Becca Lindquist 1:00:11 Do you know what, though? It's very objective. I did a reference call last night on my phone, and I used Granola to take the notes, and I just sent it to Varun and, and, uh, my talent partner. And like, it's like very cut and dry. There's like no emotion [laughs] in the Granola notes. And Varun was like, "This do- Is this a positive? Like, was this a positive reference?" And I was like, "Yes, it was glowing." And I looked back at the Granola [laughs] notes and it was like just objective like, "Yes, Sta- you know, Stacy helped me in this deal, like blah, blah." And I was like, "Okay, got it. I'll figure out a, I'll figure out a different process." So like they got some things to work on.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:41 And then Whisperflow, to be fair, I, I never had the chance to mess with them, but I, I loved them. I used them the whole freaking time. I never type anymore. Like never type.

Becca Lindquist 1:00:48 Yeah. I, I, I... Well, and, uh-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:50 The only thing that really annoys me on the phone is the toggle.

Becca Lindquist 1:00:53 Yeah, that is kind of annoying.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:54 It's so annoying.

Becca Lindquist 1:00:54 Especially if you don't have it open.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:55 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:00:55 So, hey, Whisperflow, if you could fix that for me, that would be really great.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:59 So annoying.

Becca Lindquist 1:00:59 Um-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:59 But I love that. I'm with you

Becca Lindquist 1:01:01 ... I, because think, I, I don't know if you have this problem. If I open up a, a new email tab and I just have a blank email, I get... I'm like, "Oh my God," like, "What am I gonna say?" If I can just press a button and say... Like, that's how I, I send out like a weekly update, and if I can just press a button, I sayYo squad, this is what's going on this week. Here's the numbers, here's the pipeline, like da, da, da. And it does the whole thing for me, and I just hyperlink the shit.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:25 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:25 I'm like, "Ah."

Harry Stebbings 1:01:25 And you can add it a little bit if you're like-

Becca Lindquist 1:01:27 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 1:01:27 ... "Ah, I didn't wanna say like..." Yeah, yeah. I have that too.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:30 It's, it's... So, so I think that that's-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:31 I find it better for hard emails, ironically, where like, you know, it's difficult to know what to type.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:37 And it's easier to know what to say.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:38 To say.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:38 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:39 Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if you know Bill Bench over at, um-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:42 Yeah. God

Becca Lindquist 1:01:42 ... Battery.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:43 I, I, I remember interviewing him when he was at Pendo.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:46 Oh, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:46 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:01:47 I, I, I, I have a ton of respect for him and like, if you've been an operator that long, like, God, you've got some thick skin. But he, he, uh, he, he'd said the other day, he was like, "No one's gonna type anymore. Like, if you're typing, you're behind. Like, you should be talking to your technology." And I was like, "That's a weird way to think about it. It's like a very futuristic Jetsons way to think about it," but it's actually true. Like, I don't type, I don't really type that much anymore.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:12 Never.

Becca Lindquist 1:02:13 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:14 I completely agree. But you haven't used the AI SDR tools to boost productivity. You're not pushing them.

Becca Lindquist 1:02:20 I mean, we use Clay.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:21 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 1:02:21 Right? We use Clay to supercharge our SDR team, right? Because, uh, if I can build a system that then tells the SDR where to focus, and then I can go train that SDR, let's go.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:34 Can I be a dick? It's not that intuitive. It's like, not that easy. I sh- I-

Becca Lindquist 1:02:39 What's not that easy?

Harry Stebbings 1:02:40 Well, I, I, I've tried... Varun and Bruno keep on trying to get me to do stuff. [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 1:02:46 Okay.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:46 And I'm s- it's a bit fucking complex.

Becca Lindquist 1:02:48 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:02:49 Like, I don't know where to start.

Becca Lindquist 1:02:50 Well, so actually it's, it's, uh-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:52 It's a, it's a bit of a blank page problem.

Becca Lindquist 1:02:53 That's right. It's the same problem, it's the same problem as Whisperflow and, and, and email, right? It's a spreadsheet. You open it up, it's a blank spreadsheet, so where do you start?

Harry Stebbings 1:03:02 Well, no, Whisperflow's like, just talk. I can't just like verbal diarrhea Clay.

Becca Lindquist 1:03:06 You can now. Well, you can't verbal, you can type diarrhea. Uh, maybe, yeah, you can use Whisperflow into Sculptor, which is like our, uh, kinda like, you know Clippy?

Harry Stebbings 1:03:15 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:03:15 From Microsoft Word.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:16 Yeah. Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:03:16 Right? Sculptor is like our little Clippy. You can say, "I'm trying," you know, uh, "I'm trying to find, uh, the, the 100 best Indian restaurants in London, and find out who their owners are, and what is their Yelp reviews, and what are people actually saying in those Yelp reviews is the best dish, and then craft me an outbound email saying, 'Hey, hey owner, I'd love to sit with you on Thursday and talk about whatever while we eat this dish.'" Like, you can put that into Sculptor and it will build the table for you. So you're actually not starting... 'Cause that, that was like, when, you know, when I was, um, when I was, I guess, interviewing or talking to Varun about joining Clay, there were a bunch of things that I was like, "Hey, and what about this?" Because like, my wife uses Clay, or like, you know, we bought Clay at dbt. Like, "What about this? This is a gap." And he'd be like, "Yeah, we d-" And I'd be like, "Yo, this blank, it is a blank page problem. How do you start that?" And he was like, "We're actually building-"

Harry Stebbings 1:04:10 Dick comment. Is that not Claudified? Like, is that not something that Claude would just do?

Becca Lindquist 1:04:16 You could probably use Claude to say, "Hey, give me the top 50 oil companies in Austin."

Harry Stebbings 1:04:20 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:21 Right?

Harry Stebbings 1:04:21 Find the, find the-

Becca Lindquist 1:04:22 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 1:04:22 ... CEOs of all of them.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:23 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:23 Get me their email for each of them.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:25 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:25 Actually, OpenAI will fuck you on that one straight away.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:27 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:27 They're like, "No, we don't provide emails."

Becca Lindquist 1:04:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:04:29 No, no, no.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:29 Well, I think that-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:30 Well, that was fucking useful.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:31 Yeah. But, but think about it. One rep could do that. How do you do that when you have 100 reps, right? What do you do? How do you scale that out? How do you add in something new and iterate on it? That's... A lot of people, we talked about my favorite phrase, the Claude spookies, right? Like, "Oh, why doesn't Claude just do that?" It's like, "Hey, have you ever tried to like, get 100 people to do something different, to change something, to iterate in the same way that you iterate?" Good luck.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:56 Yeah, it's hard.

Becca Lindquist 1:04:57 'Cause we're still humans, right? We're not bots yet, so.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:59 I, I, I totally get that.

Becca Lindquist 1:05:01 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:05:01 Listen, I could talk to you all day. I wanna move to a quick fire round. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

Becca Lindquist 1:05:07 Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll do, we'll do our best.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:08 Okay. So what's the worst hiring mistake sales leaders make?

Becca Lindquist 1:05:12 Uh, focusing on the last company that they were at and if it was a playbook company or not. So like, I'll give an example.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:17 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 1:05:17 It's actually interesting, you see, um, I don't know if you, if you saw, uh, Brian McCarthy just joined Cursor from Rubrik, right? Um, and, and actually, you know, I, I was texting with a friend last night. Uh, a lot of people are now moving from Rubrik to Cursor. Rubrik, very playbook company. Cursor, AI first company. And I, I have a ton of respect for those guys and all the, all the playbook folks, and like, I think what they've done and what they've taught the, the, you know, craft of sales is, is really, really valuable. It's gonna be very interesting to see how they modify their playbook to be AI first, because I think there's a lot of parts that are still very relevant, right? But I think there's some parts that are gonna be thrown out, right? Like, uh, I'll give an example, like, uh, understanding entire business case before you do anything in the product or you show any value, like, you can't really sell that way in the AI space. So like, I'm very interested to see how that works, but like, I've worked for leaders in the past that, that they, they have a certain hiring profile, and they do not wanna deviate from that, even for high slope individuals. I think that that's, that's a mistake, because then you just get the same, you get 100 of the same kind of person versus people who are gonna actually push the envelope.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:27 What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

Becca Lindquist 1:06:30 Um, 12 months ago, I actively resisted using AI. I was like, "I think it's gonna make people dumber. I think that," you know, you, you see, you see some folks that just ask Claude the answer rather than reasoning about it themselves, and I was like, "Ooh, I don't love that." Um, o- obviously, like now I work at an AI company, so maybe, uh, [laughs] maybe I'm a hypocrite. But like, basically I went from saying, um, "Fuck that," like, "I'm not gonna use this thing," like, "I've got a brain and I'm gonna use it," to, "Okay, how can I, how can I offload some of the things?" Or like, "How can I teach Claude to think like me so that I have two of me and I can converse with myself and be my own thought partner?"

Harry Stebbings 1:07:10 Do sales teams have to be in person?

Becca Lindquist 1:07:13 Uh, in person with customers or in person in an office?

Harry Stebbings 1:07:15 In an office.

Becca Lindquist 1:07:16 I think that we get s- uh, I'm a five-day a weekerI show up to the office five days a week. I'm here in London for these four days. Tomorrow I'm gonna go to the, the office on Friday. Uh, I think that you get so much more when you're working in person with your team. Like, I get FOMO when I'm not in the office.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:32 Are you not pissed when you go in and other people aren't in? Like, Friday is the new holi- like weekend now

Becca Lindquist 1:07:38 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:07:38 Especially in Europe.

Becca Lindquist 1:07:40 I know, yeah. Tomorrow's Easter-

Harry Stebbings 1:07:41 Like, Friday is like work from home Friday?

Becca Lindquist 1:07:42 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:42 Fuck off.

Becca Lindquist 1:07:42 Yeah. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:07:43 It's not work from home Friday.

Becca Lindquist 1:07:44 Um-

Harry Stebbings 1:07:45 Like, I, I would never let ... Work from home Friday or Monday is basically, it's an extended weekend.

Becca Lindquist 1:07:49 It's a three-day weekend.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:50 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:07:50 I, I, I, uh ... Look, I don't track attendance, and, like, if you're a produ- if you're productive, you work from wherever. You get a little bit of flexibility. But if you're underperforming and you're not in the office, we're gonna have a conversation.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:01 What would you most like to change about the world of sales?

Becca Lindquist 1:08:04 I, I think everybody would say this. I think, uh, uh, people feel like they don't want to be sellers. So, like, you know, maybe you're a product leader and you're like, "Ah, mm, I don't really wanna go into sales," because it feels a certain way.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:18 Mm.

Becca Lindquist 1:08:18 I think that if people understood that, like, "Hey, we're not just, we're not just, you know, making 150 cold calls a day and indiscriminately trying to s- sling our, our product." Like, "No, I actually thought critically about your business, and here's how I can help you." I wish people would, would view sales more like that, but I, I understand there's a lot of us out here.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:36 When is the right time to verticalize sales teams? You said about critically thinking about a business.

Becca Lindquist 1:08:41 I'll tell you how we're thinking about it at Clay. Um, we're gonna spin out a, a small new verticals team, and the reason that we're doing it is because we don't, we don't have a, a complete understanding of, like, the, the, the data coverage or the data sources. Do we have them? Do we have the right coverage? We don't have a motion of where we land, what's the story that we tell. So I think when you're, when you're trying to enter a new vertical in a concerted way, that's when it makes sense. I also think when there's some sort of, like, expertise that you need. So, like, you know, everybody has a finance vertical, or they hire someone in Detroit to, to sell to the big auto companies, right? If there's some sort of, like, differentiated expertise-

Harry Stebbings 1:09:25 Yeah

Becca Lindquist 1:09:25 ... I think that makes sense. Here's where it doesn't make sense, is where, "Yeah, I've got my guy at JPMC and he just buys whatever." S- Like, that, that's dead. Like, the relationship type of, of sale of, like, "Well, I know all these people, I have this Rolodex," that's gone. Because I think today the buying cycle, the buying committee is not just one person. You have to have the product that can go and satisfy the needs of multiple people and multiple kind of divisions in a business.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:50 What ACV is justified for a sales rep?

Becca Lindquist 1:09:55 Ooh.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:56 So you see lots of PLG tools where they're super cheap, and you're like-

Becca Lindquist 1:09:59 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 1:09:59 ... well, they could expand-

Becca Lindquist 1:10:00 Yeah

Harry Stebbings 1:10:00 ... but they could not. Like, what's the-

Becca Lindquist 1:10:02 I mean, I, I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a math major, right? So, like, there's, there's a math equation in there that I, I don't know the intricacies of. Um, I'll tell you the ACVs that I'm less excited about as a sales leader. Anything below 20K, I'm like, "Why do you have a rep?" And, and, and if it's not, like, a very short sales cycle ... Like, I'll talk to some founders and they're like, "Our average deal size is 25K and our deal length is six months." And I'm like, "What are we doing here, guys?" Right? If you're spending that ... You're either spending way too much time with these folks, or you could add at least another zero and, and justify it, right? I ... You know, you talk to, like, HubSpot, and they're at the size where, like, yeah, they've got reps that are working, like, $9,000 deals, right? They're at a different scale, I think. So it's a-

Harry Stebbings 1:10:48 And they can do it light touch with a lot at the same time.

Becca Lindquist 1:10:50 Yeah. Right?

Harry Stebbings 1:10:50 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:10:50 And they're like, "Our average ... You know, we, we do a three-call close and it's $9,000 MRR, and, like, we're just focused on logo acquisition because we know that we can go double those." Okay, cool. That makes sense from a business perspective.

Harry Stebbings 1:11:01 What's your favorite win story of a deal?

Becca Lindquist 1:11:04 I worked on a deal with, uh, a rep at my last company. Uh, it's a large bank in Australia. It's one of the Big Four banks. And they ... One, we, we, we had a, we had an EB. She was the chief digital officer, chief data officer, um, and she just fucking got it, man. Like, she was, she was, um, uh, maybe a little bit earlier in, in career for, for, like, a, a C-level role. Um, she was super innovative. She would come to us and she'd be like, "Yo, I'm checking out these other tools. What do you guys think? How do they play? Like, does this story make sense?" So, like, it was almost like working with a friend that was, like, really smart that was putting together their data stack. The use case was the coolest though, which is they were using our product, uh, to basically create new derivatives, uh, that they were gonna sell to my, my fra- my, you know, my, my classification, um, poor rich people, people who had between $10 million and $50 million of net worth. And they were gonna launch 10 of these products, and they were expecting each of those products to generate $100 million for them. And I was like, "Wow," like, "you've crit- like, you've thought about ..." Like, we, we kind of uncovered all that and helped them build the business case, but, like, it was something that was, like, a very intricate use case that had a huge financial impact, and it was just a, it was a fun team. I actually ... My favorite deals are not the biggest deals, it is the deals where, like ... I'm, I'm working on one right now with, um, with one of the GTMEs on my team, and, like, I show up to the calls and, and, you know, we have our plan. We know what we're trying to do. We're like, "Hey, we need, you know, we need to drive these steps." But, like, the people on the other end of the phone are, um, two women who, like, have their shit together very clearly, and they're like, "We need to make a big change in this company, and, like, here's how we're thinking about doing it. You guys have done this with other people. Are we thinking about this the right way?" And I'm like, "You're thinking about it exactly the right way, Christie. Like, you're doing great."

Harry Stebbings 1:13:06 What's the biggest deal you've ever closed?

Becca Lindquist 1:13:08 Me personally?

Harry Stebbings 1:13:09 Yeah.

Becca Lindquist 1:13:09 It was a, it was, uh, $1.1 million for three years, so it was, you know, like 3.3 TCV, uh, with a large financial services company.

Harry Stebbings 1:13:20 Love it.

Becca Lindquist 1:13:20 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:13:21 That's a good day.

Becca Lindquist 1:13:22 That's, it's a good day.

Harry Stebbings 1:13:23 What's your biggest advice to a new parent?

Becca Lindquist 1:13:27 [laughs] Uh, the, the best advice to a new parent ... Actually, my wife and I talk about this all the time. Um, if you have a rigid schedule, then the kid can be off schedule. If you don't have a rigid schedule, you're like, "The baby eats when the baby eats, the baby sleeps when the baby sleeps," no way to get off schedule, no way to, like, feel down about yourself, feel down about the kid. You just go with the flow.

Harry Stebbings 1:13:54 [laughs]

Becca Lindquist 1:13:54 Makes your life a little easier. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:13:55 Mark An- Mark Andreessen would call that ˈretard micing.

Becca Lindquist 1:13:57 [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:13:58 Let, let, let, let life do its thing, and you're like, "You know what? It did its thing."

Becca Lindquist 1:14:02 You know? Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:14:02 It did its thing.

Becca Lindquist 1:14:03 Sometimes, yeah. There's a little bit of that in there. [laughs]

Harry Stebbings 1:14:04 I love that. That's amazing. Listen, it's been so fun to do this. Thank you so much for being so amazing, and I've loved having you on.

Becca Lindquist 1:14:10 Thank you for having me. Really enjoyed it.