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Steve Goldberg: Core Questions All CFOs Ask Today When Buying | E1094

Click here to claim the offer http://liveflow.io/20sales and elevate your financial game today! The first 10 people who sign up via the link will get 20% off for 3 months. ----------------------------------------------- Steve Goldberg is the Chief Revenue Officer at Salesloft, the sales engagement platform that was acquired by Vista in 2022 for $2.3BN. Prior to Salesloft, Steve was Group Vice President of Enterprise at Yext and before that was a Senior VP @ InsideSales.com. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (00:47) Falling in Love with Sales (02:23) Understanding Customers Deeply (03:58) Sales Call Recommendations for New Reps (05:32) Identifying Genuine Buyers (08:38) Spotting Talented Employees on the Rise (11:42) Conducting Effective Deal Reviews (15:30) Decision-Making in Employee Performance (17:48) Assessing Grittiness in Interviews (22:48) Changing Roles of CFOs in Business (27:31) Delegation Strategies for Growth (31:05) CEO Involvement in Sales Closures (32:20) Developing a Sales Playbook (37:17) Building Teams Based on Buyer Needs (42:35) Balancing Urgency in Sales Cycles (46:37) Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Steve Goldberg: 1. Becoming a Sales Leader: When did Steve first fall in love with sales? Why does Steve believe sales is more psychology than anything else? What can sales reps do to master the psychology of their prospects? What does Steve know now about sales that he wishes he had known in the beginning? 2. How to Close Prospects Faster Than Ever: How does Steve build relationships with prospects very fast? What questions does he ask? How does Steve know if he is really speaking to a buyer? What are the signals? How does Steve advise sales reps on getting multiple relationships within an account to prevent the potential of losing your champion? How does Steve feel about discounting? When is the right time to do it? 3. How To Do The Best Deal Reviews: What makes good vs great deal reviews? Who is invited? Who is not? Who sets the agenda? Who is responsible for what? How do deal reviews change throughout the quarter and throughout the year? Is a deal slipping into the next quarter an acceptable excuse for a sales rep to give? 4. How to Ensure Renewals in a World When They are Not Guaranteed: Have all budgets centralized back to the control of the CFO? Are people right to say that no CFOs are buying new technology today? What is the best way to show to customers the value you provide? Why does Steve believe revenue operations is the most valuable role within an org? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Steve Goldberg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Salesloft Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #VentureCapital #SteveGoldberg #Salesloft #harrystebbings

Steve GoldbergguestHarry Stebbingshost
Dec 13, 202355mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:47

    Intro

    1. SG

      The market has changed from a nurturing market to a performance-driven market and that's happened probably over the last six to nine months. (alarm sounds)

    2. HS

      Has budgets completely retreated to CFOs and are CFOs shut for business?

    3. SG

      Yes, budget, everything goes to the CFO but no, they're not shut down for business. Every renewal is a new deal. The first question my CFO asked me is, "What if you didn't have it?" And that's what every CFO is asking. I think rev new ops is probably the most valuable role in a company.

    4. HS

      What do you think rev ops gives you so much of?

    5. SG

      I would say...

    6. HS

      Steve, I am so excited for this. I've got off a couple of reference calls now that just said what an absolute fricking hero you are, so thank you so much for joining me today. (laughs)

    7. SG

      Absolutely. I, I was really looking forward to it and, uh, um, I'm really curious to hear what you have to say actually.

  2. 0:47 – 2:23

    Falling in Love with Sales

    1. SG

      (laughs)

    2. HS

      Well, I mean, listen, we'll, we'll save the 40th birthday party for later. I wanna start, I think there's often a moment where someone like falls in love with sales. When did you first fall in love with sales, Steve?

    3. SG

      I didn't even know I fell in love with it. It just kinda naturally happened. I was a psychology major in college and I was a sports psychology major, and I played, uh, baseball through college and I was a catcher. And as a catcher, your job is to kind of manage the field, manage the team, manage everybody's momentum and motivation and, and so I had to go onto the pitcher's mound a lot when the pitcher was down and kind of bring him back up, and I was just so fascinated by, by psychology. And I didn't realize how important psychology was in the business world until I actually got into sales. And I always thought sales had a negative connotation when I was growing up and, and when I first got into sales, I was afraid to say I was in sales because of that negative connotation. And then at one point, I realized that, "You know what? I'm gonna embrace this," because salespeople are problem solvers and they help your customers solve their problems, which makes your customers at the end of the day look really good and hopefully get promoted and move through their career. And there was this one gotcha moment where I was, uh, I was actually working with Gateway Computers and I was up there and I walked in there saying, "You know what? I am... I, uh, I'm in sales and I'm here to sell you something, but I'm here to help you solve your problem." And it just, I embraced it and I realized that, at that moment, that salespeople are problem solvers and they're psychiatrists, they're psychologists, and I, I just fell in love with it from that aspect.

  3. 2:23 – 3:58

    Understanding Customers Deeply

    1. HS

      It's really interesting though 'cause actually David said to me beforehand that one of your greatest skills is knowing your customers. And so I guess my question to you is, how do you get to know your customers so well? What questions do you ask? How do you unveil what they really need?

    2. SG

      Well, there's a business side and a personal side, and you also, you always have to understand everybody's business motivation and their personal motivation, and more about what motivates them in work and outside of work. And once you understand that, you understand more about them, more about their personal life, their professional life. You really can help just relate to them and what they're trying to do and how you're gonna help solve their problems both, both personally and professionally. And I just always look at like especially... I always look at what their personal win is and what their professional win is.

    3. HS

      How do you find out what their personal and professional is? Do you, do you ask them? Like-

    4. SG

      You ask them. You just... You have quest- you have conversations. You naturally just have conversations. Really quickly, I think one of the things that I've been able to do is I could pretty quickly tell like people's body language, people's kind of where their head's at. Like, you do the research, you follow them, you research them, you understand like what they talk about, maybe a little bit of their background, where they went... if they went to college, where they went to college, did they play sports, what sports team did they like, you know, wha- where they're from. And where people are from, where people grew up, you just kind of figure out how to correlate with them, and, you know, it's just one of those things where I've just naturally always been able to kind of dig into it and get to the personal side of the relationship.

    5. HS

      It's funny. I had Chris Deignan on the show, who's CRO at Snowflake, recently,

  4. 3:58 – 5:32

    Sales Call Recommendations for New Reps

    1. HS

      and I can't remember the number. When you get to my age, Steve, memory is not quite what it used to be, but I think it was eight or maybe four, one of the two, four or eight. But he said four or eight calls with new prospects is all that you can do as a rep per week if you really want to be prepared and ready. Do you agree with that or do you think in the early days for young reps, it's about volume, it's about at-bats, reading as many people as possible, just go, go, go? How do you think about that depth breadth?

    2. SG

      So for one thing, Chri- Chris Deignan's a really good friend of mine. Chris Deignan is my brother's best friend. They were, uh... He was the best man at my brother's wedding, both my... Chris and I were, and, uh, um, I spent... And Chris has spent many, many nights on my couch when we were growing up when he was moving out to San Francisco, and, and a perfect example of Chris, s-... You know, Chris went to University of Delaware with my brother. Chris is from Massachusetts, he's from Lincoln-Sudbury, he's from, um... He played... I believe he played... might have played lacrosse there and he was... And I just... You know, p- him and I started off at Aerotek together and, um, then he went DMC and, and so going back to your previous conversation, I just... I've known Chris for a long time and I think Chris is a phenomenal person and he's just a good person. I don't know about how many you can make 'cause I think it's all about quality, not quantity, and if you make two but they're very quality, and the next week you make two more but it's quality, it's really, really important. And so I just think you gotta be smart, you gotta do the research, you gotta understand who you're talking to and what you're talking to them about to make sure that you're catching them at the right time.

  5. 5:32 – 8:38

    Identifying Genuine Buyers

    1. SG

    2. HS

      I, I totally agree in terms of catching them at the right time. You also need to make sure that you're speaking to a buyer. How do you know if you're speaking to a buyer, Steve? And I did have a schedule but like, this is far too enjoyable, so fuck it. How do you know if they're a buyer and how do you get there?

    3. SG

      So one, one thing I always look at, especially when we're building our internal sales process and our structure around our processes, when you're selling to somebody within a, a large organization now, if you sell to a, an enterprise company, like a large enterprise company, they're politicians. If you sell to a smaller SMB commercial company, they're operators.And there are two very different ways to sell to them. I try to put myself in not only their shoes, but the people's shoes that they're actually selling to within their organization to get something done, and if they're respectable enough that the people, like a CFO, would listen to them-

    4. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SG

      ... and how they would be perceived within their company. And one of the questions I always ask my sales team is, "The person you're selling to that you think is a buyer, typically, especially in this day and age, they're not a single sole buyer that they make all the decisions. They have to go to many different people."

    6. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SG

      And when the CFO is putting pressure on them or their CEO is putting pressure on them, how are they gonna take to that? Are they gonna commit to it? Are they gonna say, "I'm willing to commit to more because I'm, uh, 'cause I'm gonna consume this technology or this service"?" And you can very quickly realize in that process if they're truly a buyer or not, or what part of the buying process they go through, or how they need to get other people to help make decisions.

    8. HS

      What are signs that someone's not a buyer? Where would you be like, "Oh, oh, oh, Harry, we've got a sign that, that we may need to go through someone else here"?

    9. SG

      Well, one, if they tell you they're the buyer. People who usually tell you they're the buyer, th- they typically aren't.

    10. HS

      (laughs)

    11. SG

      (laughs) And, and if they tell you, "Don't talk to anyone else. Just talk to me. I can, I can navigate through this myself," because you've gotta be able to work together in... So, no, let's, let's talk about an enterprise company right now. A lot of enterprise companies at the beginning of every year, people switch roles. So if you're selling to a very large enterprise company, you could be the CIO one day, and then next year you could be the CRO. They move roles quite a bit. Or if you're the CMO and you've been there for, say, four months and, you know, you're, you're, you're actually on your way, you wanna, you wanna break some things, you wanna try some things, you're kind of in the honeymoon, so you can actually take that chance. You gotta look at a company and how often they switch people's roles in the organization, and what the tenure of that role typically is. And if they're, they're two years into a role as a CMO, they might not have as much power as they did when they were, like, a year into that role.

    12. HS

      Why, why is that? I thought you would have more power as time accrues because you establish yourself more, you're maybe more successful, you've proven yourself. No?

    13. SG

      Well, not all the time. I mean, that's why you have to look at, um, what ... We have to look at the culture of the company you're selling to, and the typical time people are in a role. There's always people that ... And remember, politicians in very large companies are always trying to find their next way up. So you've gotta find people that are on their way up, not on their way out.

    14. HS

      For sure.

    15. SG

      And it's really important to navigate through that when you're selling to these larger companies.

    16. HS

      How do you

  6. 8:38 – 11:42

    Spotting Talented Employees on the Rise

    1. HS

      find someone who's on their way up, not on their way out?

    2. SG

      You could tell by their behavior. You could tell by how they communicate. You could tell by how they talk. You could tell by their body language in a meeting. You could tell by, if you're in a meeting with them and other people, are they actually showing authority in that? Are they controlling the conversation? Are they controlling the meeting? And, and it's just, uh, you know, if you think, if most people out there, they, they look at the deals they've done, the big deals they've done, they've always had a change agent in there that's driving through the process, that's-

    3. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    4. SG

      ... navigating through their own process. And, and you just gotta l- you gotta look at that person. And I think what David told you earlier on was that I was able to always figure out where the true champion is in an organization-

    5. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SG

      ... and where the two, true change agent is in the organization. And that is really where the art ... It, it's hard to teach that to a lot of your salespeople. When you talk about med pick and you talk about medic, a lot of people check boxes there. You can't let them check boxes. You've gotta be able to ask the questions, like I'm, we're talking about right now, to ensure that that person really truly is a champion of change.

    7. HS

      Sorry, is the champion always the changemaker? Is sometimes the changemaker separate from the champion? Do they differ sometimes? Is that like a chief innovation officer and, like, a CFO-

    8. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    9. HS

      ... or are they often the same profile?

    10. SG

      No, it's, it's could be a very ... It could be a director in certain accounts.

    11. HS

      Huh.

    12. SG

      It c- it could be a senior director. You know, you may ... The economic buyer could be the CFO, but the change agent could be a senior director of revenue operations who wants to be a vice president or a senior vice president, who wants to make a mark on something 'cause they believe it so much that they're gonna drive it through the organization because that's their next promotion.

    13. HS

      Is it a good excuse, if I'm one of your reps and I say, "Steve, it, it was gr- uh, we nearly had it, okay? We nearly had it, but then our champion left. I'm really sorry. It wasn't my fault our champion left." Is that not our fault and it's an externality, or is that you should have known? Is it a good excuse to have a champion leave to lose a deal?

    14. SG

      No, it's not a good excuse because you k- there's never just, like, one champion. There's multiple people as part of the process. You know, part of it's, it's always never the seller's fault. We talk about why we do deal reviews, why we have first-line managers to really coach and manage their people. You do that so you minimize the surprises that happen at the end, and you've gotta naturally always be looking and always have these conversations with people, going back to what is their personal win. If you go back and understand what this person's personal win is, you'll start to get a sense of how long they're gonna be at that company or not. If they trust you as ... Remember, salespeople, the negative connotation versus, "I'm a problem solver." "I'm here to help you get to your next role." And if they trust you, they may open up to you and say, "Hey, look. I'm not gonna be here that long. I'm thinking about moving on." Like, you've gotta build that trust in these relationships. If not, you will get surprised. You will get surprised. And in that case, I d- I never say it's your fault, but, you know, bad news doesn't, never travels better with age, like wine.

    15. HS

      (laughs)

    16. SG

      And you've gotta really, you know, suss that out early and go with your gut.

    17. HS

      I remember

  7. 11:42 – 15:30

    Conducting Effective Deal Reviews

    1. HS

      Dev at MongoDB, the CEO there, told me the m- best thing ever. He said that different types of news travel at different speeds. Good news travels fast, bad news is very slow (laughs) . I thought that was a really good piece of advice that I, that I always remember. You mentioned deal reviews there, Steve. I'm a total novice here. I'm a first-time founder. How should I do deal reviews? How often should I do them? What makes a good versus a bad one? Can you help me understand how to do deal reviews well?

    2. SG

      Yeah. So, so one, it's, it's really the, the first-line manager needs to own the deal reviews. They need to own the process. My job is to design and architect the overall system that people work within. So if I'm asking my-... second line and third line managers five questions, they need to be asking their teams the same five questions or the same 10 questions. Their deal reviews are different at different stages of a quarter, for an example, or different stages of a year. At the beginning of the quarter, you're gonna be asking a different set of questions, 'cause you're really gonna just try to get an understanding of what's happening. But the whole goal of deal reviews are to understand like why not something is gonna happen, but also understand how do we actually untie knots. 'Cause managers' m- job and my job, my job is to un- help untie knots.

    3. HS

      Can I just pause on that? Just, I wanna make sure that I don't miss stuff, which is great. (laughs) When you say at the beginning of the quarter it's different, we wanna understand what's happening, what are we trying to understand and why? Are we trying to understand it for forecasting, for projections? Help me understand our objectives on what we're understanding and why.

    4. SG

      Well, we're, we're trying to understand power. We're trying to understand, one, do we truly understand the problem we're trying to solve? Do we truly understand what our unique value proposition is in that process? And has the buyer bought off on that or has... And then, then you go through the med pick process and understand like what do we know, what don't we know. And med pick is really just a qualification process.

    5. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SG

      And the goal at the beginning of the quarter is to understand what you don't know. You look at org charts. But by the middle of the quarter, at some point, what I usually lock in on, and by the middle of the quarter, we have to have agreed-upon mutual plans in place and alignment on how we actually get to the end of the quarter, and then we have to measure that nonstop to continue to track all the activities that needs to happen. But obviously you're gonna close business early in the quarter as well, but if you've got that process in place every quarter, then you're gonna have more consistency in actually closing business and not just waiting till the end of the quarter.

    7. HS

      What makes a bad deal review?

    8. SG

      When people aren't being honest.

    9. HS

      Do you know when they're not being honest?

    10. SG

      That's the goal of enabling... That the first line manager is the most important kind of aspect of any process, because they're the ones that have to be having the one-on-ones weekly and daily. They're the ones that be al- have to be able to understand that. So when I do deal reviews, not only do we do deal reviews with the sellers, but I also do deal reviews separately with the first line managers and then you triangulate.

    11. HS

      How do they differ with the sellers versus the first line managers?

    12. SG

      Well, you talked about Dave Vernitsky for an example. Dave Vernitsky is the master at forecasting, the master of fore- I've worked for Dave for probably 10 years, and he had his forecast call every Friday at 10 o'clock. And you had to be prepared for that meeting, 'cause he would go through every opportunity and he'd go through every one and he'd have seller notes, next steps, and manager notes next step. And he'd be like, "All right, Steve, this deal, talk about it, tell me what's going on." And I, he'd go into so much detail and if he figured out what there was a gap, he would just dig into that gap, and then we'd, we'd move on. And so I would do the same thing with my team and then they would do the same thing, 'cause I couldn't show up unprepared. So what it does was it really minimized surprises. He would go through the month, every deal in the month, in... every deal in CTP, every deal in, in best case, in every deal in, uh, in, in long shot.

    13. HS

      How many

  8. 15:30 – 17:48

    Decision-Making in Employee Performance

    1. HS

      chances do you give people, Steve? In an ideal world, and I don't mean this arrogantly, but everyone's like me and you, and what I mean by that is fucking machines. (laughs) Uh, sadly, not everyone is a machine or not everyone knows that 10 o'clock Friday, you gotta be on. How many chances do you give people when it's not quite there?

    2. SG

      The, the market has changed from a nurturing market to a performance-driven market, and that's happened probably over the last six to nine months, and it was really hard to drive that process in place because people wouldn't like to be asked questions, for an example.

    3. HS

      (laughs)

    4. SG

      But you, uh, we still drove that process, and in my experience when I grew up, I was at Siebel and I was at Salesforce. If you showed up once and didn't have it together, you maybe got invited back twice, but there was no third time if you didn't have it. And, and that's just the environment I grew up in. Now, the market's not like that as it is today, but the expectation and the discipline that is getting back to that model, like, the market is getting back to driving that process, and a lot of the people that have grown up in this industry over the past, say, five to 10, seven, eight years, they haven't seen this.

    5. HS

      Are they ready for it, Steve?

    6. SG

      I don't think they are. I think there's a set of-

    7. HS

      Okay.

    8. SG

      ... people that are. I think there's a broader set of people that are not. And you can see it when it doesn't work out in your Glassdoor reviews, for an example. If you're saying you're gonna be a performance-driven culture, you've gotta be a performance-driven culture and you're gonna get some challenging Glassdoor reviews out there. You're gonna get people saying some negative things. But you've gotta commit to it, and you've gotta commit to that process. But if you're consistent with it, and you have to have integrity, you don't treat people poorly, you treat people with the utmost respect in this process, but you've gotta be able to ask some questions, because to your point earlier, it's really not okay when you get surprised towards the end. It's really not. And if it happens once, okay. It happens twice, now you start to get some consistency in the same people that are missing it multiple times. Then you gotta start looking at the first line managers like, "Well, how are you missing this?"

    9. HS

      Can I ask you, when it comes to those people who have what it takes in that performance-driven culture, who thrive-

    10. SG

      Yeah. (laughs)

    11. HS

      ... on that chase and the unwillingness to accept losing and that, bluntly, grit, how do you test for that in interviews? How do you see it in someone before you hire

  9. 17:48 – 22:48

    Assessing Grittiness in Interviews

    1. HS

      them?

    2. SG

      I'm from Massachusetts. I'm a-

    3. HS

      (laughs)

    4. SG

      ... Patriots fan. I'm a Bill Belichick fan. I know it's not probably the most popular thing to say right now, but what, what he does, cuz, just 'cause he hasn't really changed with the times recently, but the people that he recruits and that he brings onto the team are typically, um, people who have a lot of grit. They have a lot, like, they were captains of their s- programs, or they were, you know, really kinda leaders in school and, um, and they were really competitive. And so, one, you've got to really look for grit, and what we do in our interview process, one of the most valuable things, are we do top grades with everybody.And in a top grade, we'll spend, um, two to three hours with you. And we'll have you walk us through your life. Walk us through the decisions you made in elementary school that you can remember. You, you got to be a freshman year and you, you know, you decided... Say you had a coach and you decided you were a quarterback and you decided, "Hey, I'm, I'm gonna go be a receiver." Well, walk me through, like how'd you make that decision? And then, okay, so now you're in college, you went to this school. Why did you go... Like you, you had two, two decisions to make, why'd you go here versus here?

    5. HS

      What do you want to see in asking those questions?

    6. SG

      I wanna see how people make decisions. I wanna see people's thought process for how they make decisions. I wanna see if people could be consistent and they don't just give up. They don't just give up, they actually have grit and they are out there to like, you know, they're, they're obsessed with winning and they're very competitive. And we... You naturally, you look for trends that people make throughout their life and you look for consistencies. And, um, it's been really helpful because you can really start to assess, you're just looking for trends. And then, then you look at their career, for an example, and if they jumped around like, "Tell me why you left this role to go to this role? Tell me why... Okay, you started off as an SDR, you were there for nine months and then you went to another company to be an SDR. Well, well why didn't you wait? What happened? How'd you make that decision?" Then you start to look for trends of, uh, scenarios and you can start to assess. And what, what you see is when you, when you miss, you can look at backwards and people that didn't work out at your company, the same trends that you caught, they've... maybe you admired the problem in the, uh, in the interview process and, you know, you, you were just trying to fill a street quota and you didn't, you didn't get in deep enough.

    7. HS

      It's so funny you say that about kind of bouncers as like people who move between roles a lot. The other thing that I look for is like superfluous statements without data. Like if you say, "Hey, I increased, I don't know, uh, MQLs by 300% across these three channels through these three, uh, methods." And then, "Oh, wow. That's like data to prove but, you know, attribution." What other signs for you are like, "Ugh. Like, that's not good. They don't have that."

    8. SG

      Um, well everybody back channels. In an interview process, like a lot of people don't understand why they didn't get the job because people back channel. 'Cause everybody... You know, you know people, you grow up through people and somebody will that- will also so back channel because we may know people they worked with or people that knew people, and we'll back channel to be like, "Hey, is this accurate? Tell me a little more about so-and-so and how do they handle this situation?" And so you really have to, uh... You can't just take people's word for it. You've gotta really back channel to make sure that, um, you know, you, you could validate everything that, that someone's telling you.

    9. HS

      Steve, do you do case studies as part of the hiring process?

    10. SG

      We don't but that's actually, that's actually a good idea. We actually don't.

    11. HS

      Why don't you? I always think it's kind of... Uh, the hard thing is do you do a case study on your company or on their company? There's pros and cons. But why don't you-

    12. SG

      Why don't you mean do they present a case study?

    13. HS

      Yeah. Like do they-

    14. SG

      Oh, yeah.

    15. HS

      ... do a similar pitch and present?

    16. SG

      Yeah. No. But you gave me an idea that I... where I thought you were going was do we do case studies on people that we brought in and follow on like two, three years down the road or maybe, maybe a year down the road how they're doing, and I think that's actually a good idea. I'm gonna actually look into that.

    17. HS

      Well, thank you. I didn't actually mean that. But you can, you know, uh, yeah.

    18. SG

      You're welcome.

    19. HS

      Totally give me credit-

    20. SG

      Thank you for asking.

    21. HS

      ... for that. Thank you, Steve.

    22. SG

      Um-

    23. HS

      Uh, no, I mean like actually like, "Hey, sell me this pen."

    24. SG

      Yeah. We, what we do, what we do is case studies for an example. So we'll have them come in and do a discovery, 'cause our business is very big on discovery and making sure you clearly understand the problem you're solving, especially in this day and age. Like you have to be solving problems. People don't buy features, they solve problems. And it has to be the biggest problem, the top three problems a company has. So we go through a process where they have to do a discovery call with a sales leader, a couple of sales leaders, and really go through that due diligence, and then come back and present the unique value problem, the business case, and, um, how they would... and, uh, and also the how. A lot of people focus on the what, we also make... we also have them present the how. Like, "How are you gonna help us get to that problem and how are you gonna help us solve that problem? Not just what you're gonna do to solve that problem." And, and so we, we absolutely go through that. It's a big part of our process.

  10. 22:48 – 27:31

    Changing Roles of CFOs in Business

    1. HS

      You said there, especially now, you need to be solving your top three problem. Everyone says two things. One, budget has completely retreated back to the CFO, and then, two, CFOs just aren't buying new technology. So two questions. A- Has budgets completely retreated to CFOs? And are CFOs shut for business?

    2. SG

      Yes. Budget, everything goes to the CFO. But no, they're not shut down for business. We, we actually just did the biggest, one of the bigger deals in the company history just very recently. And back in the financial crisis in 2008, when I was at Salesforce, we did some of the biggest deals in the, in, at the time, in the company history at that point. When you have problems and there's change going on, people solve big, big problems, and they will solve it outside of their budget cycle. But you've gotta really, truly make sure that you're solving really big problems. And by the way, every renewal is a new deal too. You have to treat every renewal... 'Cause every renewal is going to the CFO. The first question my CFO asks me is, "Something's up for renewal is, what if you didn't have it?"

    3. HS

      Can I... Sorry. Does this mean that vitamins are dead and that only painkillers survive?

    4. SG

      Yeah. Which is going back to the previous conversation around high-performance cultures, is that it's, it's so... 'Cause companies are doing more with less. A lot of companies out there have restructured. Big companies had tons of overlays that can help kind of talk about features and functions. They really don't anymore. Smaller companies have minimized their street quota and lowered their targets, but they're putting more emphasis on doing more with less and, um, really-... focus a lot on enablement. You have to be able to truly enable your teams. Like, our, our view is, and our, my CFO talks about this a lot, is this year is about getting better, next year is about getting bigger.

    5. HS

      (laughs)

    6. SG

      And you gotta get better with a core group because great people wanna be surrounded by great people. Great people wanna be around people that are like them, and building that culture and instilling it into them around making sure that we're truly solving the biggest problem a company has, number one, and number two, you found the change agents or, in a, in an organization that wanna, wanna make change.

    7. HS

      Do you not think they're slightly conflicting when you think about that? So better this year, building a more efficient, more, uh, kind of high-velocity machine, better, and then bigger, more people, more revenue, more this, more this, more... They're kind of conflicting, aren't they? To assume you can maintain better while bigger is, I even think, realistically impossible.

    8. SG

      Well, let me, let me give you a couple of examples of that. So, you know, like, you ever been on a beach and it looks beautiful? The sun's setting, tide's in, looking outside it's like, looks beautiful, right? Looks incredible. Then all of a sudden, the tide goes out, and now you're looking at the, you know, the sun's down, but wow, there's a huge reef over there. Oh my God, there's a shipwreck over there. Like, look at all those rocks. I had no idea those were there. Well, that's what's happened this year. You have to change your process. And so what we found, for an example, two things that we did this year. So we have a commercial business which is about one employee to 750 employees, and we had a hunter/farmer model in that commercial business where we had sellers would sell a deal and they would own it for a year, then they'd pass it off to an AM who would just farm. And in the past, they were, people were just adding on 100 licenses every year because they were growing at huge rates. But what happened in the past year was that these account managers were just hanging out with the same people that they sold the original deal to, and instead of buying 100 licenses, they're like, "I only have 50 people at the company now." So we saw a lot of downgrades, so we shifted to a hunter/hunter model and we shifted our process and we basically told our account managers essentially that they, everyone's, we had, we had to change the profile of a salesperson, of an AM, to a hunter, and everybody had an interview for their role, and we opened it up to the outside and, and their job... When we took the renewal away from the AM, we moved it to a renewal manager in CS. We are now calling a account executive who owns new logos. Three months they all own it, maybe a couple they can keep. Then right away they pass it over to a client account exec whose job is to build relationships across the organization to sell, find new use cases that they can sell into, not just hang out with the same people. So we went through this whole process change this year because the old, old way was not working. We were just getting downgrade after downgrade, and a lot of it was because we weren't selling into other use cases. We were just hanging out with the people we sold to, and they were just, they didn't have as many people to support.

  11. 27:31 – 31:05

    Delegation Strategies for Growth

    1. SG

    2. HS

      I love this detail. So we have this, uh, you know, hunter. They sell, three months, great. How do you do the handoff of, "Hey, meet enablement CS manager who you've never met before. They're gonna own this relationship now. Good luck." How do you do that?

    3. SG

      That's the second thing we changed. You have to bring the CS team into the selling process. Remember I talked to you about the what and the how?

    4. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SG

      The CS team is the how. So you bring them into the pre-sales process so the customer can feel comfortable with the customer journey and how you're gonna make them successful, and they've got the confidence in that. So they know what they're buying into early on, and then we build these production environments 'cause we're in a very competitive market, our market is. Everybody says they kinda do the same thing with similar value props, so we have to go in there and say, "All right, we're gonna build this production environment and we're gonna align to a use case. We're gonna build out the business case, and then we're gonna put it in production and show you exactly how we're gonna do this." So you're gonna understand what it's like to work with us even before you're a customer. And our, our win rate and attach rate to that is, is pretty, pretty incredible, actually, as we go into this year. So we made all these changes this year, and I've heard some of, you know, other CROs talk about, you know, the handoff and they do it after the implementation. You've gotta do it, you've, you've gotta do it as part of the early selling process. What makes us unique is our ability to make our customers successful, meaning they get to the specific outcomes they're looking for, but it's so hard to show that in a sales process. So you've got to actually show that. You gotta ex- You got... They gotta see what it's like to work with you.

    6. HS

      Dude, you ever chatted to Chris Deignan about CS? He goes, "You know what I did when I came into Snowflake? I got rid of all CS. No more CS. I don't believe in it." What do you think of that?

    7. SG

      I've thought about this, actually, um, a while ago. And look, every business is different. Like, his business could be different than my business. I mean, they, they're more on the data side, we're on the workflow side. And we've, we've gotta help our... We have to integrate with our customers' business processes so they can get to specific outcomes, and we've got to integrate with a couple, with different systems. We have multiple use cases that we, uh, constantly have to work with. We gotta leverage AI and insights to show them how they're doing. And in our world, I think the, the, the skill set of a CS person is different. The skill set is... When I, we were at Salesforce back early on in the day, we created this customer success manager. We were the only, we were the first companies to do it. It hasn't changed since then. It really hasn't. They're really... A, a lot of s- customer success organizations are, are really a first line for support because they're hanging out with the people. Remember, I told you about. They're hanging out with the people that they sold the first product to and they're just answering questions. They're not able to be proactive, they're not able to get strategic, they're not able to help them get to these outcomes because they're just solving how-to problems with, like, the admins and the operations people. And so I think what Chris is talking about doing is that...He, he probably believes, and I believe this as well, that a lot of times when things aren't... when you're losing customers is you lose access to the buyer, if you... you lose access to the people in power. 'Cause you do a deal, you're up here, all of a sudden, you're implementing it, now you're kinda down here. And then when it's implemented, now you're down here. You've gotta stay up here. You've gotta stay across the organization, so in that case-

    8. HS

      How do you s- how do you stay up there?

    9. SG

      You gotta change your process. You gotta change your profile of the people you're bringing in. Like, what I was expla- the way I was explaining to you is that you've gotta change the profile of the people you're putting into those, into those roles.

  12. 31:05 – 32:20

    CEO Involvement in Sales Closures

    1. SG

    2. HS

      Do you still need CEOs to close big deals? You said about coming in up here. Do CEOs need to come in to close large six-figure deals or seven-figure deals?

    3. SG

      Well, one, CEOs should never be our VPs. They should never be the ones that are actually closing deals.

    4. HS

      Huh.

    5. SG

      That- that's- that's my job. What they... CEOs should give the customer the confidence about our vision and what we are doing as a company. I'd never like to put my CEO in a position where he's actually having to c- he or she is having to close business. Their job is to align with others, maybe CEO and other executives, to give them comfort that they're making the right bet on the right company. They- they should not be closing business. But I strongly believe when you do big deals, when you do big deals, they buy into your company. They buy into your culture. They buy into your innovation. They buy into what you're doing. And you've got so many tentacles within your organization that they buy into you. And it's kinda called the shiny penny in a way. You become the shiny penny of each other's companies and everybody rallies around them. So it's not just the CEO. It's multiple people in the organization. It's aligning CFOs. It's aligning chief technology officers. It's aligning chief product officers. And it's aligning CEOs, and that's the job. It's the connections.

  13. 32:20 – 37:17

    Developing a Sales Playbook

    1. SG

    2. HS

      So, you- you'll understand after this question why I'm asking it. What's a sales playbook to you, Steve?

    3. SG

      I think it's different in each segment. It's different in terms of if you're selling into a commercial business or you're selling into an enterprise business. It's gotta be designed and architected into those businesses. It is the kinda gravitational pull that you wanna drive within your process to make sure that the sales process is set up so everybody... so it's outta your wheelhouse, so everybody's competing with you. And it's gotta be consistent in how you do it, um, and it's gotta be very tactical and very strategic. And so my job is to architect those across an enterprise business and across a commercial business and make sure that... You know, you wanna give people some of the flexibility, like their managers some flexibility, but they've gotta work in your framework.

    4. HS

      Okay. Steve, I need your help on this one. I believe strongly something, uh, many others disagree with me on this. We have very different views. The founder should create the sales playbook. Do you agree with me or do you think the sales leader should create the sales playbook? The first one.

    5. SG

      The first one, you mean as a startup company?

    6. HS

      As a startup company, they need to create the sales playbook. What's your messaging? Who's your ICP? How do you sell to them? What's the pricing? V1 needs to be

    7. SG

      It's funny. I had a conversation with our previous founder, Kyle Porter, who was phenomenal, phenomenal person. And he was so passionate about our company and our product and our features. And him and I would talk about this a lot, and he'd say, "Steve, what I realized when you and I met was that I can convince one person to do anything about my product. I can convince one person that our product is the best product ever. But what you help me do, help us do as a company, is convince multiple people in a company that we can solve their problem and it's great for them and they gotta move down the process." And so that was kind of an aha moment when I got here. We were about, you know, $50 million in revenue and, and, you know, we got there early on by just being so passionate about what we do. And... but we didn't have a process. We were really great about talking about our product and our functionality, and we were a product company at that point. We weren't a platform. And we've shifted now to be more of a platform, and it- it's a very different sell. So when you sell a product, what I found is most founders are so passionate about it, and passion gets you to a point, but at some point, you gotta get to a point that you need a, you need a process. Most founders are very passionate with what they do, maybe their product exp- they're- maybe they're more on the product side or more on the marketing side or more on the industry side, but not many have, like, the experience in a go-to-market and, like, in building, like, an enterprise company, an enterprise process, and I think that's a much different world where you need, like, rev ops and enablement and you need to put, like, infrastructure in place. And I don't think that most founders have that experience.

    8. HS

      I know it's different for different segments, I know it's different for different companies, but just baseline bastardize it for me. Rev ops enablement. When's the right time to hire your first in each? $10 million in revenue, your first, you know, massive logo. When's that trigger, Harry? (fingers snap)

    9. SG

      Well, I- I think revenue ops is probably the most valuable role in a company, and you're gonna start to see the evolution of rev ops be- moving into the CRO world, uh, when you start bringing data and science together. I think you wanna hire an analyst, like, a really good analyst early on at about, say, five million, to really start to analyze your processes, 'cause a great CEO, v- very passionate, but they gotta be able to make decisions based on data, not just based on gut. By five million, you're gonna start to use some data and some AI, that you can start to incorporate some AI, so you wanna hire a really smart analyst. And as you grow to $10 million, maybe two analysts. When you get to $20 million, you're gonna need someone who's got some management experience, you know, kinda seeing that ship around, uh, really building a strong kinda rev ops organization. Um, rev ops, to me, I- I couldn't survive, uh, without a great... I've had an incredible rev ops leader.

    10. HS

      What do you think rev ops gives you so much of?

    11. SG

      The blind spots, is that they're constantly looking at the data.... and analyzing the data to understand where their blind spots are.

    12. HS

      Can you, can you give me an example? Sorry, I know it's detailed, but I'm just trying to understand what, what is an example of a blind spot that a good rev ops team will give you?

    13. SG

      One of the reasons that we changed our processes that I just talked to you about earlier is that we were starting to see based on our data that we were seeing more churn 'cause of the way our processes were set up where the AMs were seeing more downgrades but they weren't seeing cancellations. They were seeing more downgrades of users just downgrading in certain segments of the market, so in like companies that we were selling to, tech companies that sold to other tech companies. So we saw that and we had to stop that trend right away, so we, we started to change our processes around a set of data that we saw in the market quickly. That- that's one example.

  14. 37:17 – 42:35

    Building Teams Based on Buyer Needs

    1. SG

    2. HS

      On enablement, I had Henry Schuck, the CEO of ZoomInfo on the show, and he said that actually kind of aligned to what you were saying there about kind of downgrades but not cancellations. He was saying years past people would just upgrade more, more seats, more, more seats. Great, wonderful world to live in. Now not only do they not upgrade but they want data on usage. "Prove to me that you're valuable in my org. Show me usage, show me whatever that is, transactions, requests, whatever we want." Are you seeing a change in how you structure your team to service the requests of buyers?

    3. SG

      Yeah. You have to be very proactive about it. You have to i- it g- it goes back to the skillsets you put in the, the post-sale side so they can start to look at data to show their customers the insights and the value that you're creating for them. And remember, the CFO's the buyer now for every renewal. If you don't, if you're not showing them insights around business value then you're not gonna be renewed.

    4. HS

      Do you do that continuously throughout the year?

    5. SG

      We've changed our whole adoption strategy to outcomes versus adoption because nobody cares if I come to you and say, "Here's how many log-ins you have. Here's how many activities you've had." What you wanna know is, "What has my pipeline metrics been and how am I coming in every quarter to my pipeline targets and what are my outcomes around revenue that I'm driving with your platform?" And so we've changed our whole adoption metrics to outcome metrics and we know all the leading indicators that get to outcomes and we designed health scores around every single one of our customers. And we could see, be proactive when it triggers from a green to a yellow and what created that, that will all of the sudden start to drive w- leveraging our platform workflow and, and, and activity and thought leadership and content out to them and the CSM will follow right up once we see something change.

    6. HS

      You said activity, thought leadership, content. Is that ABM, like, "Hey, here's actually like marketing material that kind of fits you and kind of could be interesting," or is this like deep analysis on your business use case?

    7. SG

      It's deep analysis on their business use case and it's deep analysis on where like if w- they get stuck on a three-step cadence but they're not running it through a five-step cadence and we see if that's happening. If we see some integrations are off, we can get really proactive and fix them proactively. And then we have these EBRs that we run every quarter with our customers and we have processes in place on how we do that and we meet with... That's how you get higher in the organization. We meet with, you know, the leaders in the organization and show 'em the insights of what they're doing with recommendations on how to improve.

    8. HS

      What's your biggest advice? As you mentioned with SalesLoft, it's bluntly it's a noisy landscape and there's a lot of people who say they do the same thing, the product messaging and marketing's quite similar in a lot of cases. What would be your biggest advice to founders who are in noisier markets where a lot of people say the same things?

    9. SG

      You gotta focus on the how and you gotta stay maniacally focused on the how. And you gotta talk about what, how you are delivering for your customers. A lot of companies focus on the what. W- you just talked about, there's a lot of what out there. Here's what we do. Here's our value prop. Here's how we do that. Focus on like what you're delivering for them and how you're gonna help them, but you gotta prove it. You gotta show them every single day. And you've gotta be maniacally focused on showing them the how, 'cause a lot of people just focus on the what. And, uh, and you gotta, goes back to solving the right business problem but you gotta constantly be in front of them showing them how you're helping them, how you're helping them hit these targets, how you're helping them solve the problems not only when you get the deal done. When you get the deal done the relationship just starts.

    10. HS

      Steve, I get, I get you. I love the how. I love the how. But, you know, X competitor, they're gonna give me a 20% discount. It matters nowadays. My budgets are tight. How do you feel about discounting? Is there a right time or should it be a flat no always?

    11. SG

      So, no, it should never be a flat no, but I, I care more about what's in the rela- in the contract than how much they're paying us. Meaning, like in our business being a workflow platform, there's consulting capabilities that we need to bring into the process. There's, there's, uh, prom- like support and services pieces in there, and I wanna make sure that the relationship is set up so they can be self-sustaining and that we can integrate truly into their workflow. So I care more about that, and procurement cares a lot about I wanna see what my per unit price is. They wanna understand like what their per unit price is. So we can work with them on making sure we fit within their budgeting cycle, but I care a lot about making sure the customer's set up for success because I will come... W- we're w- we're negotiating many, many deals right now, or all the time, and my point to them would be, "Yeah, you may look good because you got this per unit price down, but in six months from now when your business unit comes to you and says, 'Well, I'm not getting any value out of the product,' then how are you gonna feel then?" And so we've gotta figure out and meet somewhere in the middle because yeah, we'll make sure we give you the right structure that's in place. I always try to get and I coach my team on you, you always wanna like... You don't want any winners or losers in these negotiations. You really wanna try to avoid that, and you don't want any take it or leave its. You wanna work with them to figure out at the end of the day how you can both feel good about the relationship. Because when procurement leaves, when the buying leaves, you're focusing on helping them be successful and, you know, you, you wanna kinda get through the contract but you don't want a bad contract to dictate a, a bad relationship.

  15. 42:35 – 46:37

    Balancing Urgency in Sales Cycles

    1. HS

      You focus a lot of, on relationships. Like you hear this time and time again in the way that you speak. Something that I find goes against it is like how do we encourage urgency in a deal cycle? How do we encourage urgency, like close, close, close? And it kind of just feels like it goes against the solving Steve's problem. How do you balance between that needing to close and urgency of closing in a quarter with, "I get it, Steve. It may not be optimal for you to sign right now. You've got this big thing happening. Have another week"? How do you balance that urgent with the personal?

    2. SG

      I, I think there's a respect component of that where you build relationships and you're working towards a moment in time where you gotta have a tough conversation. And you, you don't wanna have it to be a surprise. You don't wanna ever do anything unnatural. But at the end of the day, you know, we do work in months and quarters and there's gonna be times throughout the relationship that you're gonna ask me for something and I'm gonna ask you for something. Right now what I'm asking you for, not to do anything unnatural, but if you can do it in this timeline, we'd appreciate it. Now you don't have to, but we would really appreciate it. But that's why the mutual plan is so important so you're not just having to do something unnatural and throw a Hail Mary at the end of the quarter, end of the month. I mean that happens in ce- in certain cases but if you align on the deal reviews and the process and the structure, you're having these conversations and you're aligning toward the plan to be able to do something in, in a timeline that works for both of you. And it, you know, the, you talk about compelling events and how do you back in a compelling events and, you know, I think that's also really important. But at the end of the day, that's wh- I do think relationships matter because a procurement person, if they're told what to do by the buyers, they'll, they'll work towards those dates. I think you've got to have those relationships 'cause you're gonna win and lose a deal 100 times before you actually win it. And you're gonna feel like you lost the deals

    3. NA

      (laughs)

    4. SG

      ... but you gotta be okay with that. But you gotta pick it up every day and you gotta figure out how to bring it back together 'cause you're gonna lose it three or four times during the day and, you know, you've just got to be able to pick it up. And if you don't have those tentacles, you go back to CEOs the day after closed business. What's really important is that you're not single threading an account and you've got your managers and all the different people w- I call it te- selling as a team sport. The, w- our organization has never been in an environment where it's here's, here's your territory, go read me the news. Uh, we make the news together and so it's a team sport. We sell together. So very rarely do we have a deal that we only have one person in there because there's gonna be a point that you've gotta go and have the tough conversation and you can't be afraid, you can't admire, you can't be afraid of it. And in some cases things need to get uncomfortable before they get comfortable.

    5. HS

      Are you comfortable having uncomfortable conversations, Steve?

    6. SG

      Very. I mean-

    7. HS

      (laughs)

    8. SG

      My job is to untie knots. That, that's my job.

    9. HS

      Have you always been that way or did you learn it over time?

    10. SG

      You know, what I've learned was that you, you can't be afraid to have the tough conversation. You just, you can never be afraid because if you don't have it, then, then some- somebody else will. And or, or you just won't, you won't get to the objective. You gotta, you gotta leave it on the field. And th- this is where you gotta balance things out. Like I've had some of the best sellers in the world when I was a first line manager. They were the best relationship people, the best. But they couldn't close because they couldn't have the tough conversation. So my job as the RVP in that case was to have those tough conversations and to leverage their strength and leverage my strength. And so you, you need that balancing act. You need, you need to just tee in.

    11. HS

      Can you learn to have hard conversations? I suck at it, Steve. I just want people to like me. (laughs)

    12. SG

      (laughs) Well, people will like you. Just because you're having a tough conversation doesn't mean they're not gonna like you. You know?

    13. HS

      Yeah. But it's easier when you're just like Mr. Nice Guy. You know, being everyone's friend, it's easier.

    14. SG

      I mean, look, some, some people will never be able to have those tough conversations. Some people won't wanna have it. Um, and it doesn't mean that they're not, that they're not good at what they do. It's just this is where you may need to tee it up so someone else can have that tough conversation.

  16. 46:37 – 55:24

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. SG

    2. HS

      Steve, listen, I could talk to you all day. I do wanna do a quick fire so I'm gonna pepper you with questions. You're gonna give me your thoughts. How does AI impact the future of sales, Steve?

    3. SG

      AI is gonna make people smarter and it's gonna bring information to them so they have better insights on how to have smarter conversations with their customers.

    4. HS

      Will AI replace RAPs, RevOps, enablement?

    5. SG

      I mean, who knows what it's gonna be five, 10 years from now. I look at my kids and what they do and how they interact with technology and I think there'll be parts of the market that it does replace, like maybe more some of the transactional business. Uh, maybe some of kind of inbound capabilities. But I think we're a bit away from that. I think people are gonna be over rotating in some cases and they're gonna learn. Kind of like the IVR. Remember we used to call an IVR and you'd be like, "Press one." And you'd speak into the, the phone and it was really, it wasn't the best experience. Um, I think there's gonna be some of that. But, um, I, I do think over time it will, but I think it's the, our philosophy and my, my view is it's gonna give you better in- insights on what to do next.

    6. HS

      Tell me what sales tactic has not changed over the last five years.

    7. SG

      Solving business problems. I think it's, uh, you still have to be able to, you always had to be able to solve business problems.

    8. HS

      What sales tactic has died a death?

    9. SG

      The adage of let's go golfing and let's go and hang out on the weekends and go and kinda all those things are just like not as ... I think people look at their time and I think that that's changing a bit in terms of like all the, the different lunches and, you know, the, the golfing and those things have changed.

    10. HS

      Sadly no Taylor Swift concerts on the horizon. Um-

    11. SG

      Maybe.

    12. HS

      If you ever fancy it, I'm, I'm here. You know, right here.

    13. SG

      Yeah. Of course.

    14. HS

      Uh, uh, tell, tell me about a deal you've closed, but you've had to do something creative to get it over the line.

    15. SG

      So creativity could be around how you, you know, financially structure something that shows that it's a win-win for both of us where you may have to put, both have to put some skin in the game to come together on how you're gonna work together to solve a problem. Creativity could be that someone's on vacation-And you need to figure out how to find the person on vacation so they will sign the contract 'cause their timeline might not be your contract. But I've had times where people have been skiing, and this is where it gets, (laughs) it gets a little, you know, you, you wanna balance out not being, like, creepy. But, like, you find out where they are on vacation and you might just send them flowers and just, "Hey, just remember, you know, I'm out there. You know, just remember me." You know, I've had reps do that where they might find out, not in a creepy way, because they built the relationships.

    16. HS

      No, I totally get that. Uh, a creative seller is always a, always encouraged. Tell me, what one piece of advice would you give to a new sales leader? Someone starting a new sales leadership role, what would you tell them the night before?

    17. SG

      This is kind of a crazy thing that just k- kinda came to mind. I saw this quote the other day. So, well, someone gave me advice, and I'll tell you what this is. Someone gave me advice when I was in college, same advice. And I walked into a, a r- a restaurant. I was sitting at the bar with, um, another person who was sitting next to me. And I was waiting for my parents to meet me to have dinner, where I've just graduated in college. And this guy was sitting at a bar and he looks to me and he says, "If I can give you any advice, know your trade before you're ready to move to the next role." And I had no idea what he was talking about. I'm like, "What do you mean know my trade? Like, what does that really mean?" And then it hit me. Like, I started my career, I s- was in recruiting, and then I, I moved in, I was in SDR. And what he meant was, like, know your trade. So, when you're in SDR, get really good at being an SDR before you're ready to go into sales. And then get really good at enterprise sales or sales or whatever you're selling before you're ready to move into management. And I wasn't ready to move into management until I started to have kids and I got married because my life, my, my life changed. Like, the way I thought about things changed. And so, I took that advice and I would say, "Don't move until you're ready to move." Some people move too quick. Because if I did that too quick, I couldn't give the advice I give to people because I've lived their roles. I live, I've lived in th- those roles. And I think it's really important that people try to move on too quick. I've seen so many first line managers who just wanna do anything to be a second line manager, but they're not ready for it. And I've seen sellers who wanna be first line managers, but they're not ready for it. They're not in a good head space.

    18. HS

      Do you think they agree with you that they're ready for it? Most often, they think they are, when they're not.

    19. SG

      They think they are. Most often, they think they are. I think something in some cases, like, has to change within your life. Like, if you go, you get married. All of a sudden, you have to think differently. You're thinking about you and somebody else. You start to have kids, you're thinking about... Your, your, your thought process changes. And I'm not saying that's not... That's how it worked for me. So I would give that same advice is that, you know, get study, be obsessed with what you're trying to do, and be obsessed with, with learning. And there's this quote I heard the other day is like, "Why is the lion the king of the jungle?" If you think about it. Like, why? They're not, they're not the strongest. Like, the elephant is the strongest. They're not the fastest. The cheetah is the fastest. There's many animals that are smarter than them in the jungle, but they're s- they're obsessed with winning and they're obsessed with winning. And they're just... And I think that's what people... They need to be obsessed with learning. They need to be obsessed with, with improving. They need to be incest with improving. And when I see people do deals, big deals, it's 'cause they're obsessed with the customer, they're obsessed with the relationship, and they're maniacally focused and they're gonna do whatever they possibly can to win. There's people that hate to lose, but there's not many people that really know how to win. You gotta be obsessed with winning.

    20. HS

      You know, I, I, I always say you have to earn the right to do the next thing. And I think that's very similar to the know your trade.

    21. SG

      Yeah.

    22. HS

      Um, so I, I love that. How did having children change your operating mindset towards work?

    23. SG

      Well, a lot of salespeople are selfish. Right? They're selfish with their time, they're selfish... Be, they're... I don't think there's any better job than being an enterprise salesperson with a great company and a great market with a great product. All I gotta do is think about myself, my schedule, my time, my schedule. That's all I cared about. But when I started to have kids, like, my schedule, my personal schedule changed. I had to, like, be a little more organized. I had to think for other people. And I had this... I had... Now I have three kids. I had to, like, think about, you know, like, them and my family. And, and so it started to get me thinking wh- like, I go, you go from catching the ball in the end zone as a seller to being on the sideline coaching the team and being able to, like, like b- having kids, like, I'm trying to, like, teach them and help them and get them to be great people and have integrity. And so as it... It just changed me to thinking I wanna help coach people and coach salespeople to get them to be the best of them. Like, now I love watching people improve. I love watching people get promoted. I love if I say something and all of a sudden, I see them put it in action or they tell me what they did and through, through a coaching initia... I love that. I wasn't thinking like that before I had kids. It was all about me.

    24. HS

      I love that. That's, uh, it's quite a development. Now a final one, otherwise, I can just keep going all day, but it's what company sales strategy around you that you've seen to you go, "Huh, that's really impressive. I'm impressed by that."

    25. SG

      Back in the day when we were at Salesforce, I think Salesforce did it so good. Like, there's just... I spent almost 10 years at Salesforce. I, I know that you had a inter- listened to your interview with Marc Benioff and, you know, just he cultivated such a culture of, like, perfection that people wanted to win for him. And he cultivated so many incredible leaders, and that company just had such an incredible sales process. 'Cause if you think about our market, you can say, well, at that point, Siebel and Oracle were the big PeopleSoft, SAP, Microsoft. You know, they, they were the... They... No one even knew about Salesforce. He just created so much talent around a process that we built a process around helping companies be more agile, be more flexible. Put our data in the... "Put your data in the cloud? What are you, crazy? Put your data in the cl-" But w- our sales process was around, "Hey, let's, let's show you t- trust us. We'll shows... We'll show you our security. We'll show you our uptime and downtime in the market," and we would be very transparent with our customers. And we just had such an incredible sales process designed and built around what made us great and what made us unique that nobody could compete.

    26. HS

      Steve, I, I didn't send you the schedule before this show, which was very uncharacteristic of us. Normally, we do. I'm really pleased that I didn't because you would have gone, "That was not what we agreed upon in the schedule." These shows are really why I love doing what I do. It's so great to have such a natural discussion. Thank you so much for being so brilliant and I've just loved this.

    27. SG

      No, I loved it. I appreciate the conversation and, uh, just flowed nice and, yeah, I appreciate the, uh, I, I appreciate your curiosity, by the way.

Episode duration: 55:24

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