The Evolution of BDRs: Salesloft CRO Explains Why | Belkins Podcast Episode #17

Speaker A: To kick this off, Mark, um, can you evaluate for me the state of sales tech as a front runner? Like A, it's a great opportunity, B it's a mayhem out there, or C it's just fine and we're getting over with it.

Speaker B: All of the above. Uh, no, it's um. Look there's a lot of um, there's different um, I guess vectors in the market and I guess depending on where you play, all of those things are true. Um, and so certainly down market you see a lot more uh, competition and mayhem as you described. Um, as you move up market you see the market start to normalize and be a little calmer where customers are a little bit more clear on what they're trying to do, what their objectives are, what their tech stacks look like, what their sales go uh, to market, uh, uh, engines look like. And so as you move up market you tend to see uh, some of that mayhem, uh sort of dissipate and uh, things start to get a little bit more clear in terms of where customers need help, how they view the different competitors in the space and what they look for, uh, in terms of uh, where they prioritize value and what they're trying to get from the vendors.

Speaker A: Um, you've been CRO ah of sales law for the last uh, what, 15, uh, 17 month. Um, is there any difference between what was a year and a half ago with is what right now? So is it just going and it's get better or we're going to. It's just, it's fine in the different

Speaker B: side of this sort of same answer. So in the commercial space down market, um, you know things are continued to be very, very challenging. Uh both you know, customers are very fast to come. They're also very fast to go. Um, as we move up market, um, we've continued to make great strides in that space where uh, we're earning bigger uh, and bigger logos, bigger and bigger deals, uh, more customers outside of what's uh, the traditional ICP in this space. Most of these vendors play uh, with the traditional sort of software, VC backed high growth tech companies. Um, we've really made a name for ourselves in uh, more traditional businesses which we believe more have more durable pools of capital for us to achieve. Uh, and so we spent our time and our calories investing there and it's really uh, paid off a lot of ways in the enterprise space for us. Um, the commercial space is still very, very high growth for us. Very, very exciting in terms of net new ARR. New customers coming in the Door. Um, but there's also a lot of competition in that space. So it's very, very, very competitive, uh, and really challenging to differentiate yourselves.

Speaker A: Is that what you expect when you came from Salesforce? Uh, what was, uh, a nuisance for you, like an out opening or. This is different, what I expected.

Speaker B: It's not necessarily different than what I expected. Um, I think, you know, Salesforce comes with a great brand and sort of market, uh, recognition. You know, everybody's a customer for the most part in some way or directly or through one of the acquisitions. And so I think they enjoy a really, really strong position in the market. And I, uh, think they're looked upon as a way to bring clarity to a lot of, uh, a lot of different parts of the market. Um, you know, that uh, is not what this is. That's not the stage of this business. That business is nearly 30 years old now, and this one is just around 11 or 12. Right. So we're at a different state, um, the industry is a different state of defining what Revenue Action Orchestration is. And so, um, that's a newer category. That category was just introduced about a year or so ago. Uh, in terms of defining the surface area, what is an revenue action orchestration platform that's also newly defined or redefined over the past six, uh, or eight months or so as well. And so that's got all of the signs of a developing, uh, very valuable part of the space, uh, where I think everybody's trying to figure out how do they differentiate themselves, uh, which are their customers that they are going to most uniquely service, uh, what are their unique value propositions, and how do we make sure that our customers know, uh, who we are and what we do and uh, can get the best out of this.

Speaker A: You, uh, mentioned Revenue Orchestration. Is that the category that Salesloft is in right now?

Speaker B: Revenue Action Orchestration is the category as defined by Gartner and Forrester. Uh, and so we've always been a system of action. So, you know, we feel like we're very well positioned, uh, to be in that space and to be the cat, continue to be the category leaders. Um, but the nature of our platform is a system of action. Uh, it's always been about taking action, whether it's a conversation, whether it's a, uh, whether it's sending out emails or text messages, where it's capturing those uh, uh, interactions, processing all of those AI, uh, or all those signals, all those AI data points, and then running them against our AI engines to make recommendations. What should I do? Next. What should not, what should I not do next? Who should I contact? What should I send to them? How should I position myself? Um, all that comes uh, out of our platform, uh, as a result of all of the five uh, or six billion uh, sales data points that we've captured and continue to grow that corpus of information every day. Uh and that is the space we play in. So action is the, is the key for us. Uh, and it's oftentimes the number one priority for CROs in terms of building durable pipeline and making sure that pipeline is performant uh, as their reps move it through the cycle.

Speaker A: Was the old name like uh, engagement platform, Was that not the household for your category? Like engagement software Engagement, Sales Engagement was the category.

Speaker B: Yeah that when we were servicing BDRs primarily that's less than 50% of our users, probably less than 40% uh, at this point, uh, of the users who use the platform, our BDRs about 55, 60% of them are account executives. Uh, and that's been a big shift for us over the past probably three or four years. It may be a well kept secret but uh, most of the users we service are full cycle sellers. Um, and we're seeing a bunch of shifts in the industry uh, in terms of who creates pipeline and how companies are spending money on pipeline. But um, yeah there's a lot of changes there. Revenue, uh, action orchestration is the new norm for uh, the space.

Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't see you guys in the BDR space that much lately. I think last four years and that's like the timing is there. Okay, so you moved from a BDR to a sales cycle to a full sales cycle, um, focus um, at that time. Um, so can you bring me up to speed with uh, sort of uh, what's happening in the um, engagement uh, platform. Sales engagement platform, uh, um, space. Um, like who is doing what, what's the objective of everyone? Like kind of a Game of Thrones type of situation. Uh, can we uh, can we throw some names and just um, you tell me where those guys are. Whether they're in the same category or they went somewhere somewhere else. So we kind of know who is what, what, who, who does what. Can we.

Speaker B: I'm happy to talk about Salesloft to the extent I'm, I'm aware of the others you're going to mention. I'll offer you what I can but uh, you know more of an expert on salesloft than Gotcha.

Speaker A: So you guys went to uh, um, full cycle sales servicing, um, kind of get people end to end sellers. Um, there's a lot of folks that moved from like a prospecting like Apollo ZoomInfo probably but they went to in like a bidar space I think. Right. So they kind of trying to close the prospecting bidar type of function as far as I know. Right. Is that the case or I'm missing something there?

Speaker B: I think everybody's trying to help in different ways those functions. We don't necessarily think of prospecting as a BDR's role. Um, if you look back at the history of this business, BDR was a role that didn't exist pre2012. Uh, I'm not sure it's going to exist post 2026. Um and that space is really a one to one marketing function if you think about what it really is. Um, the business of sales and the account executive role has always been uh, to generate pipeline. It's really just a very short blip in the radar screen over the past maybe 10 years uh where we had this BDR function. Um and I think more companies, we're seeing it every day. More companies are looking to leverage a platform like ours to help their salespeople pipeline. Uh, we know salespeople or AE generated pipeline is three to four times more effective than BDR generated pipeline. And when you're in a demand positive environment I think that BDR role makes a ton of sense. They're out there collecting all the demand because there's an influx of it available and your job is to guide it into the house. And when you're in a demand neutral environment, um, you need a lot more creativity uh and a lot more uh, uh experience to go help customers figure out what their challenges are, um, how you can help solve those challenges uh, and position yourself to be the winner of that opportunity. So I think we're going to start to see that shift a little bit more. Uh, more companies I talk to, especially large ones are investing more in full cycle sales.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Starting to shift those dollars away from that BDR role uh into into uh, full cycle. And those folks need to create pipeline. And so we are certainly you know the legacy of our platform and our offering is certainly really well positioned uh to provide those sellers leverage to go create and curate and mature pipeline. Uh, but it's not the only function uh of the seller. The seller is a broader job.

Speaker A: Was it not the Aaron Ross um, from the salesforce who built that BDR se kind of division and top of the funnel?

Speaker B: Uh Aaron, I don't know.

Speaker A: Oh you don't Know, uh, Aaron who built a predictable revenue book. Um, uh, I think he was the first one who was back in 2010 or something, uh, working for, leading an album or sales motion within the Salesforce team. He was introduced, uh, how to build up the pipeline more effectively and he introduced the, the BDR function. So I love the fact that you just uh, highlighted that the BDRs have been around only for this small little time. Right, for like 10 years. Uh, so the division of the pipeline between the BDRs and NECs and hunters and farmers and all that bullshit, it's been not that long ago. Um, and what you're saying is you're seeing this shifting that we want to see more full cycle. Which I personally think you're right because every AE that I'm talking to or I see that I'm talking to, they're so lazy to generate their own pipeline. They're like give me meetings in my calendar. I just wanted to do the demo. I just want to present, I just want to nurture whatever. I just want to go after and build a relationship. And personally, um, what I think is that uh, kind of top of the funnel BDR function as it was before, um, is not serving the customer. It's serving sometimes maybe the P and L the business make it more effective. Let's do the conversion, the KPI. But it's not customer oriented. We're not talking about the customer here when we do this. Right, because you're always handing off your prospect to someone else. Hey, talk to my colleague John, talk to Michael, talk to Mark. And then until you make a decision, you probably talk to 10 people in the company and then all. They have different contexts. Right? So with the full cycle sales and that's, and I've, I think like I've started seeing this uh, shift a few years ago and um, I had uh, I had Jen Alan Knuth on my show and we talked about kind of the full cycle sales and that's to the future. And I just love seeing that you confirmed that's what, that's where the sales loft is going. That's what the market goes after and that's the trend that you're seeing.

Speaker B: So it's, it's, it's. I think it's a simply an economics question. Uh, look, the economics that were flooding the market over the past 10 years were an anomaly. It was zero straight environments. The, you know, the VC business was, was ballooning. We saw tons of capital in the business that, both on the buy side and the sell side. So There was more dollars for the. For the buyers to spend until the sellers had to go collect those dollars. And they did that the most efficient way possible.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And that, that. That's that role. Um, you know, I was never a sales. Sales guy when, uh, when we had BDRs, I only always pipeline. Uh, I was in different roles by the time that that role became available. And so uh, look, it's. It's just the. It is a very short blip in the history of the business, I think for companies that have, uh, you know, very. Are in very unique situations. I think those BDR roles make a ton of sense and they always will. Companies that are uniquely positioned. But the fact that they are, uh, they were so commonplace, uh, among um, companies maybe didn't necessarily need them, but they were a result of, you know, both, you know, uh, surplus on the demand and the supply side. Uh, you know, that's just not the. Anymore. And so we're starting to see companies uh, look for more profitable growth. Um, and that's uh, what we're focused on. Helping customers solve their problems. Uh, and that means listening deeply. It means understanding, uh, their competitive position. It means bringing our expertise in terms of how we help customers in uh, their same position grow, uh, pipeline, mature pipeline, uh, and make sellers more effective. Those are the problems we solve. Um, uh, that's always a salesperson led se. Led conversation. Uh, when we bring that expertise to bear, uh, the direction we're moving in and we see a lot of our customers doing the same.

Speaker A: So, um, where does the. What. What there does all of this leave with the uh, sales executives or account executives in terms of um, what they can be focusing on. So, um, they still would need to do their own prospecting. They still need to be. Book their. Their own. Build their own book of business. Right. Um, so, uh, would they just really need to rely on technology to help them to make them more effective? Um. Or.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's the great thing about the past 10 years is we've really learned what it means to build pipeline. We've really learned what it means to mechanize the approach. And when it was, uh, sort of pre AI, those were simple sort of pulleys and levers, uh, simple machines. Now, um, those machines are much more performant and they're much more powerful. And we're seeing AES be able to be an orchestrator of agents, uh, more so than, uh, you know, than a doer of tasks. Uh, and so we have a really great opportunity for sellers to take advantage of these Tools and technologies and uh, use that to build their own pipeline, to be able to keep tabs on, uh, you know, large amounts of prospecting customers. Uh, to be able to create those dynamic journeys that customers need to go on that are both, uh, driven by AI, but also tightly controlled by the, by the salesperson that observes and manages those agents. Um, and so I think it's a, it's a tremendous opportunity for salespeople to take advantage of the machines that have been built to do this. Um, uh, but it is, it is the job of every salesperson to make sure they have the pipeline that's, that's ready for them to close. Um, that's, that's, that's the nature of the job. I'd love to be in a job always where all my meetings were teed up for me and all I had to do was show up. Uh, that, that was a fun time. Uh, I don't think that is a sustainable reality for a broad base of companies. There'll always be companies that have that, some unique characterist. Um, but, but I don't know that that's for everybody.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's just become very expensive to drive a pipeline like that. Right. It's just. You cannot throw that much money on the, on any channel. So it's like, you know, we've seen like the cost of acquisition, uh, of a meeting or a book meeting just goes up every year, 25, 30% and you just cannot keep up. And um, and, and I, uh, know that, um, you know, CMOs are, have the kind of anxiety. They're like, oh, yeah, I need to project and I need to cut. My budgets were cut. Like, what do I do? Um, and they go back to the sales team and say, sales, can you do something about this? And salespeople are like, well, it's not our job to build a pipeline. Our job is to move the pipeline down. So you guys figure this out. So I think just because that conversation will go up and say, okay, sales also builds the pipeline. And then now kind of sales and marketing, maybe it's kind of the same function, like revenue function per se. Is that the way you look at this?

Speaker B: I think the role of the CMO in the past 10 years similarly was, uh, around demand generation. That was the cmo. In a lot of cases, that was the function of the cmo. And I think cmos got away from some of the more traditional classical cmo, uh, functions like brand building, uh, and positioning. Uh, it became, um, uh, an opportunity to go capture what was available. And that Was demand generation. I think you're going to see CMOs nowadays uh start to focus more on brand and differentiation and position to market. Uh and demand generation is going to go, is uh, going to go back to sales. Um there'll be a partnership always like we need marketing to deliver highly leveraged engagements to help make sure customers are ready to engage when sales reaches out. But yeah I think they're going to. I think that orientation of that role will fall more to the brand builder. Uh, orientation versus the demand generator.

Speaker A: Where do these old leaves the bdrs? Um, will it be part of the marketing function and generating intelligence, enriching ah sort of like spreading out the kind of a communication type of um, um not the demand capture or not demand generation but uh, maybe the demand capture or communication function uh I think different

Speaker B: based on different companies. We don't have BDRs anymore. Um we don't have that function in the organization. We do have what we call the Office of Pipeline Management. Uh and that is a new function we created. And it's a think of it as a soft rubber coupling between sales and marketing. And what they do is they work with marketing to make sure the programs and the processes that marketing builds are consumed and used by sales. Um, so they're former BDR leaders in our case those are the folks that we put into those roles and they are the ones that sit in sort of a demilitarized zone between sales and marketing. And those two businesses vibrate at different frequencies of sales and marketing. What their job is to do is to be that translator between the two to make sure the sales can take best effect or best use of all of those capabilities marketing builds. Uh and the sales team is those agent operators if you will, uh taking advantage of the programs that marketing is building. Uh they do the white space analysis, they do uh the CAPDB analysis. Uh they help the self team figure out how to consume and leverage signals. Uh, they figure out how to help uh tune messaging uh at scale. Uh and that's their job and we call them again the Office of Pipeline Management. That's that function that connects those two uh organizations to make sure that we are working as one unit, one organization because uh, there is some opportunity for divergence uh when you make a change like this. But that's how we see the future, uh developing and more companies I talk to, more CROs and CMOs I talk to are very curious about what it takes to build an organization like that. Uh and I think of them as partly sales programs, uh, you know partly Marketing programs. Uh, but really it's the, it's the organization that's uh, that connects those two functions and makes sure they work really well together.

Speaker A: So based on this logic, would you say that, um, the 70% of the time, um, full cycle sales will be focusing on building uh, their kind of engaged pipeline with a high buying intent. So they're going to have less meetings, but those meetings will impact in more sales. Uh, but then the sales closing part will be just less of their time spent literally like 30% of the time. Is that fair to put?

Speaker B: I don't think I put those numbers on it per se. Uh, 70% is a pretty high number. Uh, we're not seeing folks spend 70% of their time doing demand generation, um, leveraging the tools and platforms that we make available to them through Salesloft and other partners that we work with. ZoomInfo is a great one. Um, we see them leveraging those capabilities, uh, to go build pipeline. They're uh, probably spending 25% of their time roughly, uh, building pipeline. 75% of it is spent on maturing that pipeline through from stage two to close. Uh, and it varies by segment. Commercial deals tend to move at a much faster rate than enterprise deals. They tend to be a little bit smaller. Enterprise deals tend to be bigger. Uh, our enterprise sellers, uh, will work on a handful of large deals in a year, uh, maybe even in a quarter. Our commercial teams will work on 20, 30, 40, 50 opportunities, uh, you know, in a month. Uh, and so it's a, it's a much higher volume business there, uh, where they're uh, they're dealing with a lot of inbound still in commercial we still see strong inbound, uh, and their outbound, uh, efforts are really, really well rewarded by customers, uh, when we target them properly.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Okay, um, one final point on this. Um, help me to understand where does this all um, leave the CRMs like Salesforce or Hubspots, like do we still need to use them or we kind of make them kind of obsolete. And let's say you don't need to have a Salesforce and you can do everything that you can in the sale in the sales loft. So you literally combine everything from those both worlds. Is that fair?

Speaker B: No, we're not trying to replace the Salesforce or Hubs for anything like that. Those are systems of record that'll always be there. We have. That's not, that is not our intention. We're a system of action. Uh, we back up to Salesforce, we back up to Oracle or uh, Microsoft or spot like you said, um, and those systems will always be there. Um, our space, the market is action. So taking all those signals, figuring out what are the best opportunities uh, to go after from a demand creation perspective. We take in signals from the market, we take in first party signals, uh, from customers own data. Whether it's you know, a uh, freemium offering or a product led growth offering, whether it's uh, renewals database, uh, whether it's end uh, of life database. Think of some of the biggest tech companies in the world. They have a three to five year end of life cycle on their products. They're out there selling new products. They need to help their salespeople figure out where's the end of life stuff that uh, uh, we had put in the market. Salespeople change over every couple of years in those accounts. They don't know where there's opportunities are. We are plumbing those signals into those databases, into Salesloft and telling the salesperson every day, uh, here's the top 20 opportunities in your territory for end of life replacement. And uh, those customers are going to see an end of life notification in the next six months, the next five months, the next four months. They're going to have to make a decision in the next month, uh, or two. You should be having this customer on a journey, uh, uh, related to that end of life turnover, uh, opportunity, um, that's something that exists in more traditional businesses. If you're focused on the high growth VC backed uh, software tech companies, that's not a motion that exists there. But when you think about some of the traditional businesses that we service, uh, those more durable pools of capital that we tend to favor, um, that is a very, very strong motion that those companies are very much interested in securing and defending.

Speaker A: Makes sense. Um, different topic. Uh, you went from Cisco to sales tech about 10 years ago. Salesforce now Sales Loft. What do you love the most about the space?

Speaker B: Uh, um, when I worked at Cisco, one of the things I loved is uh, sales was the business. It was a sales business when I was there. John was the CEO and he was a sales guy and his primary focus was, was sales and what it meant to him was uh, helping your customers solve their most important problems. When I was leaving looking for my next opportunity, I looked at all the different companies that were coming up in the space in the 201415 timeframe. I didn't find any company where sales uh, was the business. Uh, and then I certainly looked at Salesforce and Mark had a very similar mindset. His business uh, is to be a sales business. Uh, and that is the lifeblood that grows any company. Uh, and so I love that about this space. And when I came to salesloft, I worked for a guy named David Obrand, who was our CEO, who's a fantastic executive who's, uh, again, very focused on sales. And what that meant to him, again, was helping customers solve their most important and challenging problems. Revenue was always a strategic priority for companies. And so the thing I love most about being in this space is the problem we solve is a problem for every company. Uh, it's a problem of durability, it's a problem of consistency, It's a problem of growth. Uh, and every company that wants to be valued by their investors has to have durable, consistent growth. And that is the thing that we address every day.

Speaker A: All right, well, you probably expected that, but I would ask you what annoys you the most, Pisses you off? What you hate about space?

Speaker B: About the space. You know, it is, it is challenging to differentiate. I think that is a, that is a challenge. There's a lot of me too, following one another. That, that is a, uh, that is something that's challenging. Um, I think customers are still trying to figure out how they want to consume these capabilities. Um, and that's the nature of being in a, uh, market that's a little bit early. Um, and as Gartner and Forrester start to codify the space, um, that will get more clear about what a revenue action orchestration platform is. Uh, so that clarity, I think, is something that will, uh, be welcome once the market fully adopts it.

Speaker A: M. Right, yeah. You know what, um, I dislike the most is the fact that it's very difficult to get to catch everyone on their lie. Like, uh, everyone like, oh, I can do this. We can bring this value. These are the outcomes. We streamline this, yada, yada. Like everyone is like, so successful in the sales tax space. Like everyone, right? But at the end of the day, when you start actually going deeper and start working, as you pointed out, differentiation is either very small or it's literally the enablement part, right? So it's like if you're enabled, well, then you're successful. And then most of the companies that are using software, they're not enabled at all. So they literally probably use the 10% of the software they like. We just have that software, so it's cool, right? But they probably don't use at least 90% of that software.

Speaker B: I think that's true in a lot of cases. In a lot of software offerings that, you know, uh, I look at, you know, at Salesforce, folks don't use, you know, most of what the platform offers. Um, uh, I lived that life for, you know, for a long time there. Similarly here we have customers that use uh, 10, 20% of it. Um, that's certainly a challenge, but that's a challenge for us, uh, to continue to uh, get the message out there and to provide better customer support and customer success capabilities. Um, there's turnover in sales is pretty high in general. Uh, and so getting company, every company's revenue orchestration processes, GTM process a little bit different. Everybody uh, uses the tools a little bit differently. And so there's some natural, uh, I think some natural, uh, gaps in there that exist just uh, the nature of the job.

Speaker A: All right, so, um, what's the one important conversation in sales tech worth having that people don't talk about that much that you think we should discuss?

Speaker B: I think it's the future of demand generation and the future of the BDR and that role and how we create a more fulfilling and engaging career path for folks. Um, I think that is something that uh, I hear folks step into, uh, maybe a bit sheepishly. Uh, and then when I engage the conversation, I tell them, well, I've had this conversation five times in the last week. Suddenly they open up. Oh geez, I didn't realize other folks were talking about this. Um, and so I think that is uh, an aspect of uh, this business that um, the companies are coming to grips with, uh, in different ways. And again, there are certain companies where that BDR role makes a ton of sense. When you've got that right, um, sort of positioning in the market and maybe that fit or the demand is there, you're in demand surplus environment. Absolutely. Um, but for a lot of companies, I don't know that that's the case. And so I think you got to be a little bit more considered uh, around how you're uh, how you're investing in uh, developing pipeline.

Speaker A: So if I am in a BDR business. Right. We do kind of outsource BDR sdr. We obviously move to more full funnel function where we are part of the marketing team now. And it's a bit different from a direct sales than it was before. So I'm kind of moving in that direction where you're executing a more um, kind of end to end omnichannel type of strategies. Right. But what, what should I do? So it's like if, if I want to grow my business in this space, where should I go with with this, what you can recommend me, I think

Speaker B: you should be an operator of agents. I think that the role is still very much uh, a real role. I don't know that it's the, it's how we've historically thought of it and you need the massive core of these folks that companies have had. And so I think it's a more leveraged role. I think there's more technology involved. I think it's more about curating and curating, uh, you know, groups of buyers along a, or potential buyers along a journey. Um, and so I, I think it's uh, it's gonna, it's gonna look a little bit different. It's gonna be a lot more uh, you know, sort of tech heavy and tech driven and um, and I think it's gonna be a little bit less transactional. So I think that that's where the, the business is going to go.

Speaker A: So it's more around, um, um, helping CL people I work with, not necessarily to drive direct sales through a transactional motion like calls and emails, but rather like intelligently approach the problem solving like how you tap into new markets or how you refine your ICP or how you kind of establish relationship with the buyers, how you become a household name rather than how many dials you make, how many emails you send and how many LinkedIn messages you've sent. Is that.

Speaker B: I think that's, I think that's more m. Uh, that looks and feels more like where this business is going to go. Um, there'll always be the cold caller, the cold email or the transactional again for those companies and at the right place in time. But I think as we think about what this role looks like, it's going to be a little more high brand activity. It's going to be uh, you know, more of a considered, uh, and thoughtful job, uh, around again curating those audiences and that brand and how you're positioned and uh, and putting customers on, or buyers on that journey, uh, um, in a more leveraged way versus a transactional, uh. How many dials can you make for instance? I think those days are past us.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, um. What do you think is overhyped in your opinion right now in our space?

Speaker B: Probably the automated, uh, AI SDR that got no human in the loop. Um, uh, I think those things are probably overhyped a little bit. Um, uh, you know, like I said, if that's the send side, the receive side is going to have the same technology and eventually it's going to get blunted. Um, so those are probably things that are a little bit overhyped. Um, that's probably the most, you know, the most overhyped thing. I think a lot of the work the companies in the space are doing is good work. I think it's, you know, there's a lot of really, you know, good, thoughtful folks in the space who are trying to solve real problems for companies. And so I don't think there's a lot of fluff. Um, but that, that AISDR that doesn't have a human in the loop, I think that's probably, uh, you know, something that's going to kind of going to outlive or it's not going to outlive the space.

Speaker A: What about, um, sort of like having people buy in on the product, uh, like our POCs and people who are buying the sales tax software. I feel like a lot of them are already very. They like scrutinize everything in a way, like, because they hear this all of that, they know all of that, they kind of are kind of more advanced. So it's very diffic to create this aha. Thing like, oh, we actually can do that. Is that. Have you seen the same?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I see that with some of the traditional product set that we've offered. Um, you know, I think as we look at the products that we're offering now around the agents that we brought to market a few months ago, we are getting those wow moments from customers. Um, they're blown away by what they're seeing. Um, and a lot of the, a lot of the thinking and the sort of product contemplation that came out, it came from our own organization. Right. The sales organization is the expert on the product. And so we do a lot with our product team in terms of unearthing our own struggles and challenges. And how do we want to give more time back to the sellers to do the things that are most highly valued. One example is, um, and we all know this, um, folks spend between eight and 10 hours per person, uh, doing account plans for every account they have. Um, and that's se, ae, value engineer. Sometimes the RVP's involved. That could be 30, 40 hours of work per account, uh, to build an account plan. And the end of the day, you know, the folks that do really, really good account plans are the ones that ask good questions. They deeply, uh, research their sources. They have a strong structure around the rigor that they, uh, kind of deploy that research against and they communicate clearly. Geez, those things are really, really well done by AI. Uh, and so you know, we built an account planning, uh, agent that is highly performant. That, uh, also creates all kinds of opportunities for our customers to use those account plans more consistently. Because, you know, we know that when salespeople create those account plans, for the most part, they create them at the beginning of the year, uh, when you get your new deck and then they go in the drawer and they're rarely looked at again. Um, when we create these, these account plans with our agents, we find that they're much more dynamically used because our other agents feed off of them. Uh, they, they help under, they help to unearth. What are the sales angles? How should I revise that account plan based on an earnings call that just happened? Uh, how should I reorder, uh, my top priorities in the account? That's all done for the salesperson, uh, dynamically. And they come in in the morning, they get in their cockpit and they see that right there in front of them. Uh, if you think about what it was like a year ago, to do that, you'd have to go back to your account plan. You'd have to read it all, you'd have to listen to an earnings call, you'd have to pick out the relevant data points. You have to argue back and forth a little bit about, hey, is this really a top priority or not? That's hours and hours of work that honestly isn't getting done. Now we're seeing that work get done and then we're seeing folks take action on it. Uh, because we'll actually write the emails for the AE. Uh, we'll identify in our, again, our partnership with ZoomInfo around, uh, who are the buyers that you haven't engaged with? Uh, that based on the actions that we're seeing, if you haven't engaged with these folks, I think these are the five or six folks you should engage with. Oh, and by the way, based on your account plan, based on your competitive positioning, based on the new products you're bringing to market, um, here's the email you should send to them. Them. Um, so that allows the salesperson to spend more of their time doing what they do best, which is engaging with, uh, buyers and having really deep and detailed conversations about how to solve those problems.

Speaker A: Um, I think I saw about three years ago that you guys changed the landing page and put the AI on the first screen. We were AI powered or AI enabled, but we all know that three years ago we kind of didn't have that much power in the AI that we have right now. We just were starting out. It's an entry, right? Like, we are going to AI. It's kind of a statement. Right. So can you give me like a one example of where you guys start leveraging, um, true AI or where there's a true differentiation to what the AI can bring right now to the product that you haven't had a few years ago. And this is like the most powerful thing that is happening right now that everyone needs to pay attention to.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, look, we, we are category creators, uh, in. In the concept of cadences. That was what Kyle created when he built the company all those years ago. Um, those, those cadences were very rigid steps to the sales process and had three or four different cadences based on the type of buyer you were. Um, now with AI, those cadences are dynamic. Uh, they are dynamic based on the, the account plan that I mentioned. Based on what that research, uh, agent we deploy finds, uh, you know, in the market every day as we go, uh, look to learn about those customers. So the dynamic cadence, the dynamic engagement, uh, the emails written for the rep, uh, the identifying the different buyers that folks may have moved around or new folks came in, uh, you know, building that power m map, understanding, uh, who's in the power map, all those things are examples of AI that are readily available in salesloft that weren't available, uh, you know, three months ago. We brought this out in May. We contemplated the products in, uh, you know, probably starting in August last year, and really started development in earnest in December and brought them to market in May. Just an amazing, uh, you know, kind of speed to deploy there. Um, and that was a lot of that done through AI. Building those products was a feat of AI's capabilities, but then also bringing them to bear, uh, being able to demonstrate them for our customers. And look, we turn these things on for our customers with a flick of a switch. Uh, we were in a demo yesterday with a customer and we showed them our agents in their environment. And, uh, at the end of the meeting, the customer said, hey, this is amazing. Like, what would it take to set this up? And we said, no, no, it's set up. And she said, what do you mean? We said, we turned it on. It's on in your environment. You can just keep it. And she was absolutely blown away. That AI agenta capability, uh, is at the edge, at the salesperson's fingertips, um, with the flick of a switch and that once we did the demo, her team had all those capabilities, um, and so we left them on for them. And we'll leave them for a week as a trial, uh, and uh, and we'll see what the uptake and adoption looks like. So we're. Those things are exciting, uh, in terms of the space, the ability to bring value that quickly. Um, especially when you think about very uh, very real amount of time that sellers, engineers, managers, value engineers spend on doing that work. Um, that, that is all done for them, uh, with the flick of a switch.

Speaker A: So let's uh, I mean you guys are a frontliner. You are like on the front of everyone. You're spending so much budgets on the R D, I suppose. So, um, what are the conversations you have internally about where this is all going? What's the future we can anticipate, um, and then throw me any crazy future you think might happen. But five years down the road, 10 years down the road, how is it going to look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll certainly share what I can. Um, look, we think about uh, providing more leverage, more mechanized support for sellers. And uh, that's going to look in a bunch of different ways, um, uh, like uh, bringing capabilities, uh, to run agents totally autonomously. Uh, whether that is identifying customers, whether it's creating dynamic journeys, whether it's creating sales pitches and presentations, um, those are all areas that we think of as opportunity for us to help the seller be more successful. That is the reason we get up every day is to help them to be more successful. That will extend into other areas where we look at customers like sort of full life cycle. How do we continue to drive, better cross sell, upsell, better engagement, adoption, uh, and make sure that our customers are leveraging our products and services to the best of their ability. Uh, and that's also uh, going to feed into uh, how we think about uh, engaging uh, across different channels, uh, across different social channels, across different uh, you know, uh, you know, traditional channels. That, that is that we all, we view all of that as our domain and space, uh, where we will continue to drive opportunity, ah, for customers to engage with sales folks to make sure that we can help them solve their most pressing problems.

Speaker A: Um, is this like an AI sales play? We're going to have AI agent seller will be uh, or where is this the AI here versus human part? So where is the human?

Speaker B: We believe to sell as human so we will always build products for people. And again I mentioned these things earlier in the conversation. Think of salespeople as agent operator. That office of pipeline management. Those are agent operators. Those are folks that are running agents internally to identify white space. They're running agents internally to identify, you know, what Are the. What, uh, are the best prospects we should go after? And then similarly, uh, with, with the products that we bring to the market, we uh, think of, uh, how do we get salespeople to operate those agents, uh, so they will always be involved with the human in the loop and making sure that we're not, uh, we're not, we're not replacing humans. That's not our intention at all. Our intention is to help humans do the best work they can and get them out of the work that isn't necessarily productive. The account plan is one example. Uh, that's realistically at the beginning of a year, that takes up probably 60% of a salesperson's time in the first, uh, probably first quarter of a year, depending on what kind of turnover you have, what kind of new book you get. Um, that's a massive amount of time that is not spent in the market. It's valuable because you need to learn and you need to be, uh, you know, sort of deeply, uh, deeply understand your customer. So you have to do it. But man, that's expensive. And if we could help them do that, uh, more, uh, elegantly effortless, um, we can return a whole lot of uh, cash back to our customers to get their salespeople to perform more quickly. Onboarding, uh, instead of, ah, nine months, six months, maybe three months, we get folks down to that level of uh, uh, efficacy. Um, and there's real, real dollars back to every business out there.

Speaker A: Um, any A.I. concerns for the future that you have? The nightmares of AI in sales, you

Speaker B: know, I think there's always those, those concerns. I was in a meeting the other day and it wasn't around sales, but somebody was saying that uh, they put up a job and they got I think 7000 job applicants in uh, in about three hours. And uh, she was saying there's no way this, we are. Our ATS could, uh, you know, uh, could, could. Could process this. Uh, and so it put them in a really, really awkward position to be able to sift through, like who are the real candidates and who are not. Um, and so in general, I think there is a real, ah, concern around if I just use AI to fire this stuff out, eventually you're going to have to have an AI receiver on the other end. And then how do I really get through? So we never want to be in that space, but I think, uh, with some of these technologies that are in our space that are competing for Mindshare, I think you're starting to see that. Uh, and I think that the natural Response on the other side of the conversation is going to have to be some AI receiver that filters out that information, uh, and gets uh, you know, gets the, gets uh, the right information through. Um, so we'll never be in that space. We'll never, that'll never be something that we, that we are a part of. But uh, it is something that we compete with from a brand perspective because some of, some folks are out there, you know, you know, sort of proselytizing a message like that. Um, we believe to sell is human and we believe we'll always be a human in the loop company that uses AI to make our sellers better and to make those jobs more satisfying. Uh, that's really uh, what we think about how we make the seller really do their best work. And that work is oftentimes most satisfying.

Speaker A: So what I hear is that you don't want uh, more uh, AI generated cold emails, AI generated posts on LinkedIn, AI generated messages, and then maybe not AI callers that can be calling your phone 24 7. That would be the nightmare. Right?

Speaker B: Look, I think AI generated emails are okay. I think the human has to be in the loop to uh, you know, to edit, to review, to read, to um, you know, to make sure that the message is right on, I think generated and sent without a human being in the loop, without editing, that's where it gets uh, it jumps the shark a little bit for me. Um, because on the other side there's a human, there's a company, there's a buyer. That buyer has to be treated with care and respect. And to just fire off, you know, sort of thoughtless emails is not respecting the buyer. And at the end of the day that's not a viable long term path path. Um, I think everybody wants to engage uh, with a counterparty that's going to be thoughtful and consider their time and their needs. And that is exactly how we think about this.

Speaker A: Um, one of my previous guests was um, Gord Belf Co G2 and his uh, bet is on AI agent sellers and then AI agents, uh, buyers. Uh, what do you think of this?

Speaker B: Yeah, it was perhaps, um, I think that'd be interesting, interesting kind of place for us to find ourselves behind those. AI buyers and sellers are going to be AI buyer, AI or humans. Right. They're going to be somebody that says I need to go buy this thing. Um, so I think that may be just a little bit uh, outside of what I'm saying in terms of AI agent operators. Um, at the end of the day somebody has to make the decision that hey, I need to buy this capability, I need to go acquire this thing now, if you're talking about commodities and hey, I need an extra, you know, uh, you know, I need consumables. Sure. Uh, you know, that sort of stuff. But when you're thinking about highly considered purchases, uh, in enterprise, uh, you know, enterprise, uh, companies, I think there's always uh, a human on both sides of that transaction. Can an AI agent give you leverage? Absolutely. We agree with that. Ah, will that, will that role totally be replaced for things beyond commodities and consumables? I don't see that happening.

Speaker A: But maybe it's like. I think what uh, Goddard is, would um, be focusing on is a. And I think it's, there's a merit in it. Um, so it's like you have 100 note takers. You literally, if I would ask you Mark, what kind of note taker you have against my client, like there's so many of them, it's like, wow, is different one. Right. So you're probably going to have an AI buyer seller that will shortlist you the three options that would know you better. And I assume that it's. We're going to see that with more software like, like they would. But then the actual decision making probably will be done by a, by a person. But then the short list of 3 options to talk to, build relationship with would be probably provided by an, an agent. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. The human is going to decide what I need. Maybe the AI knows hey based and your processes and your security posture, all those things, these are the people that are most likely. Absolutely. I think those things are definitely going to be there. Uh, what I thought you were saying is that these things will act autonomously. I think that's a leap. But for certain these things are force multipliers, uh, in a lot of different ways. Uh, for companies who need to uh, save time and make sure their people are doing the most satisfying work.

Speaker A: Are you guys optimizing for LLMs and for the AI buyers and just to get that AI traffic and um, any specific playbook you can share in that

Speaker B: space in terms of, in terms of

Speaker A: um, like the, you know, getting that. Um, so again the AI sellers and buyers is the future. We don't have that Right. Yet. Right. But what we have right now is people are using AI LLMs and just generally the AI searches like chatgpts and anthropics and Cloths and others as a search engine. Right. So they literally are shortlisting software, uh, comparing this and that. Apples and oranges and understanding who it's like our LLM traffic growing 25% month over month. So we are right now are probably getting about 25% of new business uh from the AI search, not from the Google's as it was before. So now the question what a lot of CMOs um CROs are thinking about is what do we do to kind of get that more of that AI traffic, get more of that kind of visibility uh as well as how do we optimize what is the playbook we can do to be in front of the others in that AI search game? Does that make sense?

Speaker B: It does. Um, yeah it's certainly something we're talking about. Nothing I'm ready to share at this point in terms of what we're doing. We are aware of it and uh, we certainly have um, a group of folks looking at how we would uh improve our rankings or consideration rates there. But that's a little bit early right now at this point point.

Speaker A: Um do you highly rely on the uh, like what was the sort of like percentage of the, of the business that comes from or again approximately from the direct sales relationship, referrals etc opposed to ah, organic sort of like anything that related to kind of Google Ads and anything that would. Any kind of optimization that's happening right now with all the sources can kind of harm the business where you guys are.

Speaker B: You know I think about 20% of um, our opportunity comes through those um, you know through inbound through you know Google and that sort of stuff. Uh another 10% through partners. Uh a lot of it is driven by our sellers uh directly engaging in the market with our customers and prospects. Um we look at curating sort of long term you know big relationships and enterprise customers. And that is not a volume game, that's a sort of deeply problem considered game. Um and that's a lot of the area of focus that we have put our calories into. Um in the commercial space we see a lot of that and that is certainly a big big part of what that commercial business looks like. Um but in our organization everybody's expected to build pipelines so we rely on our sellers to go uh, or build that pipeline as effectively as they can. And again they use the agents, they use our platform capabilities, put folks on dynamic journeys and um, they curate those relationships over a long period of time. Sometimes they're really fast relationships, you know in 30 day closes sometimes they take a little bit longer. Um but the non AE generated pipeline is about 30%.

Speaker A: What do you think about um the following um will AI or AI technology we have right now be a good kind of leveling field for us to just uh, level up everything to a very decent base level so that we going to see all of the kind of junior talent contributors working more effectively or on the flip side, AI will create more division and then those people that are more um, senior that kind of uh, that already have a skill set that they will just be more advanced and we're going to see the gap in terms of um, um, the efficiency and effectiveness and then um, you know the M kind of um, it's going to be very difficult to access it. Um, a good example is um, I am um, following Dave from uh Exit 5. He created great content and, and when people tried to mimic him and use the AI to create more content, um, I um, was just always like Dave with AI will create much more content because of where he's at and all of the other guys that are just trying to mimic it and using technology to kind of, to think that they could do the same. They won't develop that kind of grind that the skill set over the years and they will. So the gap will be more. So I am on that, that second part of the camp where you are at.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think look a lot of entry level jobs, whether it's in sales or other, other um, you know, businesses or disciplines are getting disrupted. I think to be a college kid today and coming out and thinking you're in an entry level job is a really scary prospect. Um, and so I think there's going to be a disruption in some way because folks are going to have a harder time getting into uh, the work that they, that they, that they studied to go do. Um, and so I don't know what the looks like but I do know that the folks that are leveraging AI to use it as a thought partner, to use it as a force multiplier, to use it to help uh, be more thoughtful and considerate. Uh, those are the folks who are winning. Uh, the folks who are not leveraging it or who are thinking it's hype or um, it's not um, necessarily helpful or they're smarter in some way. Uh, I think that's a fool's errand. Um, you know a lot of the knowledge, a lot of the work that we do is about pattern matching and it's about you know, memory recall. It's about uh, experiences and when you have all that information, those tools and systems are really good at doing that. Pattern matching, memory recall, uh, and helping you get smarter, faster but you got to know the questions to ask. Um, and that's, I think the opportunity that folks have is to figure out how to ask better questions inside of the, some of the AI tools. Um, and as you ask those better questions you're going to get better responses and uh, you're going to get the benefit. Um, but if you're not being thoughtful about the questions, if you're using AI to replace your thinking, I think that's a very short term, uh, maybe a short term benefit that folks might see. Uh, because eventually uh, you're not going to have the ability to ask those great questions. That's really what we do is we ask why and we ask how and we ask what and that's the opportunity for us to leverage these platforms and tools in uh, our day to day life. Um, but I do think a lot about young folks coming out of school and I do wonder what the, what the entry level jobs are because so many of those are being replaced um, by uh, by these tools.

Speaker A: Are you doing any Vibe coding yourself or any like advanced AI stuff? AI coding or AI product creation or something like that? You have time for that or.

Speaker B: No, we, we, I, I don't, I don't do it in the, in the tools necessarily. We have a group of folks that we, we do spend time with product where we are doing, you know, building products around um, you know, some of the, some of the common challenges that we experience, um, in our business. Right. We are the expert, we are the product in some ways. And so um, it's a really unique place to be in terms of getting into some of those Vibe coding sessions where some of the product teams are running the tools and we're providing some input or guidance or some of that conversation. Um, and that's been a lot of fun. Um, I heard that term probably three or four months ago. I hadn't heard it before three or four months ago and now it seems to be everywhere. Uh, uh, there's a Rick Ross podcast the other day, uh, where um, he's talking about Vibe coding, um, and he's a producer, uh, and he's talking about in the context of how he writes music now. Uh, um, and so that's just, it's neat to see folks get more engaged with the space.

Speaker A: Um, internally me and my partner were talking that we're going to see a lot of the kind of, we call it like a one man billion dollar company, right, where you can create a product and um, promote it and acquire customers and then retain them and do that with like a very small team or just yourself in a way. Um, but I am personally I think that that could be the future for a lot of them. But I personally think that we're going to see more platform plays like where um, we're going to see more acquisition and more monopolies and just kind of more you know, like you don't need to have all of the products like you've had like hundred SaaS products, but you can have one that will be so impactful in your organization that will cover everything. Um, and then what's going to be in the between, everyone will be struggling. So you either are optimizing to be very lean, very efficient and you're trying to kind of get out the margins and kind of get the niche or you're joining and doing kind of a platform play and integrating with Salesloft or Salesforce or the other kind of big guys like yourself. Um, what do you think about this? Um, what is the reality that you think, think we'll be living in or I with me, I with my co founder more on the kind of a

Speaker B: billion dollar company I think um, in technology, if you look back over the history of, of this, this business past maybe 50, 60 years, it's been a pendulum swing back and forth between centralization and distribution. Um, and I think the things you're describing are, are one side of that, right? Um, the, the, the idea that the platform is centralization and then all these billion dollar companies is distribution.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And it's going to go back and forth and back and for again over the history of this business you can watch these trends happen. Whether it's in telecommunications or networking infrastructure or software or the mainframe or applications. It's always the same back and forth, back and forth. So I think the answer is it will go back and forth. Um, and it won't settle in either. It'll continue to move, um, as compute and R and D resources and access to AI and development tools work in one direction, you're going to see these billion dollar companies uh, get created with by leveraging all these tools. And then eventually you're going to see that pendulum swing back the other way where you're going to find these platforms that may acquire those tools or may find a better way to bring those tools to bear. And uh, then eventually when there's more compute at the edge and more AI tools, it'll go back to that idea of distribution. But what I can offer you in the business of predictions is it will continue to go back and forth uh, between centralization and distribution that I can be reasonably confident in what the actual details look like. I couldn't answer roughly.

Speaker A: Um, I went up market last year, sort of like working with more upper mid size upstream type companies because uh, we're not um, as much into AI generation and in our space AI SDRs is the new thing. Like everyone is like oh let's do kind of clay AI SDR automations, let's go and we don't want to play that game. So we went and start working with bigger companies. But I'm still kind of figuring out that, that up market enterprise play, um, anything you can, um, any pointers you can give me in terms of what I could focus on like the low hanging fruits for me where I can kind of win more business in this space. Like a couple of my partners, they are heavily focusing on offline conferencing trade shows. They're like heavy on those, just investing and they see huge roi. Um, some are doing billboards, I don't know, like the subway kind of at um, so again you guys are heavy in that sector. So anything you can tell Michael, do this thing and you might succeed.

Speaker B: Yeah, well first of all there's no low hanging fruit, uh, if they wouldn't be those companies that you wouldn't be valuable if you go after. So um, there is very little low hanging fruit um, in terms of where we spend our calories and where we think about investing the most. It's at some of the larger sales conferences. Um, the Gartner event is a great one. Forrester is a great one. Uh, where our buyers are congregating. Um, we do a lot of curated experiences uh, with um, folks where we bring uh, prospects and customers together. Um, that's been sort of a tried and true modality that um, you know, look, I learned that at Cisco a long time ago and certainly leveraged it in my career since. But bringing customers uh, and prospects together in uh, those highly curated uh, executive level conversations is um, always a really strong modality for us. And for every company I've been at

Speaker A: in terms of how does it work. So you do that like a dinner, RSVP dinner type of, or like a happy hour is that it's usually a dinner.

Speaker B: It's usually 10 to 12 folks will bring somebody uh, who's one of our experts, whether it's ahead of product or head of development or CEO or myself. Uh, we usually bring a third party. So somebody uh, who's got uh, a brand or got a particular topic to talk about whether it's negotiation or. Or, uh, product development, uh, or, um, uh, uh, leadership. We'll, uh, bring those folks to the table, uh, and we'll just have a conversation largely unrelated to what Salesloft does. Um, there's an opportunity for the customers to talk to the prospects. And oftentimes, or invariably, I guess I should say, um, the conversation finds its way back to, hey, who's our host and sponsor? Uh, we let those things unfold organically. Uh, and that's the formula I've used for 20 years, and it works consistently. Uh, and the real value is the intellectual gift that we're giving the customer, uh, and the prospect. Uh, and the customers love talking about the success they've had. The prospects are always looking for sort of unvarnished, uh, direct engagement and feedback. Uh, and again, to sell as human, to engage as human. Um, these things are opportunities for people to engage with other people with. I think that's where the real value is found and realized. Um, and so that's a modality that we've used consistently, and it's been very, very fruitful for us. Again, some of those big conferences, there's different, um, ones that are more performant for us. Uh, but, uh, those areas are areas where we spend our dollars in terms of figuring out where find our next customers.

Speaker A: Love this. Um, any dinner that you can share that went, uh, not the way you expect.

Speaker B: Uh, went not the way I expected, and I can't share the details of it.

Speaker A: Oh, the one. Okay, let's do the one that. That went very more than you expected. That was like, absolute phenomenon, success. Well, I know people don't like to work, talk about the success, but if we can talk about the failure, then let's talk about the celebrations.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Any surprises?

Speaker B: Certainly, um, you know, one surprise. We found a customer who was a customer. Not necessarily the most. Most, you know, the most emotive customer. Uh, we found this person, uh, pitching us at every corner of the table, and we were shocked to see it. Uh, and, um, you know, talking about us, uh, I guess in front of our back in, uh, a way we never expected. Um, and what we found was, um, he was a really big fan of ours, but. But definitely, you know, love to love, uh, to give the sales team a hard time. Love to give the customer team a hard time. But, uh, what was really, uh, you know, fun and enjoyable for us to see was, was how he. How he really thought about us and how he's positioning us to, uh, some other companies that were considering looking at salesloft uh, that was a really neat one to see and to be a part of. And the folks in the room from the salesloft side didn't really have to do much. Um, you know, we facilitated, we introduced, uh, but then we uh, let things unfold organically and it was really nice to see.

Speaker A: So your CRO, how often are you pitched on your product or service or vendor? How much time do you typically spend in a given week or month going into and build kind of early pitches, early demos, things you kind of are talking to any X number of hours. Yeah, yeah, you were saying.

Speaker B: Yeah, as a seller.

Speaker A: No, no, as a CRO. Like people are selling to you. So uh, I wanted to explore that side of you if you can, because folks are listening to this. They're like, like, I mean, CRO sales loft, a gazillion billion dollar company, like uh, trillion. Oh, I want to sell to, to, to Mark. So I, I wanted to pick your brain. So how often do you, do you say yes to a demo, a cold pitch or a. Just a presentation with, with a new vendor or new product?

Speaker B: Ah, almost never. Um, and so, um, pretty, uh, rare.

Speaker A: Don't try to sell to you?

Speaker B: No, not, not, not that I usually, uh, I'll take recommendations from people I try trust. Uh, so find somebody who, if you want to pitch me, find somebody who knows me who says, hey, I met with these guys. I think you'd enjoy the conversation. Um, and the reason for that is I think so many folks optimize for some of the things we're talking about. How do I nail that message? And that's not necessarily the thing that I'm interested in. Um, so I tend to look for references or recommendations from folks, um, that I trust. Um, I also have a fantastic rev ops team that spends a lot of time talking to vendors and talking to those folks, folks about what they're seeing in the market, where they're getting pitched, uh, and what pitches should make it through. Um, I also have the great pleasure working for Avista Co. And so I get the chance to talk to those folks every day about what they're seeing and hearing in the market. So that's a great filter for me to hear who's pitching them and what are they seeing in the market. Uh, and that's been another area where I get a lot of references and recommendations. Um, those are the places I go to, uh, people I trust. Uh, certainly the, you know, the PE firm that uh, invests in us and then the people that run rops for us, those are the areas where I'll probably, uh, look first for a pitch, I have taken a few conversations. Um, you know, oftentimes, uh, you know, uh, it's a little bit misguided, uh, in terms of what I see out there. Um, I have seen, uh, quite a few pitches or aggressive pitches get, you know, sort of jump the shark a little bit. Again, in terms of, uh, you know, the level of aggression, uh, that some of these folks are using to try to get a conversation going for something that I'm not the buyer for, uh, Internet security was one of them that came to me for probably six months. I was on some guy's radar and, uh, gosh, it got irritating. Um, not only was not the buyer, the pitches got more and more aggressive as I ignored them. So, uh, what not to.

Speaker A: Did you engage at the end and say fuck off or something like that?

Speaker B: It did not. But I did capture every message the person sent, uh, and I did share it with my team in a long form presentation said, this is what this journey looked like. Um, and here's a few problems with it. One, the messages were inappropriate, uh, and they didn't strike the right tone. But two, I'm not the right buyer. Uh, and this person didn't, uh, ever take the approach to say, hey, I know you're not the right buyer, uh, but I'm, um, a sales guy. You're a sales guy. Um, would you mind giving me some pointers? Um, you know, that may be something, uh, I would have considered, uh, but just to, uh, have a bit of a thoughtless pitch around, uh, wanting me to engage in an Internet security conversation was just, wasn't my time or their time. But, um, I did use the chance to use that as an example for my team to say, hey, be very careful in doing this. Here's what I would have reacted better to. Um, and take it how you will.

Speaker A: Do you still remember the company name?

Speaker B: Oh, yes.

Speaker A: Well, they done the job not in a bad or in a good way. You're not doing business with them, but you know them. But it's like a Voldemort type of situation. Right?

Speaker B: Uh, I knew the name before. It did not improve their standing.

Speaker A: So you've been on the CRO position role for the last, uh, what, like 17 months. Congratulations, by the way. This is your first CRO role, uh, in your career, as far as the LinkedIn tells me. Right. Um, how is it different from CVP of sales based on your experience so far, what's rewarding and what's not in. In this Year role.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's um, like like every, every role, every step up it's 10 times more than the previous role. Um in terms of decision making, in terms of responsibility, uh in terms of uh you know authority or um you know accountability and, and those things. It is much more uh holistic in um in all of those areas. Um we think about enablement more we think about territory planning, we think about quotas, uh we think about people, human capital and comp plans. And how do we make people uh comfortable uh and confident in the roles and jobs they're in. How do we give them opportunities to do their best work? Um that is something I think about a good percentage of my time. When I was a senior leader at a big tech company that wasn't my main consideration. It was more uh focused on near term midterm performance and hiring the best talent uh and making sure they had opportunities to develop and grow. Um this is a much more fulsome role in terms of uh, considering the full person and how we organize and orchestrate them to get the best uh, for them but also to get the best out of them uh in terms of uh, uh how we can grow our business. Um so I think that's the difference is it's a 10x er uh in terms of the challenges uh as well as the rewards for opportunities that exist in the, in the, in the job.

Speaker A: Based on your um background as um uh in sales and senior vice president and your competencies, uh what was the most kind of rewarding kind of skill set that you brought in from M A from a sales uh background into the CRO position that uh, what to help you to kind of capitalize on that or just move faster like a key attribute or a skill, maybe your personal trait or generally that, that you brought in from the previous position. Uh that kind of helped you a lot in this new role.

Speaker B: Yeah, one of the things that I've always sort of relied on is customers want to build trust. Um they're going to spend their money with other companies, they're going to spend a lot of money. They want to know that there's somebody, the other side of that conversation who's going to care for them, who's going to respect them, who's going to take care of uh their investments and their own personal brand and reputation. Um that is something that is I learned very early in my life but also was reinforced of my time at Cisco, uh again reinforced to my time at Salesforce where um we spend a lot of time listening Deeply to customers and being considerate of who's on the other side of the conversation. I, um, don't know that I don't see as many people take that tack, uh, on things. Um, I think it's a very obvious lesson. I've learned it over and over and over again. Um, and I don't know that I always see folks, uh, spending as much time, uh, being that trusted counterparty on the other side uh, who considers the person whose brand, whose career, who. Whose reputation, uh, they're uh, investing in the relationship with you. Um, so that. That has been a. I don't know if it's a skill set. It's a, It's a sort of a maybe a life skill, uh, that, uh, that I brought to this role that has served me well over and over and over again.

Speaker A: Um, a lot of, um, um, VP of Sales folks could be listening to this conversation. Um, and I wanted to ask you, is it, um, a kind of organic, more kind of natural promotion ladder for, for VPs of sales or, you know, leadership, Sales leadership, try out the CRO hat. Would you advise that for other folks?

Speaker B: Would I advise them to try out the CRO role?

Speaker A: Right. Like, is it like a natural progression in your experience, like going from, uh, kind of CRO as the next challenge in the career ladder, folks from the sales team? And then is that something that, um, you think that the sales people need to try out as the next step in their career generally and look, look out for.

Speaker B: I don't, I don't necessarily think of it like that. Um, you know, I have this sort of, you know, what's the next logical progression of my career? Conversation over and over again. And, um, folks oftentimes say to me, hey, I want to move from sales into leadership. And I ask them why, and they say, it's the next logical progression of my career. I said, well, you shouldn't do it. Um, that was not a good reason. Um, if you get satisfaction out of helping other people grow, helping them do things they didn't think was possible, uh, being that person or that leader that can bring folks together and get the group to do more than the individuals, then you should maybe consider, uh, more senior leadership roles. But if that's not what you enjoy doing, if you enjoy being the guy or the gal that closes the deal that, that, that wins the, uh, opportunity, uh, that's a, That's. That's a very fulfilling role and job and really important for folks to, To. To do that. So if you, if you, if your satisfaction comes through uh, in the agency of others. I think that is, that is where, uh, that is where these roles make sense. Sense. But if that's not what you, uh, what you, what gives you joy, I, I, I don't think I would recommend it.

Speaker A: Um, I have a, I always do a quick kind of game. Um, um, uh, I call it like these are that quiz. Um, I have one dedicated for CRO. So which one would you choose? A one Killer Case study or Five Fast Facts.

Speaker B: Five, um, fast facts.

Speaker A: Uh, speed to value or die depth of strategy?

Speaker B: Uh, depends a little bit, but probably speed to value.

Speaker A: Um, you don't, you, you don't care about the strategy that much or just the, the value outcome that you can deliver right now is more important.

Speaker B: It depends on what, what I'm buying. But you know, you know, potentially more likely it's, it's speed to value, um, these uh, days. But yeah.

Speaker A: Personalized video or tailored. Personalized LinkedIn message?

Speaker B: Probably uh, the tailored LinkedIn message, right?

Speaker A: You don't do personalized videos, especially AI generated. Did you see, have you received a lot of those?

Speaker B: I have a Synthesia account, I've used it. Uh, I'm sure that technology will get there. Uh, it's super neat stuff but um, I'd prefer someone to write out a personalized message that gets me to engage.

Speaker A: Um, talk Pipeline acceleration or team performance boost. Team performance, can you explain?

Speaker B: I believe in the power of we. Um, so anytime you can get a group of people to do something consistently, uh, and perform at a high level, you'll always win. Uh, the team always wins. Um, so pipeline boost is certainly important but when you can get a group of people doing something consistently and performing at a high level, you can do

Speaker A: anything, uh, data led pitch or pain point storytelling or pinpoint focused, uh, narrative.

Speaker B: Uh, probably a pain point narrative.

Speaker A: Uh, and then the last one called call or cold email.

Speaker B: Uh, probably a cold email. Uh, I'm more likely to uh, take that.

Speaker A: Did you get a lot of cold calls?

Speaker B: I do, I don't answer calls that are that where the number is not in my phone already, so I'm probably unlikely to answer.

Speaker A: Yeah, I tried to, um, I'm kind of moving countries often and I'm trying to get a local um, SIM card and I'm not giving my number to anyone. So you cannot get the reselled information. So I rarely have. But my partners, they, they somehow being their confirmation is being sold and they're just getting so many calls and I hate that. Like I have this thing where like the call is calling that someone is important. Like, it's like an IRS calling or something. Like, you know, like, literally, like, I need you. Right. That's strange.

Speaker B: The IRS won't call you. By the way, if it's the IRS calling, it's not the IRS press.

Speaker A: Yeah. They don't call. Right.

Speaker B: They send you a letter, and this guy tells you when there's. When there's spam. So, uh, if it's not in my phone, 99% of the time, it says possible spam.

Speaker A: Uh, Mark, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much for a great conversation. Um, I. I think I asked everything that I wanted to. I appreciate the time you spend with me today.

Speaker B: Awesome. Michael. Great to spend time with you today. I appreciate it.