How to Sell Asynchronously w/ Rex Galbraith, CRO at Consensus

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello, and welcome back to the Colin Cadmus Podcast. Today I'm joined by Rex Galbraith. Rex is the Chief Revenue Officer at Consensys, the world's number one demo automation platform. Founded in 2013, Rex joined in 2016 as VP of Sales and climbed to SVP of Sales in 2022 prior to becoming the CRO later that year. Before ConsenSys, Rex led sales at HireVue, Global Access and Yoli. Needless to say, he has a wealth of experience and I'm excited to dive in and get his thoughts on all that's changed in B2B sales and find out what's working and what isn't working for his team at Consensys. Before we get started, if you're watching on YouTube, please take a moment to subscribe to the channel, like the video and leave us a comment if you have questions or feedback.

Speaker A: If you.

Speaker B: If you're joining us from Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please drop us a review and let us know what you think of the episode. This is much appreciated. Without further ado, let's dive in and get his thoughts. Rex, thanks for joining me and welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Of course. Thank you for bringing me on, Colin.

Speaker B: Likewise. It's been a long while coming. I've heard nothing but good things about you. I've been obviously blown away by consensus. You know, I've become an ambassador of the product. I'm shouting it out all the time. Um, and I genuinely believe everything that I'm saying. This is something that I wanted for many years, tinkered around with different tools that were sort of in the space and just nothing seemed like it was well executed. Um, and I know you guys have been around for a while and we'll get into it. Maybe you've sort of watched the product sort of evolve and whatnot. Um, uh, but it's exciting to see what's happening because it seems to be. And maybe the timing of sort of everything that's going on is in relation to the success you're having, but it seems to be perfect timing for this product and for people to start thinking about automating demos. Because the whole industry is like, hey, let's pull back from hiring a million salespeople and using Headcount for growth, and let's figure out how to get efficient here. Uh, I just saw Chamath from, uh, the all in podcast made a tweet this morning where he's basically saying, like, traditional SaaS is dead. And he explained all of the reasons why and basically the foundation of the reason is that we are just no longer comfortable pumping all of this money in for growth. Because they just don't think that spending all this money today is going to equate to all of this cash later. They're actually nervous you're just going to get wiped out by some efficient AI or something like that. And so this is how people are thinking today. Like how do we grow our demand and bring a bigger pipeline in without necessarily having to just keep hiring more AES endlessly. And obviously if you can automate demos at the top of the funnel, um, in a variety of different ways, uh, then you can increase uh, that capacity for those AES. And so that's what's got my eyes drawn to it, I imagine the sort of leading cause of your growth in sales in addition to just great execution. But want to dive into it. And I've got five questions for you. Um, before I do that, do you want to maybe just give me or give the audience a quick overview, sort of what you are doing as CRO at consensus, maybe how your roles evolved, wherever you want to go, just to give us sort of a starting point of what you're doing there?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I joined. I'm almost coming up on my 10 year. I think it's the next.

Speaker B: I saw that actually I meant to throw that in. Yeah, it would look like you were a couple weeks away.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's weird to even think about it. I still feel like we're in super startup mode. I feel like I'm just figuring it out and we're new to it. But what's happening right now is the reason I initially came onto consensus is I believed in this idea that what you do live and what you do outside of a meeting really matters. And that uh, a lot of the reps that I'd seen and a lot of the skill set that I had as a rep was what I could do live talking to a person. Whether it was on Zoom or in person. The world is changing where a lot of people want to do things asynchronously and with the advent of AI, it makes that even more so. So I just see that the market is, is following the B2C motion when it comes to purchasing. That is. Uh, and I just saw a, uh, data point, I think it was from six Sense and it basically said something that if you, the effect of 80% or more of buyers will not engage with a sales rep until they're more than 70% of the way through Their evaluation.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so what's happening is the best reps aren't even getting at bats anymore because they don't know how to engage in between the meetings. And I feel like what we're doing at Consensus is addressing that. And, and what I do love is we're seeing more and more companies believing in that, more companies and thought leaders, uh, pushing that motion forward. And our goal and our mission is to be at the forefront, leading the innovation and leading the charge.

Speaker B: I love it. And you used a word that is so hits home for me is asynchronous. As, uh, you know, I created an online course a few years ago for. It's called the Modern Outbound System. And the idea was like, hey, cold calls and emails are declining. Let's dive into and talk about the things that are sort of working now. Social media is a big part of that. And asynchronous selling was like the thing we talked about. And I have that exact stat that you mentioned there. At the time, it had come from the Gardner future of sales report in. I think it was 2019, but that's what they said. Yeah, buyers want to go through the journey at least 80% of the way, probably more. Ideally, I think they want to go through the whole journey.

Speaker A: That was five years ago.

Speaker B: So if they can go through the whole journey without speaking to a salesperson, uh, I think they would. Would do that. And I think that's. That's also probably a large reason why this is working now. And maybe, I mean, the technology has gotten better too. But I just think, you know, we tried to push this stuff five, ten years ago. You try to automate demos. I don't think buyers necessarily even would have, you know, known how to use it or wanted to. But I think buyers are just getting more savvy. The younger generation is becoming the buyer that. They talked a lot about that in there, about how the baby boomers and Gen X is sort of being replaced by the millennial buyer.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we shop differently. Right. We grew up with, like, a lot. Well, I'm an older millennial, so I grew up going into retail stores. But, you know, the younger side of my generation, they didn't go to stores, they didn't call 800 numbers to order a shirt out of a catalog. They go online, they do their own research, they place their order. And so for them to then go into B2B and have to be jumping on phones, talking to people, this is like, way out of their comfort zone. They've never done anything like that these people don't even walk into Nordstrom. And you know, the person's like, how, hey, how can I help you find something today? Like, they're like, no, no, no, I'm fine. Like, you know, they freeze up with the social anxiety probably. So I think that that's all just the stars have aligned perfectly there. Um, but let's dive into the first topic. I want to get your, your thoughts on hiring salespeople. This is one that everyone always wants advice on. Obviously, you can't be successful if you're not successful at this. So, um, before I ask the question, the question is, what's the secret, uh, to hiring great salespeople? But can you first give me a sense of how big the, the team is there and how much hiring you've done?

Speaker A: Yeah. So in terms of sales people, we're probably between sales SDRs and kind of the go to market, there's probably about 40. And then if you look at CSMs, there's probably about. Someone's going to correct me on this. Probably 15 to 20, uh, there. So the go to market team is probably around. You know, anyone that's touching and engaging with customers all the time is 60 plus.

Speaker B: Okay, that makes. And are you overseeing CSM as well as CRO?

Speaker A: Today we actually brought in Todd Jansen. So I'm direct line working with them all the time. But the active manager today is Todd Jansen, who we brought in from Salesforce. And so he has brought a new component. While my vision is kind of all there, he is really driving the day to day, uh, all the time.

Speaker B: But he reports to you?

Speaker A: No, he does not report. Oh, he does today.

Speaker B: So they do keep it, keep it separate. So I always ask, the CRO roles are. They're always unique and different. But, but I do think that that's the right way to do it. I think it's, uh, you can very quickly just become overwhelmed with, with too much if.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: The thing is when it comes down to at the end of the day, everything serves driving revenue to the business. And one of the things that I love about consensus is we don't focus a lot of time on or there is structure to it. Um, but a lot of the leadership, we have no problem diving into each other's worlds. And there's no, there's no, no, uh, one gets upset. Uh, product dives into my thing. We have uh, our SV of P of product on and he'll come in and talk about, hey, I think we should be doing this with Pricing. I think we should be doing more marketing material this way. Um, that is one of the incredible things about consensus, is I feel like we are leaders of the business first, and we happen to have certain disciplines that we focus on probably a little bit more than the others.

Speaker B: So it sounds. You guys understand the concept of first team very well on the leadership team there.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was interesting. I watched a podcast. Uh, I can't remember, was it Lex Free? I can't remember who it was, but he was talking to Jeff Bezos, and he. He mentioned two concepts that I'll never forget. And number one was, um, when leaders speak first, that's where good ideas die. Because the rest of the team, once they hear a leader, they're like, oh, my gosh, my idea might not be good. Uh, and then the second is, is that. That we don't. We don't have a hierarchy. The best idea is always at the top of the hierarchy. So if it comes from the ICSDR or if it comes from the VP of Sales, if the. If the SDR comes with the best idea, that's the ruling idea. That's the idea that wins. It's not people that determine where the actions go. The best ideas do. I, um, love that. Always remembered that is just to say, hey, make sure, keep your mouth shut early on. Let people express their ideas, and don't open your mouth, because you may shut down an idea. That's the next big one.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I. You, uh, know, I always find that some of the best ideas tend to come from people on the front lines. You know, I always constantly say to CEOs, when they reach out to me, they're like, hey, you know, we're not hitting our targets. I think we need a new SDR manager or a new VP Sales or something. It's like, well, why aren't you hitting your targets? And then they start listing all the reasons they think. I'm like, well, why does your sale. Why do your salespeople think they're not hitting their targets? And they're like, well, I don't, uh, know. You don't know? You haven't asked, Right? Like, this is it. Probably start there. Because they probably know why they're not hitting their target. Some of them will probably tell you the target's just too high. And, you know, if they're really good salespeople and they've been there for a while, you might want to actually listen to that, because maybe they have a mathematical reason why that's true. Um, maybe you're losing to competitors because you're missing this one feature and they're hyper aware of it because they're having that conversation every single day. But as a CEO, you're not hyper aware of it because every day you're talking to investors, telling them how great everything is. You don't know the problems. It's not even like it's basically an echo chamber. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But, so what would you say is the secret to hiring great salespeople? Um, you know, everyone's got their own sort of approach. You have any, uh, any words of wisdom there?

Speaker A: So what's worked for me and, uh, you know, and I'm learning every day, all the time, hiring is as hard as it gets. I think it's, it's one of those things that you should take your time on. Getting a bad hire, if this makes sense, is probably more damaging than it is than getting a good hire. It is very costly and at the end of the day, I always take it as it's, it's on me. If I put the wrong person in the wrong seat, that's on me. I think a lot of times we try to blame all that person, which is bad. I'm like, it's your job to, to bring the right person in and coach them up. But there's a couple of things I would say trust, like I, I immediately think connect. Could I trust this person? And if you've ever read the book Speed of Trust, it's something I reference all the time. I don't care if you have an A player with the best plan in the world. I'll take a B player with a B plan that I trust over an A player with an A plan that I don't trust. It's everything moves at the speed of trust. And then the second I put a post on LinkedIn yesterday about follow up, how they follow up with me and how they're referenced and say they follow up is a big thing. Like it's just a common denominator. I've seen in good reps. They don't need nudges. Uh, I, I call them. Someone gave me this term once. I can't remember who I stole it from. But they're send delete people. I can send them something, an email or Slack and I can delete. I don't have to think. Most people I talk to, when I send something, I put a mental note. I put an action item. If I don't hear anything in three days, there's a guy on my team and people love him. His Name's Tyler Jeffrey. He runs our mid market. He is a send elite person to me. If I send it, not only am I going to get it back, I'll probably get it better back. Better than I envisioned it. Yeah, Those are the types of people. When I give people in interviews, the ability to do that, I'll say things and be like, hey, get me this or get me that. And a lot of them will forget and they just won't. Others will be like, you know what? You asked me to send that, that case, uh, study on that deal that I closed and I, I put a video together kind of walking through it for you like that to me and like, you need to treat me like I'm a prospect and I want to know what that engagement is like. So between trust, follow up and then probably one third one would be product passion. Do they truly geek out about the product? If this is just, hey, you guys are just a hot growing company right now and I want to make a lot of money. I'm like, you really just have to love it. Like, I want you geeking out about it. So when I bring up consensus or wherever I'm running, um, the business at the time, can they actually talk deep about the product? And would it be something that in natural conversation they would love to talk about consensus or whichever, whichever company that you're hiring for.

Speaker B: We're like kindred spirits here. I mean, you're even using phrases that I've had in my head or have said before. I think I was on, uh, oh, God, I can't even remember. It was the sales leadership podcast. It was the first podcast I ever went on. And he asked me, you know, what's the foundation of leadership? And I said, trust and respect. And it was something that I learned the hard way because the first VP sales job that I had, I didn't take the time to earn their respect. I assumed I already had it. And that caused a lot of problems because I went in there, I tried to sort of rubber stamp all the ideas that worked at my last company. A bunch of them didn't work. You start losing respect along that way. And then I start realizing, well, wait, a lot of the things these guys are doing here actually does work for this company. And so I had to sort of re earn all of that trust in the latter six months of that first year. But when I went to Air Call, I thought about it completely differently, just like you say. So I'm going to sort of take a back seat here. I'm going to take the time to get to know people, figure out everything that's working here, and I'm going to find out all of the things that there's. That they're sort of commonly pissed off about. And I'm going to solve those problems first because that'll be the easiest way for them to trust me. Right. And then start to earn some respect and then take some bigger risks, maybe changing some things that they're kind of hesitant about, you know, a little bit later down the road. And, and it made all the difference. Like, like completely huge difference. Um, the product passion, the follow up. But you said the, the send delete people. It's a perfect phrase for it. I've, I've always, I think about these people. They're always who you're searching for. I've never had a phrase to describe them. Um, but it's weird you said that because I was literally just thinking the other day about, like, making a list for a LinkedIn post of like, these are the, like, traits you want to have if you're looking to get promoted or become a favorite. And that's the perfect phrase for it. And I've always described it as like, in the same way. It's like, you just want these people, like, you ask them to do something, you don't follow up, they do it better than you asked. And it's so, I don't know if you have the same experience, but so rare to find these people.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's agreed. Like, not only do I know who they are, like, right off the top of my head, it is my constant goal that I am on someone's send delete list. Like, I try to make that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Am I that person?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: That, like, uh, to me, I put it up as an L. If someone goes, hey, Rex, where is that? I want to be so proactive in my outreach that it's like I'm getting it there before I told them I would and it's coming better than they asked for it. And.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And they're just like, hey, when I, when I give a task, I can just now focus and go. So for any salesperson looking to become a sales leader, that is what your manager is looking for is not, uh, someone to babysit, but someone that can say, hey, I can now elevate what I'm doing and go do. Because I feel very confident that Colin has taken care of this. I've sent it to him, I can delete it and I can move forward.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, I've had sales leaders before who are often not so organized or very good at this stuff. They tend to be unorganized. Sometimes some of the best coaches and whatnot, and sometimes you're like, okay, I need room for this sort of high energy leader on my team, but I can't trust them to complete anything outside of that. And you just maybe sometimes you sort of accept it and like, whatever, but then you lean harder on the people that you know you can rely on. And I just think there is a very easy solution to this. It's you need to be hyper organized. And some people are just like, well I'm not organized. Like, okay, I'm going to just give you one trick on how to do this and it'll save your uh, like if you can just do this one thing, every time that you have something you need to do, put it in your calendar. That's it. Just make your calendar your to do list and live out of it. And this problem, uh, for me at least it's like so simple. But other people just drastically struggle with this stuff and it will absolutely hold you back in your career. I want to be the person who, if I just hear my CEO or someone like sort of having an issue, I don't even want them to necessarily ask, like maybe if I think I can fix it, I'm going to just do something, come to them or come to them with an idea like, hey, I heard you mention, like that's taking it to the even next level.

Speaker A: But, but yeah, yeah, like you like, you like re. Answer the question like you're pre solved issue. And I agree with you, like that's an amazing thing. I've had people on my team before who like, you were talking about the challenges of 2025 and you mentioned one thing. I think it helped with. I actually brought you this and it's like, are you kidding me? Like I didn't even ask you. You brought it up. And then that, that just elevates how you think about that person and you know that they're thinking like a leader because leaders are thinking about the whole business where, where if you don't have the leadership quality, you're really hyper focused on yourself. And, and, and I don't, I think just, I don't think titles make you leaders. I think anyone in any role can be a leader, um, at any time. And a leader to me is just somebody that is, is someone you want to follow by example and isn't waiting for an order to be given.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And, and, and you can be anywhere in an org to do that. Yeah.

Speaker B: I've always said when people ask like, how do you become, you know, a manager or whatnot? I say you really should naturally be sort of doing those types of leadership things before you're even in the role. And if it doesn't come naturally to you, and it doesn't come naturally to the people around you, like your reps are, your peers are not asking you for help. They're not, you're not the one on the team that they come to, like, probably not going to feel so natural for you to become their leader. Um, but anytime you're sort of looking around the team like, who's going to be the next manager? I've always said if it's not obvious to everyone, then it's probably no one. Right. It should be the person that, like, when you're like, hey, we just promoted, you know, uh, Lauren to be our next manager, everyone's just like, yup, that makes so much sense. Like, like, uh, that's how it should be every time. And it's because they did these things that we're talking about.

Speaker A: Yeah. I used to think that managers like to earn manager means that you had the answers to everything. It's not about answers, it's about initiative. As long as you can find the answer and that you can actually complete the goal, that's the leadership quality. I used to think once I know everything, I'm like a guru that sits on a pillow and people come in and then they ask me a question and I give them a one word answer and they leave enlightened. Like, that is not what a leader is. A, uh, leader is somebody not only who will give you the belief, but put the initiative in place and then they'll, they'll stand side by side with you to help you complete it if you're struggling with it. Uh, and, and that's the type of leader. I'm not perfect at it. I fail it all the time. But when I'm trying to check myself like, am I doing the right things? Is, is that what I'm doing? Is am I just giving out yeses and nos and, and, and, and not following up and not standing side by side with my team, uh, that's when I can kind of do a pulse check if I'm, if I'm doing the right thing. So as that pertains to hiring reps, I try to hire people that not only I can help, but they can help me. And one quality to look at is, um, would you report to this person one day if they, because I tell People this all the time, they say, what. What's one of your big goals at consensus? Like, do you want to have some awesome exit? I'm like, yeah, I want all those, every. All those things. Um, I said my dream would be is that somebody that I hired either asks me to join a company that's entirely super successful down the road, or they're my boss. Like that. Maybe at one point that would hurt my ego. Today, I would be filled with joy to see people that I've worked with or hired take what I've done and take it to the next level. Like, that would make me. I'd get stoked behind that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You want to hire people better than you. I mean, it's, it's the. It's a catch 22 in some companies. And, and it was probably worse during the sort of growth at all costs, uh, area because they're just hiring and firing people. But you can very easily become a victim of your own success in these roles. Uh, you build out such a great leadership team underneath you. All of the sudden, you're the top earner in, in the sense of, you know, equity and total comp. And. But now you got this team under you, and you're sort of like, very hands off. And it's like, well, you know, when you need to cut costs, you got to all of a sudden look out for your head. Right. Um, but quick, uh, question on, on hiring. Do you, for your AES, are you developing them all from SDRs, or do you hire AES externally as well?

Speaker A: So the person who does this mostly on my team is Dan Hickson. He runs our vp. He's our VP of sales, and he runs the SDR and AE team. Just recently, we've been starting to get a lot of them from sdr. We, uh, just had someone today who posted, uh, Jacob Sawyer on LinkedIn that he was an. He came in as a, as a green SDR and now is an ae.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: We, we believe if we're doing our job right, we will get more people who are moving through the process. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Is one is I want to show people that you can go from SDR to wherever you want. You can go from a CSM to leading a team. Um, that means that we're training, we're doing a good job, um, from a leadership perspective. And they're immediately ramped. They're immediately stoked.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: They already have the tribal knowledge, they already have the communication. I already know that they're a good person, the product knowledge, I don't have to take a guess. And so it is our preference, uh, and more than we ever have before. And Dan's done a great job at this. And I would say Alex Edwards, who's our VP of client success, we are hiring from within and promoting from within more than we ever have.

Speaker B: I love it. I think it's, it's the proof that. Well, it's hard to recruit SDRs if you can't do that, first of all, because eventually they start to. There's a whole reputation that it's a dead end job and, and so you kind of have to crack that code. Um, there's also, I mean, you pointed out the reasons, like, you know, it's just their culture fit. You already know they show up, you know how many times a month they're late. Like you have all that fake field out already, so the risk is much lower. But also you can usually save a lot of money because what you're doing is you're getting, I like to say, like the first two or three years where they're just going into that AE role is probably the most efficient they're going to ever be because they're at the lowest possible salary or whatever that they will ever take that job for. Once they prove themselves, they have all the leverage, right? And then they can start to, to go around. And so it really makes a ton of sense even just from, from that angle to, to do it. But I have always found still bring in one or two or just uh, you know, a little bit of, of outside, you know, influence, sometimes an AE here or there. I always tried to trickle in one or two throughout the year from outside just to bring a different perspective. And sometimes they come in and they just have these great ideas and whatnot. Um, I'm actually curious, have you heard, have you guys ever used or, or heard of Track Wreck?

Speaker A: I have not.

Speaker B: So you might want to take a look at it. I've been mentioning it to people just because it's something that I really wish that I had when I was uh, doing this. But what they created, you know, the problem with LinkedIn is like you go on there and it tells you their work history or whatever they type in there. But on the recruitment side, what we have to do is spend a ton of time verifying if any of that's actually true, uh, reaching out for references and all that stuff. And so I met the founder, his name's Victor and he's been basically doing recruiting. He's got his own recruiting agency that he's been doing for years. And he just saw this opportunity similar to what I'm doing, you know, describing basically where he's like, why don't we set up a way where people can put their, you know, their track record, like their sales performance metrics into this profile and they can ping their previous boss or CEO or whoever and they can come in and verify that it's legitimate and you can sort of build out this robust profile with all this verified credentials. Yeah. And then on the recruiting side, you can basically search by all of this stuff. So maybe I am an ae. And I said, you know, I have three years experience selling to SMB deals. Average deal size is this. Average sales cycle length is that, you know, product or industry type is this. And it's all verified, verified, verified. So now the recruiters can just come in and search for like, specifically what they're interesting for. Yeah, it's really cool. Um, I'm just mentioning it to people because he's trying to get it off the ground and, uh, it's growing fast. But if you're trackwreck, I'll take a check.

Speaker A: I'll take a look.

Speaker B: Yeah, track reco. It's very cool. He's got a. I think he's got upwards of like 30,000 people on there now, so. Because he's got the recruiting agency, so he sort of just rolled it right into it. But, but that's why I asked if you're hiring external, because if you are, I would totally try that. We are.

Speaker A: We do both. We do both for sure. And so we're always looking for a way of sorting through the massive amounts of talent. Just because, just, Just because someone's good doesn't mean they'll be good for your team. It has to be the right, like you said, the right parameters, the right. You know, we were talking about this before. Um, you know, SMB skill set is very different than enterprise skill set. Uh, uh, HR skill set. Something to HR versus selling to salespeople is a completely different motion. And so being able to get as much information up front will save both the employer and the employee, um, time to make sure that they're spending time with people who actually match what they're looking for, what the skill set is.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's basically what it does if you use it. I'm curious to get direct feedback and, uh, hear how it goes, but it's pretty neat. Let's jump into the next topic I want to get your thoughts on. On outbound sales is traditional outbound Sales broken, dead or dying. I've been, you know, sort of asking everyone this in the last, like 50 episodes, you know, cold call rates, going down, email. But maybe you want to tie in. You know, I imagine that, or maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine you're probably using your own product somehow to sort of navigate this. So wherever you want to go on, on that subject.

Speaker A: Yeah, this, this probably sounds very biased, but our number one tool is our own tool. Like we. And that's what I talked about is we hire people who geek out, like comes in the interview, and they don't really know what we're doing. Uh, it's not as interesting to me because I want someone who truly geeks out and love. So we've had a lot of people we've hired that used it at another company and said once, uh, I was leaving, I knew I needed to go work with you guys.

Speaker B: So you mentioned that's the best type of hire.

Speaker A: That is the best because they're, like, almost ramped. They, they can. And I love it in calls when I used it here. Yeah, yeah, I used it this way. And so right now, for us personally, consensus is fortunate. We are still growing. We are still, uh, hitting goals, achieving things. There are challenges and headwinds where we're winning in ways we didn't think we would. We're losing in areas we thought we'd be winning. But the net result is we are growing, driving towards success, hitting, hitting the benchmarks that are putting us in kind of top growth, top, ah, quartile. In terms of the software world, I would not use the word broken. I would probably use the word outdated. Um, what is very hard is you, uh, know I've been selling for 20 years now. I would love to use the same playbook. I would love to, because I know it, it's. It's got me to where I am. But I learned very, very quickly this fact, and it's, it's a hard thing for salespeople like you. You'll know where you sit on this if, if this affects you emotionally. Is that, is that buyers don't want to talk to you. It doesn't matter how charming you are, they do not want to talk to you. And, and in the past, that was different. The reason why is because you had a couple things that were very advantageous. You had a demo, you had information, you had pricing, and all of that. You just held like this, and you're like, yeah, this is what you have to do to talk to me. You got to fill Your name out on a form, give me your phone number, give me your email address, tell me what you're interested in. Tell me how many employees you have and depending on how long the form is, and then you're going to give me your time. And then before I even show you anything, you're going to answer 30 minutes to an hour of my discovery questions. And then I will bless you with a demo and maybe in the next two calls, I'll give you some pricing that is dead, that is gone. It, uh, now is in the exact opposite order. The buyer now says, show me a little bit of your demo, show me a little bit of your pricing, I will give you nothing. And when you earn it, I will give you some time. And then you can ask me a question. Once you understand that that is the new playbook and that the buyer is in the driver's seat, you can now make the adjustments to start thriving in, in this environment, the, the buyer is in control. And if you ever feel like you can leverage something against them, one is you're creating a bad relationship and a bad start. You're not going to earn their trust and you're just not going to get a seat at the table because your competing companies are doing this. And, and that is what we're doing it because we are trying to, to at the same time put drivers in the buyer's seat, but also giving sellers tools to give buyers what they need so they can make the best decisions.

Speaker B: Boom. We're so aligned on, on everything you're saying here. Yeah, like to say, like we were the gatekeepers of information. Right. But now they find all of that information before they get on the phone. Uh, they can just go to ChatGPT and it's gonna, if your company's been around for a year, like it's gonna, it's going to find everything and you're

Speaker A: going to hope that it's accurate and that the LLM isn't pulling from your competing competitors. Right about yours. And so you have to have a path through the traditional channels, LLM, your website, that they can educate themselves. We call it selling in the gaps. Uh, more than 80% of the purchase happens without you lot. They're present live. What are you doing to engage with them in between? That is how the playbook, ah, has changed. And I don't know if you're a, a sports guy or not, but like, I'm a big, big, and I was a big NBA fan. I'm kind of changing a little bit.

Speaker B: I'm a hockey Fan. I'm, uh, not, I'm not obsessed, but I was as a kid.

Speaker A: Yeah, so, so for me, when I grew up watching Big man, basketball was about centers, everything. And then a guy named Michael Jordan comes in the league and then now shooting guards mid range. And then you get people like Allen Iverson that change the game. And then there's this guy named Steph Curry that can shoot from anywhere on the court. And now when I go play with my nephews in basketball, it is three point line to three point line and even the tallest guy in the court is shooting threes. And it's changed the way that basketball operates. And so the playbook of the 90s would not work well today and vice versa, the playbook then would not work well in the night. And so that's the same thing is it's not that what you did 10 years ago was bad. Uh, it's just the, the buyer has changed the way they want to buy and they're the ones at the end of the day that, that sign the contract and write the check. And so if you don't pivot and adapt, especially in a world with AI that makes it so much easier for them to get information. Uh, your, your job is not to be the gatekeeper of information. Your job is to help them connect the dots and, and to show them a way. Because there's different ways. You know, you got our way and then company B's way and you're, if you believe you have the right product, you just show them the truth. You show them the truth, you give them the full information and if you have a good product, you will win more often than you will lose. And that's how you create a big A good business is I don't believe you have to have good one liners. And, and this, this is a multi person decision. If you're the best solution, as long as you present it well and you, and you earn the trust and you do all those things, more often than not, you'll come out on top. I love it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, what would you say has changed the most in the last five years? Uh, in sales at consensus, specifically, like as you're sort of navigating since the COVID sort of era, has there been something that's just an absolute sudden change?

Speaker A: Well, one thing logistically, a little bit more than five years ago, we were working out of a grocery store. If you want to learn more about that. I've done some presentations, I saw you

Speaker B: write about it, but I was confused. I didn't Quite understand.

Speaker A: So some startups start in a garage. Our real journey started in the grocery store. The reason it was a grocery store, there's a place called Harmon's in Utah. If anyone from Utah knows, uh, about it. It's a nice higher end grocery store. They have a lounge area at the top where like people can go get wi fi. They have a little office that when we, when we were struggling, we got reduced down to 13 people. Um, from like 60 to like 13 people. Um, ran out of all our funding. We, we didn't have a building anymore. We went remote almost by force. Before all the COVID stuff happened, I think it was a hundred dollars a day to get this office where we could sit in it and you got a 50 gift card. So we'd go, we'd go get their sushi, their thing and, and, and even my wife loved it because she's like, could you go pick up milk before you come home? But it was kind of like to me, from an ego perspective, when people are like, where's your office? I would just pick. No, it's in, it's up in Lehigh. It's up somewhere like we're going. And, and so that changed, uh, a lot. And I could go for days on that. But what got us out of the grocery store was a couple things. Uh, what we just talked about. You know, uh, I think there's another Gartner data point. I think 61% of buyers want a rep free experience which goes back to. Buyers don't want to talk to you. Yeah, I think accepting that truth. And then the other one was, uh, I've mentioned this in a couple other presentations was ucp. So we know what ICP is. Ideal customer profile. UCP is unideal customer profile. So we talk about icp. That's what we want. But does that mean that it's always who we. You know, when you're desperate and your pipeline's thin, you know, your ICP aperture opens up a little bit once you make a conscious decision. Here are people that we will not serve, not because we don't like them, um, but it's because we can't serve them at the level that is fair for the amount of investment they're going to make. 2. It's not what we focus on all the time. It's not fair to them or to us to bring on customers. And it's hard to say no to revenue. It's. Especially when you're starting. It's very difficult. But I'll tell you why you shouldn't one, just out of good ethics, don't sell the people that you can't. You can't give them good service. Number two is it will kill you a year from now when you're trying to. There was a point where we had a 40% churn rate today. We, you know, I think we, we float somewhere between, you know, 90 to 93%. Grr. Um, but that happened because we were very conscious about who we're going after. And we don't pretend for a second that we're everything to everyone. So. So the big thing is for us over the last five years was know your UCP and live by it, even if you have to. If you turn people away, I promise you it will work out in the end.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And then two is just understand that, um, buyers don't want to talk to you until you've earned their trust. So you need to give them a path and a way to get access. Do not gate things, make it available to them, and once you've earned their trust, that's when they'll give you their time. Uh, you are not, it is not your right or you don't have some status where they need to come to you. If anything, uh, it's us trying to defer to them and trying to show them that, hey, we're a company that's worth chatting with. And if you do work with us, we will treat you right and we'll be fair all the time. Love it.

Speaker B: Yeah, the ucp, that was, uh, that was a big one for us at Air Call, um, if they weren't a good fit for our product, you know, and sometimes it was like they didn't have strong enough Internet or they weren't using the right hardware. And so our software wasn't going to end up working for their calls. And we had a major churn problem when I started there. So we implemented a deal desk. And basically, if they were, um, you know, if they were sort of even just a little bit outside of our icp, um, criteria, we'd sit down with the deal desk and you had some representatives from there, some representatives from sales, and we'd be like, hey, there's a couple of points here that fall sort of outside of our traditional icp, but we think it's worth discussing. Do we want to take a risk on them or not? And, you know, we stopped taking a lot of those risks in it, and it made a huge difference. I also think, like, now that we're, like, in this realm of, like, let's hire less People and let's sort of, you know, be more efficient. It actually, it goes really well with that. Right. Because when you're mass hiring, I think is when you also start to have all of these loose deals kind of coming in. You have so many people that aren't very well trained and they're all desperately trying to hit quota. And so it almost encourages that behavior. Whereas the direction that everything's moving in today is. Is, I think, quite the opposite. And, and people are getting more comfortable realizing, like, I don't want to deal with these bad leads. Right. Like they're going to waste our time and even if they sign up, it's going to be a nightmare and all that stuff. Um, how are you guys using AI outside of the consensus product? Are you guys using anything like Momentum or to update your CRM automatically, anything along those lines?

Speaker A: We're using a lot. A, uh, lot. We're trying to use as much as we can. The one thing I will say about AI is while AI is amazing and great, it's not amazing and great for everything. And so we, we don't just try to put it on everything just to say that we're doing it. We try to be very intentional. One tool that comes to mind that we're big fans of, uh, that. That our SDR leader actually was the one that found this is called Pocus. And uh, it. What it did is it took us from reps spending a huge amount of time researching one of the things that we're not a spray and pray company. We are very intentional about who we reach out to. We make it very personalized, especially with the demos that we do. And so we did a lot of research before we reached out to anybody. Within weeks of setting this up, we were spending. The SDRs were spending 60% more time reaching out, uh, because a lot of the research was being done through this. It was looking through all the socials and everything, and it would either come up with recommendations or just. It just surfaced a lot of information contextually about that person, the markets they'd been in, what was going on, what they were posting about. And, and so we, it's just been great. Um, it's been great for us, uh, saved us a ton of time. And it's just surfacing information in a way at scale that we've. We've never seen before, which the SDRs love, because now it's like, hey, I actually get to spend less time in prep and more. Yeah, where you actually get hit your goal.

Speaker B: So. And that's the Key today, man, in my journey through sales. I mean I think you've been going at this quite a while longer than, than me. But I started in 2012 in an entry level role. You know, I was four years into my career, took a big pivot out of retail and got into sales and we just pounded the phones. We made 100 to 200 dials a day. We had endless lead lists. We were selling to restaurants and small businesses and it was just like over and over and over and over. But it couldn't be more different today. Right? Like it's, it's just everything's flipped upside down on its head. Um, I want to get your thoughts on enterprise here and I've got kind of, you know, we chatted beforehand. I've got sort of a few questions that I could ask here but I think let's just start with one that's high level because one of I think the most impressive things at least sort of from first impression, if you just go to Consensys website right now and you just start browsing around. I think one of the things that stands out really quickly are the massive enterprise logos that you guys have managed to sell to Salesforce, SAP, Atlassian, uh, workday. I mean the list kind of just goes on. Um, anything you can share there in terms of like, you know, was it sort of like, hey, we landed one and then we used that name to get to the next one or is it just the product became so good? Like how do you break into all these huge logos?

Speaker A: So it's definitely multifaceted. Like we built the product in a way that someone of that size could onboard. Like our security's top notch. We invest a lot in our compliance, our gdpr.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: So not only do you have to pitch it well, the product does have to deliver. Yeah, we um, learned very quickly the enterprise companies have very nuanced ways of using a solution. Like you think there's a straightforward but all of them want their own integrations into certain things. But I will say this from a sales perspective. Um, I still can't believe a lot of the logos and the companies that we work with. And the great thing is it's not just some pilot. We have an account that has 15,000 active users. Active. Like they have to drop 300 licenses to get 300 more to just stay within the limit.

Speaker B: And Salesforce hired a director of demo automation.

Speaker A: The titles have now changed.

Speaker B: I mean that's huge when they're putting a full time role because of your product. You know, you're doing something right.

Speaker A: And so we've been very fortunate in, in that, in that way. And so from a, from a sales perspective, I'll tell you. There was a company based in Germany, large company, um, and we were trying to get, and we're trying to get a hold of them. And we were a small business, to be honest. We were actually in the grocery store. I remember working on the final negotiation and trying to cover my phone's mic when announcements would come on, like, go to aisle nine to try to close this deal. And I'll tell you how we got it in the first place. Like, one tip that I think could help you close these big deals. Uh, there's a book that I love called Pitch anything and it talks about framing conversations so that you. So a lot of times we try to like outwit out roi out this. But once you frame it. So for example, if you want to convince someone to go to McDonald's or Rhodes Chris, which are very different restaurants. If your frame is quality, quality M and amazing atmosphere, there is only one option. If your frame is I'm a soccer dad and I have 10 kids in the car and we got to get to a game, but everyone has to get fed. There's only one choice because you frame, the frame is right. So. So when you take a frame and you take creativity and I'll give you what happened. There was a company that would not talk to us. They were talking to all the big dogs. We were the small little person. So what I did is I used our own tool and I basically found this person. I found out who the key person was. I found a video of him introducing himself at a conference. I ripped the video myself and then I put it into our tool and I put it at the very beginning. What our tool allows you to do is you see a lot of different videos stacked in a choose your own adventure. But there's an intro where you can make an intro of who you are. I put that person in the beginning, modified it a little bit, sent him an email and said, hey, Kevin, thank you for letting for. I hope you don't mind that I used you as the intro to this automated demo. Um, please take a look. Here's my information. If you want to reach out within 15 minutes that he's an SVP, 20 year veteran, writes, uh, writes me back. Or maybe he called my camera. He did reach back out and said, let's chat. And the reason it worked is I framed it and showed him a way of communicating with somebody that he had Never seen before where I took his video. I took a little bit of initiative. He might have been like, why did you rip my video? That's kind of creepy. But I took a shot.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I knew I wasn't getting any attention. And he even said that was very creative. How could my team do this at, ah, scale? And then, and then six months later I'm sitting in a grocery store locking down a deal that basically saved the company and made us hit payroll. And then consensus's journey kind of started from there.

Speaker B: It's so interesting because of the nature of what you're selling. If you use your own product to provide a demo of your own product, it's kind of a double demo, right. Like they're seeing a demo of the thing that they're on the experience side of using. So I imagine you're sort of showing the other side of it that they're not seeing. And so you're kind of seeing both sides of the product at the same time. I don't know many instances where that's even the case in sales. That's a very interesting paradox.

Speaker A: We call it the Matrix effect. Uh, basically, if you've watched the movie the Matrix, which I love.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is we tried to create that scenario where, if you remember the movie, there's Neo and Morpheus and at one point he basically has an epiphany that you are in the Matrix.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right now. So if, uh, if you ever talk to a consensus salesperson, the ideal situation is that you come into a meeting, we show you the experience, and then at the end we tell you we're actually living the experience that we're promoting to you right now. I sent you this. I sent you something that you could watch in between the meetings. Asynchronously, I took the information from that and used it to prep for this call. I am then going to send you another one for the next meeting to get you prepped for the other one. And the goal is, is that if you like this experience, we're going to teach you how to do exactly what we're doing right now with you. And they're like, that's what I want you to replicate how you are selling to me right now. And if it, once that frame is created, then it is most likely they're going to say, if I believe that that's the frame and that's what I want, then we become. It's. I wouldn't say it's a slam dunk, but it's. It is. Hey, they believe in the frame. And consensus matches that frame. And that applies not just to consensus. It's like the McDonald's and the Ruth's. Chris, if you just say who's the better restaurant, then, you know, that's one thing. But if you say, if you change the frames, like, hey, you want fast and great for soccer games and this and that, once that frame's set up, you don't even have to push them into the decision. They know what the decision is.

Speaker B: Yeah, they're living through that experience right now. Um, I think maybe a good way. We've got a couple more minutes here. I think maybe a good way to end this is if you can give. I've tried to clarify this in some of my posts, but you clearly are going to understand it way better than me. But there's not just one type of demo automation. Right. It seems like you guys have simulations, tours, videos. Do you want to maybe leave the audience with a, uh, description of what those are and maybe sort of advice on when and where to, to use, you know, each one?

Speaker A: Yes. And I appreciate you giving me this moment to do that. And, and for those listening, I will say, uh, that the way that we deliver our solution is we, there's demo automation and what we call a product experience platform. That's the platform that delivers the automated demos. There's three types. There is a simulation that is like a Minecraft open world where you can just explore a product. There's you can gate it or you can ungate it if you want, but they can just go click around and fill the product. Like a flight simulator. There is a tour which is guided. Like the best way I could describe, if you go to a really nice car place and you want to look at the car and you can click on the engine and it expands and turns and there's audio and video, there's that. And then there's what is, what we're known for, which is the video side, which executives, um, are much more prone to watch than any other demo type. There are lots of demo types and experiences. Uh, nine times out of ten, executives watch videos. Um, and that.

Speaker B: Can I take a guess? Next one, Can I take a guess? Is the simulation, like engineers want to go through that. The tours are probably end users of the product and the video is probably executives and anyone in the buying team.

Speaker A: Spot on. Uh, that's it. So what we do is we deliver the experience that the person wants in the moment they need it. But most executives are not going to dive in and say, this is how you log in. And this how you create a new user. They're looking at the roi. What's the value prop, how does this fit into our vision? And that's the key. Our job is to keep delivering experiences that people want, not just at the start of the funnel or the middle, but all through. So, so our belief is that the product, when it becomes to a vendor, uh, client, uh, relationship, the product is the center point that goes through that whole relationship. And they want to experience it at different times. Whether that's an expansion play, a net, new play, an adoption play, whatever that is. They need to see the product in some way. And one of the things that we're taking to the next level that you're going to see in 2026, I'll give you a little bit of a peek. We will be empowering the top agents in the world with demo experiences. So agents today are limited to just give you text. A lot of times imagine a world,

Speaker B: AI agents, to be clear.

Speaker A: AI, AI agents. Yes, that's correct. Imagine, um, a world, an agent force, a gemini, a chat GPT HubSpot, where if somebody said, this is interesting, thanks for that, could you show me how to do that? Or could you tell me what that looks like? And boom, an automated demo pops up, contextual to who you are, where you're at in stage, everything, all of that. And now the person can either watch it, tour it, touch it, engage with it, whatever you want. You now are adding another layer of experience that someone can have through an AI agent.

Speaker B: So that was so perfectly said and I would say it sounds like a lot of the secret sauce here is probably using every aspect of your platform, having the simulation set up, having the tours, having the videos, but knowing when and where to use each. So if you use the video on that executive, and they're sort of into it, but now they want their CTO to take a deeper dive. Like you might share the simulation, or maybe you share all three and they pick what they want to use or whatever. But the idea is you have all these different sort of angles that you can use so that not everyone's forced to go through a cookie cutter process, right? They're not all sort of looking at the same demo. And then those group demos are always the worst, right? Because you have the one guy who's like, I got the technical questions, the other guy, I got the money questions, I got the. And you all need to sit through all of it even though you don't care, right? And those demos can be, can be exhausting. So I could imagine how this can not only just give people what they're looking for, but accelerate it because they're sort of all asynchronously doing this on their own time. And. And you don't have to keep scheduling all of these live calls and stuff. So.

Speaker A: And then all the analytics tied back in to kind of see how everyone's viewing it in their way and making sure that when you come to the live meeting that you're speaking to, what the people on the call care about. Uh, because you don't want to. What the CFO cares about, what the CRO cares about and what the AE care about are entirely different. And if your message isn't adapting to that, uh, it will. It will fall flat because people are. I call it Personalization 2.0. We used to think that high calling at, ah, Colin Codman, Cadmus, uh, podcast, that that was good personalization. But now people see that and their mind just. It turns. It turns them off. And I think I read something the other day, I have to find the quote, but I think they said people are 70% less likely to buy from you if you use a spray and pray approach. It actually, it moves the trust, the earning the trust meter down because, like, you did not. You're not someone who took enough time. You literally just look at me as one field and one more contact with no personalization.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I don't even feel like those messages came from a human anymore. Like, even though I know someone clicked a button, I don't. Like, you don't know you sent me that email. Right? I was just in a list, you know, that was just bulked in there and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker A: It's like the Christmas card on National Lampoon's Christmas vacation he gets. It's like, it's if when it's that personal, where he had to look at his, his assistant to be. Did we send that to him? Like, you should know and be able to really quickly know exactly what you did and personalized on that. I am a big fan that, uh, you can do quantity and quality at the same time. Um, it is possible, but, you know, the spray and pray approach, um, is less relevant than it's ever been. And it was, it wasn't very relevant 5 years ago.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, we're at the end here. This was incredible. Anyone, um, who's interested in checking out consensus, go to goconcensus.com and Rex, are you hiring for any roles, anything you want to plug in here or promote while we're here?

Speaker A: We are. If you come to our page, we have, uh, CSM roles, AE roles. I believe we'll be opening up some, uh, STR roles as well. And then there's almost always some type of dev role out there. So if you're looking at joining a team like that, please, please come by or recommend to a friend. We would, we would love to share with you.

Speaker B: Awesome. And you've been sharing some content on LinkedIn when you have time, right? Is that, uh, is that a big focus for you now?

Speaker A: So everyone go, I know, call in. I'm no call in, but I try to put things out there that I get so much benefit from from LinkedIn. I always try to at least get a little bit back.

Speaker B: You get so much from it, man. I can tell you it's, uh, it's worth every minute you'll put into it when it comes to recruiting, everything. I mean, it just pays you back, you know, the more you do. But yeah, keep sharing the stories. I love reading along. And everyone go follow Rex. And thanks for joining me, man. We'll have to keep in touch. Um, I'm very excited to continue to follow this journey along.

Speaker A: Thank you, Colin. I really appreciate it.

Speaker B: Likewise. Thank you.