Building a High Performance Sales Culture w/ Todd Priest, VP of Sales - Hyperdrive Minds Podcast 35

Speaker A: What are like the top three traits you look for in sales reps?

Speaker B: Uh, that's a good one. I look for curiosity, competitiveness, and a level of discipline in sales. It's a competitive cycle, right? In anything that's being sold in this world, especially in software, especially across the technology landscape. It's a competitive space. It just is. So m. I look for those folks that have that innate competitive edge, that want to do more that, that love to win, understand when they lose, how to learn from it, and want to go and do it again and again and again. That's not for everybody, but it is a trait that I value highly. And then the discipline, that's something you can teach, but some folks have it as an innate trait. I couple discipline and passion. I can't teach passion, but I can teach discipline. So if somebody has a passion, and that's usually aligned, uh, with competitiveness, it. It's nice to be able to pull those things together, teach an additional level of discipline that's applicable to our go to market, our product suite, our client base, our culture, and when they can accomplish those primary three pillars, it's fantastic.

Speaker A: As a VP of sales, what's like an unconventional strategy that you've implemented in an ultra competitive like SaaS sales market?

Speaker B: You know, something that I've very much enjoyed and seen high quality results in a, uh, go to market strategy that lends to more accelerated growth is first and foremost, you've got to do the research and understand who the players are that you want in this party. But once you have that understanding, once you have that knowledge of who you want to target and who you want to build with. As a client, I've seen and, um, experienced wonderful success with.

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Speaker A: Subscribe today and let's kick your revenue into hyperdrive. Welcome back to Hyperdrive Minds podcast. Today we have Todd Priest. How are you, sir?

Speaker B: I'm doing well, Blake. How are you today?

Speaker A: Yeah, doing good. It's, it's a good Friday. We got a Big weekend ahead. Um, I'm excited to chat with you I guess. Uh, give us a quick overview of your background.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. First and foremost appreciate being here and uh, spending this time with you on this Friday. Yeah, quick overview of my background. Like many of us, started out in early days of tech back in the good old 90s and uh, started out in infrastructure. Navigated with some, I'll call them, um, startup scale up entities. Really great experiences. Taught me a lot. Uh, worked for some brilliant people there and learned how to sell tech. Learned how to manage in that ecosystem and understood what the pace looked like versus I'll say non tech environments. I started out working as a salesperson for a Taiwanese based manufacturer. Quickly moved into sales management and shortly thereafter into sales leadership. Worked for a genius of a, an entrepreneur who guided my foundational elements of sales, sales management and sales leadership. Ended up opening 29 countries around the world. Looked at all, all different areas of the business, expanded the portfolio but more importantly really learn how to navigate business conversations and build really high quality teams with high quality people. Replicated that a number of times in a few different areas of the business. Navigating into net new technology as I uh, moved through each opportunity. Wanted to gain some experience working inside of a, I'll call it a Fortune 100 at Hewlett Packard pre split. Had a great mentor there who convinced me to come across. I did. It was a phenomenal experience. Brilliant people. Holy cow, uh, what a wonderful company that is. Learned a lot as to how things operated inside of a large corporate entity, uh, which has served me very well as of today. Learned that I moved very quickly even in that large paced environment. Had an opportunity to join an acquisition that Hewlett Packard Enterprise made with a cloud based focus. It was really quite fantastic, very fast paced. Primary AWS partner, um, although they were distributed across the entire spectrum of hyperscalers, Happened to be aws, happened to be the single largest partner of choice at that time with that partner, worked there for uh, a couple of years within the walls of HPE as well. Moved across, did a couple other things in a like form in segmentation, verticalization and go to market strategy implementation through the likes of a couple additional publicly traded entities. Always focused in a business unit to drive transformation and scalability. That brings us to today where you and I are sitting together enjoying a conversation around a multitude of technologies but primarily uh, go to market strategy.

Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. You spent many years in like the chip manufacturing space. Do you still keep tabs on what's going on in that industry.

Speaker B: I do still have some friends. I was thinking, thinking back on a couple things in that space. I stay connected with a couple folks in that area. Really bright, brilliant people, but moreover really good people. In fact, a gentleman that I hired as a sales rep is seeing great success in that space. He's now a global uh, vice president of uh, sales, enjoying quite a bit of success on a global scale. So very happy. And he uh, and I stay in touch. He calls me his mentor. I don't know about that any longer. He's uh, he's exceptionally bright and we share best practices frequently. So it's quite nice.

Speaker A: Nice, nice. What was it like when you first got into that industry versus what it's like now with AI?

Speaker B: Yeah, fundamental. It was pioneering back then really. I was privileged to be able to have access to the manufacturing facilities in a number of different countries. So I got to see some of the inner workings of how that all worked and how we as partner of that ecosystem engaged and what we could build with it. Back in the early days it was just a lot of, as it is today I suppose, a lot of relationship building, a lot of collaboration, trying to understand what can be. It seemed fundamental looking back on it, but it allowed us to get to where we're at today. AI has opened so many doors with so many different opportunities in business and in personal life, but it's still byproduct of all the things that have come before it. So really interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, tell us about that journey from like the chip manufacturing world into the B2B SaaS world and how did you get into sales leadership?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, it was a really great opportunity for me. Early on I was tapped on the shoulder by the CEO of the first scale up company I was with and he said, look, you're really great with people, you've got a good business mind. You sell the heck out of our product suite. I'm going to move you into management quickly. I just took the ball and ran with it. Spent a lot of time with him, understanding all the ins and outs of what best practices he brought to the table were. Put my own spin on them and took them to market. And just, I'd say the single greatest function that I built into my process was finding the right people, hiring those right people. They're not always from the specific industry, but finding those folks, getting them on the bus, enabling them with uh, a lot of information, very transparent, uh, engagement and bringing them up to speed and then setting them loose, supporting them with good guardrails. But uh, a Lot of collaboration and teamwork around them. I was taught that early on I was afforded the opportunity to move into leadership very early in my career. As I progressed I kept that same model. It seems very natural to me to engage. Although we live in a technology enabled world, we work with other human beings, we live with other human beings. So fortunately for me, I enjoy people and uh, I seem to have a lot of good connecting points with people, whether it's internal or external to my ecosystem. And as I navigated through the different companies and different portfolios, that was also by design encouraged by my first mentor, the CEO that I work for saying look, absorb and accumulate knowledge of the different technological advancements, apply your foundational practices to it, but constantly make micro pivots and evolve that awareness of how you go to market and what you're bringing to market but continually learn. He really pushed me on that. I took that along the way and I pressed the pace on experiencing net new technology and go to market strategy while maintaining my personal connectivity to the people. That brought me to opportunities within a huge portfolio at Hewlett Packard. With that go to market strategy that was being brought forward, I was afforded the opportunity to work in that team to bring the first SaaS solution to market in concert with other elements of the portfolio. It just clicked. It felt good. And ever since then I've just maintained a connectivity to it. I m don't limit myself exclusively to that sector of business. I try and keep pace with a multitude of technologies and go to markets. That being said, you can't get away from it. It is part of our world and it is a productive part of our world. So my current engagement is very much so software as a service entangled and engaged and it's been a fantastic journey. So far so good.

Speaker A: Yeah. You talked about being successful at hiring and identifying good talent. I guess. What are like the top three traits you look for in sales reps?

Speaker B: Uh, that's a good one. I look for curiosity, competitiveness and a uh, level of discipline. The curio piece. It's not always those folks that are in the industry that you're participating in. I'm m a big believer of getting the right people on the bus and oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes those folks are from adjacent industry which then brings in the discipline and competitive elements in sales. It's a competitive cycle. Right. In anything that's being sold in this world, especially in software, especially across the technology landscape. It's a competitive space, it just is. So um, I look for those folks that have that innate competitive edge, that want to do more, that love to win, understand when they lose, how to learn from it and want to go and do it again and again and again. That's not for everybody, but it is a trait that I value highly. And then the discipline, that's something you can teach. But some folks have it as an innate trait. I couple discipline and passion. I can't teach passion, but I can teach discipline. So if somebody has a passion and that's usually aligned uh, with competitiveness, it's nice to be able to pull those things together, teach an additional level of discipline that's applicable to our go to market, our product suite, our client base, our culture, and when they can accomplish those primary three pillars. It's, it's fantastic.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you, you've been on the job search yourself. I know you're interviewing selectively. What kind of uh, opportunities are you seeing on the market right now?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities out there. It's a competitive market as well. Absolutely. But I am being highly selective, as I think everybody should be. Companies are selective and there's a great talent pool out there to pull from. All too often people take whatever's presented to them. Although those that are quite, I'll say, skilled and aware make a conscious decision to assure that they're uh, landing in the right place where they can make the biggest impact, looking for the right culture, fit the right business opportunity, where there's a two way street of value, where I can deliver that added value and that growth as well as where I can gain added value from what they've already established. Whether it's a scale up or a mature entity, that's where I'm at right now and being very selective. But fortunately for me, I've got a lot of opportunity in front of me and I'm looking forward to what comes next.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, best of luck to you. Does there seem to be a misalignment between what a VP of sales does and what expectations a company has? This hiring one, I think that can

Speaker B: potentially be a challenge. And those are the criteria that you have to look for in the interview process, in that evaluation process. And they should be looking at that from their side as well. When I'm hiring from within a company for that next leader, I look for these alignment elements, but I think it's incumbent on both parties to assure that they're properly aligned. It just serves the best interest of everybody involved, including the customers, which is, ah, at the end of the day, the primary goal to build that business with them. Oftentimes I think there's high value alignment, maybe not always realized. Sometimes there is a misalignment, whether it be an expectation, communication, activity, et cetera. Uh, through that transparent communication from both sides of that engagement comes clarity of what that alignment should look like. I think that more often than not nowadays, people are being very clear about what the expectation looks like, what they're looking for, what they need, what they want from both sides. I think it's becoming more crystal, which is a nice thing to see.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard some companies, some smaller companies say they want a VP of sales, but after qualifying the role, you kind of discover it's an individual contributor role and they want the person to be this army of one, closing a few $20 million deals before they hire anybody on your team. So I see people kind of getting caught in that situation and having some mixed experiences. Have you run into that at all?

Speaker B: Yeah, I've seen that a few times across my career. Not just recently, but those are usually smaller entities that are really looking for top tier talent that can come in and make that large scale impact. In the initial phase of the conversation it's presented as one thing, but as you start to gain clarity of what the role looks like, what the team looks like, what their go to market structure is or isn't, uh, you gain perspective on what that looks like. It does happen. I think that they're just trying to cast a wide net and get the best talent on their bench possible. For some folks that's, that's a really great play. It gives them an opportunity to enter into a really solid company, hopefully with an early impact and set that stage with their touch on it and then build from there. It's not for everybody. It depends upon where they're at and what they want do. It needs to be a good fit if somebody's going to say yes to that. But that's not what they really want. It won't last for, for any length of time. That's valuable for any party. So really does need to be a uh, mutual fit. But there is a good opportunity out there for somebody that wants to be that I see with that opportunity to build that and move into that actual leadership role. It's, it's a great opportunity for some.

Speaker A: Yeah, it'll be a good opportunity for, for the right type of person. So as a VP of sales, what's like an unconventional strategy that you've imp implemented in an ultra competitive like SaaS sales market?

Speaker B: There's lots of approaches that one can take. You know something that I've very much enjoyed and seen high quality results in a uh, go to market strategy that lends to more accelerated growth is first and foremost you've got to do the research and understand who the players are that you want in this party. But once you have that understanding, once you have that knowledge of who you want to target and who you want to build with. As a client I've seen and experienced wonderful success with, I'll uh, call them strategic round tables. You can structure them in a multitude of ways. But bringing the right decision making executives to a conversation around a table with industry peers with a target one or two topics that generates a high level of commitment to the contribution of that conversation as well as connectivity. So it's a peer group connectivity effort as well as. So you're serving a multitude of interests, you're serving educational interests to discuss something of interest to these clients. You're serving peer group connectivity interests and networkability. You're also accelerating that early adoption of uh, perhaps a provocative topic of interest that would enhance our technology stack. AI, uh being one of those topics of course and how that leverage of AI can generate productivity within their ecosystem. There's a lot of value in that and I've seen, I've used it as user group engagement, executive roundtable engagement. It works wonders when done properly. You have to bring the right subject matter experts to these conversations as well. But it's a discussion, it's an open forum and it's properly managed. When it's properly managed it's a ah, great catalyst to accelerated growth.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good idea. Is that something you normally do virtually or do you host an event of some kind on site somewhere?

Speaker B: You can do it in both ways, virtual and in person. Person on site both have their, their benefit depending upon what the scenario is. However, face to face in a setting physically together is generally a more productive, faster paced result.

Speaker A: Right. Yeah, a lot of things are happening virtually after Covid, but I think there's definitely a push back to face to face and events and breaking bread with people again. Before COVID I was taking somebody to lunch three or four days a week and that all ended, you know and I'm uh, waiting for it to come back. Uh, now may go to lunch like once a week. Right. So needs to be a lot more than that. I feel like everybody's dependent on email campaigns and LinkedIn outreach and such. But you know some people are saying that sending people really carefully crafted unique letters in the Mail or just something that's they don't get every day is having better results. Have you seen that?

Speaker B: I have. There's all kinds of creative ways to outreach and connect with folks. But we actually really unique kind of fun way to bring some specific people to uh, a party was sending them out a. It was a whiskey engagement basically. So you send them out a box, it's like a sample box of five different whiskies with an invite to join a virtual engagement and enjoy the whiskey tasting. Now of course you've got to qualify who you're sending these things to, et cetera, but there's a topic of discussion while engaging in that whiskey tasting. But that's opened a lot of interesting doors as well. Handwritten letters. I had this one gal who was very, very proactive with bringing muffins and cookies to different entities. And even during COVID you just drop them off and then leave but leave those handwritten notes to specific individuals that she is either working with and, or trying to work with.

Speaker A: Yeah, it can definitely set you apart. So when you're trying to build like a sustainable sales culture and you know, retain your top salespeople, how do you balance that with trying to hit short term revenue goals that company leadership or private uh, equity companies pressuring you to hit?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's always a, a balance. Right. There's short term, midterm, long term goals and depending upon the company's cycle where they're at in their life cycle, short term can be and usually is a high demand. Now the balance between retention of excellent sellers in that ecosystem can be an is taxed to drive that short term success metrics. I'd say generally speaking the companies that have a really foundational and well known and well adopted cultural element to it with a clarity of purpose, that vision and mission that drives from top to bottom and throughout the organization you get the right sellers into that environment, uh, there's a transparent communication and an adoption of what they believe in and how they believe in going to market it. Usually with the top performing people is a really solid alignment. And so even in the short term driving for increased dollars and execution, it doesn't negatively impact those that are the right people on the bus with the right knowledge. It can depending upon where they're at in their life. There's. We're all human beings, we all have our own cycles and our own dynamics in our personal lives that, that do positively or negatively affect our work life. But that's incumbent upon leadership to also be aware of those things and With a great culture, more often than not you are aware of those things so you can manage to them. And again, the short term, within that type of setting, I think that it's managed well with the right people and the right transparent communication in some of the newer, faster moving, earlier stage companies, that can be a bit of a challenge. Right. You're trying to nail down those returns. M. So you're pushing the pace on everybody, including those high performing top tier players and that can be taxing. And when it is, it's incumbent upon everybody, primarily the leadership that's engaged there, to understand what that impact is and address it directly and honestly. And on the heels of that positive outcome or coming up short, there still needs to be that topic addressed and almost a recovery element to it. But by and large, again, when you're in a really great cultural setting, a really strong leadership team, those things are managed well. And when they're not, then you get people that make the decision to call it quits and leave and move on. Um, that does happen. That's part of, part of our professional world. But we try and manage it to the best of our ability.

Speaker A: Yeah, especially in sales. A little bit higher turnover right there than any other profession. Right. What role does data analytics play in your strategy? When it comes to like metrics that you hold the salespeople accountable for, which ones do you swear by?

Speaker B: Yeah, data, the new currency. Right. There are a lot of metrics, but if I'm applying it to sales and sales management, specifically pipeline management, forecast accuracy, coverage, health lead prioritization and segmentation, all of these things fall in their proper sequence. But there's so many different elements of data to manage. Now I find that if we keep it a little bit simple, it makes a big difference. But uh, at the end of the day in sales, you're building a pipeline and you're forecasting what you're going to actually come to the table with and what you're going to deliver. And when you can manage those two areas with precision, then the business, the health of the business is much more predictable and it's much healthier in the short, mid and long term. That is an art and a science. Just having a, uh, data analytics at your fingertips doesn't always mean that you're going to be successful. I think it's table stakes now to have that level of depth, but leveraging that data as it's, uh, presented to you in the right ways, that can lend to some pretty fantastic outcomes. And it takes practice and it takes discipline, takes honesty, Um, I talk to people frequently in my teams about honest pipeline development and honest assessment of stage progression in the forecasting conversations. So we can predict the business properly and deliver against it appropriately.

Speaker A: Yeah. Are there like three metrics that you look at that you try to get your sales people to focus on on a daily basis? Right. If you get, get these three things done, then you should hit your numbers.

Speaker B: You know, I did early in my career, I, I had a whole slew of different rotating metrics that I would speak to. Number of calls, number of updates, number of quotes, number of deals closed. It was a rotating door of interesting topics. And I, I realized that it's different even within the same ecosystem, different for each different rep. So I stopped being cookie cutter in that regard and, um, started making it more applicable to where that individual was in their selling journey with their clients and their targets. I'll call it a segment, what segment they were working and where they were within that journey, as evidenced by that. I stay very hands on. I'm very engaged. I focus more on work, much like most of us, than any other area of my life. But I like it and I enjoy learning about where they're at in their process and I enjoy coaching the elements that I think are critical to driving their success. It's quite rewarding when they actually get there and it's quite educational when they don't. What do I need to do different to help pivot and then help them pivot properly so that we can get there the next iteration? So the easy answer is no, I don't have three cookie cutter. But you know, in sales it comes down to some of the basics. Blocking and tackling, right? What's your target market? Who are you working with? What's your pipeline generation look like? What multiplier are you shooting for? Are you achieving it? How are you achieving it? It always needs to be honest. What type of portfolio mix are you bringing to the table that's helping that client? What type of outcomes are you helping them drive? Are you a trusted advisor or just a player that's serving a single piece of their puzzle? Are we multi tiered? Are we engaged in a more productive, partner driven ecosystem with our clients or not? And then what's that forecast accuracy look like? How good are we at our business and what are we driving to with accuracy? Not just throwing at the dartboard, but hitting the bullseye and making it work for not just us. Critically important for our clients, what we do with them is an absolute criticality to their business. So we have to Be good at what we do and how we align our resources to drive that outcome for them.

Speaker A: Have you ever had to turn around a underperforming sales team?

Speaker B: I have. Every sales team has its dynamics. I've been privileged to be part of some exceptional teams that have been high performing, well over performing. At the same time I've had to take on new teams that were underperforming against goal. What I find more often than not in those settings though Blake is it's not necessarily the individual contributors design and shortcoming, it's generally what, what's their awareness of what's at their fingertips and how should they manage with that and how accountable are they to that? So what's the team structure that's surrounding them that's driving their either success or lack thereof? So it's usually a lack of guidance and integration and assistance from those that are around and above them. And so when I join that type of setting and I have a, ah, number of times, I generally do a lot of education. I discover where people are at and share once I have that knowledge, what the stage should look like, what it could look like and what we can do to achieve that next level success with and for them. I create a buy in element from the individuals. I create buddy systems from those that are overachieving, with those that are underachieving. Everybody has added value, they just need to uncover that and be able to share that with others. Makes us all better. And then I create a system systematic engagement, team touch points, buddy touch points, one on one touch points. And we drive to the accountability of outcome and it's just honest engagement with a high level of support. And once we get to that, it's almost always the proper outcome driving to that overachievement. Yeah, people want to achieve, nobody wants to underachieve. So it's finding the way to help them get there. And that's the secret sauce in m my book.

Speaker A: Yep, very true. How do you typically collaborate with the marketing team to increase uh, you know, the quality of the leads coming in and the conversion rates?

Speaker B: That's an untapped resource in so many environments. Marketing has all too often been looked at as just another action of the company that is taken for granted. I'm a huge fan of active engagement with marketing. Having them share what they're doing, their current activities are, what's at their fingertips, what they can bring to the party. Also sharing from the sales side what we're seeing in market, what we're seeing from a competitive landscape, what our desired outcomes are. And then crafting a collaborative environment where we can actually find those value streams from both sides of that equation, bring them together and accelerate them to market. I, uh, bring marketing into weekly calls. It's not always a commonplace activity in sales activities, but um, for me it's become a commonplace activity bringing marketing into that conversation where they have a voice and where they can hear the other voices, understanding what that roadmap looks like and aligning activity associated to it. And then also the other element of this marketing journey is partner engagement. Whether you're a direct only or a partner engaged or a hybrid environment, having marketing aligned to the direct and indirect activities in market plays a huge role in what the outcome looks like. I'm a big fan and a big supporter of marketing. I engage them often and I enjoy that engagement quite well.

Speaker A: Yeah, they can really drive the business if they do it right. But the partnerships and like the channel strategy can have a massive impact as well. What are some of the things that you've done in that regard? That's worked very well in B2B SaaS.

Speaker B: Yeah. Partners are what I often refer to as the volunteer army. Right. They can partner with whomever they'd like. It doesn't mean they have to partner with us. So we have to be good partners when we go to market with partnerships. And there's a lot of value that can be achieved there as well. Oftentimes partners are engaged in environments that we're not engaged in that we'd like to be engaged in. But it's not just a take situation because they're a partnership. There's a give take to the relationship. Assuming for a moment that all the business metrics are met within that partner expectation. It's a great partner financial plan that lends uh, to their success by working with us in that go to market. Assume that is the case, then it's incumbent upon again going back to the human engagement, that partnership from a person to person perspective, understanding what their go to market is, what their goals are, what they need to drive to that outcome of their business, and then aligning ours with theirs, finding where those synergies lie. Oftentimes there's a, uh, target client that maybe we have and they're already engaged with and we want that, but it's not a great alignment match, not with that partner with that client at that time. But without having that discussion, we don't know. And that can create some friction and some challenge to that expectation, uh, of that partnership. And we can refine where we want to go to Market with them and they can refine where they want to go with us. So there's, there's a give take to it. It's kind of goes back to what we were saying a few moments ago. So transparent accountability of what we want to accomplish together, where we want to go from a uh, business perspective. And can we do that together, yes or no? If yes, great. If no, that's okay as well. Plenty of partners out there.

Speaker A: Yeah, big ecosystem there. How do you coach people to kind of strike the right balance between like relationship building with customers and like the desire to constantly want to be upselling?

Speaker B: Yeah. Relationship building is a criticality in sales. Right. I mean that's, that's a table stakes type of conversation in my opinion. But people manage relationships in different ways. Upselling, cross selling, I think that's also in a successful sales model, something that should always be considered and engaged. But you have to earn the right to do that and that's foundationalized in that relationship building exercise. There needs to be, uh, I think the term trusted advisor is all too often used, but it does hold merit. There needs to be a trust to that relationship. There needs to be a mutual benefit to that relationship. When you have that and you're actually looking with the client at what their desired outcome is, then you can actually upsell and, or cross sell. And I think that's where we need to be. But it takes time to get there. There are many ways to get there. I'm a big fan of multi tiered engagement. So if we've got a great client or a great target client, we generally apply a multi tiered touchpoint engagement model. Uh, from the senior executive, the C suite suite, all the way down. It depends on the complexity of the client's environment. But the, say the account director is generally the quarterback of what that engagement model looks like. So they've got to have a pulse on all the different variables, business units, personnel, from a client's engagement perspective and be able to oftentimes work with me and others to understand who from our ecosystem should be applied to that equation. When you have that, there's a greater sum of trust built more quickly and you get different data points that you can manage to more effectively. You have that, then it's much easier to cross sell, upsell, create that broader portfolio integration and create those better outcomes for that client.

Speaker A: Is there a difference in your approach when it comes to trying to close enterprise level clients versus the SMB market?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I've stayed more aligned with enterprise over the last number of years. Although SMB commercial space is still a very large part of the market, SMB and commercial is much more transactional. There's usually a flatter structure and a much more pointed directive to an outcome, uh, which moves things along more quickly. Generally those dollar figures are smaller. Margins are oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes compressed. But you're looking at just building volume and uh, putting your, putting your product out to play. Whereas an enterprise, it's a much more complex sale. From a personnel and a tech stack perspective, margins can be compressed, but generally speaking you can maintain a pretty healthy margin given the right approach to that opportunity. And all too often I think that people get to accelerate for that short term goal and they will compress margins and make concessions where they don't necessarily have to, both on the client side as well as on, on our side. But given the right structure, right team, the right understanding and the right trust, you can drive a profitable, higher level value outcome and everybody wins. So it's a matter of aligning things properly for sure.

Speaker A: What are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen like uh, a VP of sales make when they're trying to lead a sales team to grow revenue?

Speaker B: Uh, lots of mistakes. I mean I've made my fair share as well. But I'd say to uh, consolidate it to just a couple. It's going back to personnel hiring, hiring the right people too quickly. Or we'll say hiring the wrong people too quickly. Just hiring too quickly is generally not a good practice, can create problems financially. So making sure that you're hiring the right people for what you're trying to accomplish is a criticality. And if that takes a little extra time and diligence, that is time well spent. And the outcome will be superior if you spend that extra little bit of time hiring the right people, finding that right culture fit, finding that right discipline, that right passion for what you're trying to achieve. So timing of hiring is oftentimes in this ecosystem a challenge and a mistake. In fact, looking for the, and aligned with that, looking for the right profile. I alluded to it earlier, it's not always the person from your exact industry. If you're trying to evaluate somebody from a competitor, we'll say yes, they have industry knowledge, they have awareness, they have competitive savvy. At times, however, they may not be the best fit for what your company is driving to. They may not be that good culture fit, which is a criticality in finding those top shelf players. Um, so looking at the profile and I've had Some amazing, non industry specific, excellent hires because they were the right people. Fast learners, dynamic people, high, high level discipline, passion that goes leaps and bounds beyond most. And those are the folks that can make that really nice large level impact. And oftentimes people get mired in the uh, I need to hire somebody that has my industry knowledge so they can be quickly to market and make an impact for us. It's a balance. Right. We've got to strike that balance. So I'd say those are the two biggest challenges. And then from a management perspective, once people are in that mix, going back to an earlier topic, creating a uh, balance in your go to market approach and what you're delivering to the company for short, mid and long term deliverables, having an understanding of how to execute all three of those areas and then actually executing to all three of those areas. It is a balancing act and it takes a large level of discipline and to manage that immediate mid and long term value proposition being driven back into your company through executables. So stay true to those concepts and you generally succeed.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. As far as the industry match goes, I see that as a requirement all the time. You know a lot of hiring managers, they definitely, they don't want to do any training so you got to have the industry checkbox if you want to be even considered for an interview which is uh, you know they miss out on a lot of good people but that's just kind of how the market is right now. There's so many people looking that they can be super uh, selective and picky and you know, either have the checkbox or you don't. I definitely encourage job seekers to apply for roles where they have the industry experience and it'll help their chances quite a bit. But uh, let's talk about AI for a little bit. What trends are you seeing in AI and what tools have you, you like actually benefited from in your sales process?

Speaker B: Yeah boy, AI, it's such a broad topic now. It used to be so narrow, used to be just machine learning and now uh, now we've gotten into the world of AI, couple different areas. I think that from an internal perspective what we would be looking at from an AI integration, obviously intelligent data makes a difference. Predictive forecasting. I uh, talked about pipeline and forecasting earlier. There's a lot of opportunity for different models to come to fruition that can enhance that forecastability, that accuracy. I think it's very critical in today's fast paced tech environments to not just put good numbers up but understand what those numbers mean and what they can yield next. And AI is absolutely enhancing that from, ah, a predictability and forecasting from a predictability of, of what can come next from a portfolio expansion with that client. And there's a lot of insights that AI can point us to. But even from a, uh, fundamental element of sales enablement, there's a lot of training that AI can provide to us. There's a lot of efficiency that I think people are experiencing by leveraging AI and research of what they're trying to accomplish in their go to market. In automation, from email outreach, from marketing, campaign integration, lead scoring, there's so many different elements of impact that it can make. It's a matter of what tools the company is um, employing and how they want their staff to leverage that different suite of AI products that they're bringing to market. Yeah, it's an uncanny time. I like it. I think that this is a really dynamic time in our world. Some people pulled back from it and initially they were a little afraid of the AI revolution. But truth be told, I think it, well, one, it's an inevitability. Two, it's an absolutely wonderful tool set that can enhance outcomes. So, so far so good.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, mixed, mixed, uh, reviews from me. I use it for quite a bit. But I did try this AI cold calling platform. I won't name it, that did not work out. But I had envisioned, you know, they were pitching me on, yeah, this thing can make 40,000 cold calls a day and, and you know, you can prompt it to say whatever you want. When we actually tried to have it make a cold call and have the conversation go the way I wanted it to go, I mean I literally just wanted the AI to ask two questions and then from there take the conversation in like this, if then tree. But if they answered either question wrong, it would just say, all right, well thank you for your time. And it hung up. No matter how we prompted it, I think I had the whole company working on my use case for about a month and, and they finally gave me a refund because all the marketing material that I saw after I ended up purchasing the platform, the use case was all around like converting inbound leads into an appointment and it can call your inbound leads and schedule an appointment for you. That's about where it ends. So, uh, that was months ago. I know the models keep getting better. It's like every eight weeks they double. So who knows, maybe they're doing leaps and bounds better now. But uh, yeah, that kind of burned me a little bit from kind of thinking outside the box and trying something new, you know, you know what, Keep

Speaker B: thinking outside the box, though. Try those new things. Inevitably you'll find something that does resonate and work for you. The other, the other thing with the model that you were just talking about, there's private AI and there's public AI, right? And those data sets are, I think, going to become more and more of a conversation piece as we navigate forward. So again, I'm a huge fan of AI integration. I think that it creates net new efficiency, it can create net new business opportunity as well. I've had a couple really wonderful negotiations. Putting AI to play, uh, in client settings and watching what it is doing for them, what the outcome is that they're shooting for and achieving by integrating very fundamental AI practices is pretty spectacular. Data document extraction is. Seems kind of fundamental, but done wrong, it can create a lot of problems. Problems done well, it can create a lot of value. So keep trying, enjoy it, Tinker with it. Uh, I play with it every day.

Speaker A: Yeah, me too. All, uh, right, just a couple of fun personal questions here before we wrap. Do you have a favorite movie?

Speaker B: A favorite movie? You know, I used to have a favorite movie in my early days, Wall Street. The original Wall Street. It was a really interesting concept with a lot of layers to it. Although I would say at this point, I don't know, I just recently watched Tombstone again and what a neat Western. What a good flashback of the OK Corral kind of scenario. So, yeah, that was pretty fun.

Speaker A: Tombstone. Is that the one with Doc Holliday as Val Kilmer? Yes, Bill Huckleberry. Yeah, that's a good movie. Yeah, Val Kilmer, he had a good documentary. But you know who else had a great documentary you should watch is Charlie Sheen.

Speaker B: I haven't seen it. I've seen the ad for it, but I have not seen that documentary yet. I'll take a look.

Speaker A: I knew he was a wild one, but, man, this one dives deep into it. It's crazy. And it shows how he got the Wall street movie and all that. So you should check it out. He's a different breed of human. How he survived. Anybody else that took that level of drugs, I mean, they, they would have been dead a long time ago. He's almost invincible. Everything he tries ends up turning to gold. And I think that's part of his flaw, is that he's never had to really try very hard for anything. And he's just like. He keeps testing how bad he can wreck it. You know, it keeps on turning out okay. So it's just crazy. Really frosty.

Speaker B: Keeps turning out okay.

Speaker A: I, uh, know, right. Do you have a favorite band or artist that you listen to?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll go. This is a bit of a flashback, but I'm a Beatles fan, so. Absolutely. I think that they are a revolutionary band that changed music and Big, uh, fan. Still am.

Speaker A: Very cool. What do you do for fun?

Speaker B: Yeah, I do a lot of things for fun. I, uh, spend time with my family. That's the, that's the priority outside of work, fortunately, we're all pretty tightly aligned, so we do all kinds of different things outside. We, we enjoy getting out and wakeboarding. Do that every year.

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: Lake Mead in Arizona.

Speaker A: You have a wakeboard boat?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: What kind?

Speaker B: We have the Centurion.

Speaker A: Oh, nice. Yeah, a friend of mine used to sell those and, uh, because I grew up on in seven lakes, so I was a big wakeboarder. I got a picture of me doing a rally over here. But, uh, yeah, I love wakeboarding, eboarding, do flips and stuff. And, uh, now I don't really do too much, I just get injured. But yeah, man, love the wakeboarding scene. That was a fun era of my life. Do you still get out there and do it?

Speaker B: We do. We're just out about a month back. It's fun. It's good times.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's my dream, to have a lake house. You know, that's the, that's the final frontier, man. It's uh, that's the life. You know, my parents have a place at the beach and my parents in law, they have a place in the mountains. So we get the best of both worlds. We could kind of go, you know, pick whichever direction we want to go in, but, but my personal preference would be a lake house. That's the life right there.

Speaker B: It is fun. We enjoy it a lot. Although we do a lot of stuff. All of my family were runners, so I went through about a decade worth of triathlons. So swim, bike, run.

Speaker A: Oh, cool.

Speaker B: Done that a number of times, hit Hawaii twice, but have done races all over the place, different distances. Yeah, we like to stay active. We're sports fans.

Speaker A: All right. Yeah, if you do triathlons, you're a different breed right there. That's, ah, those are no joke, man. You're, uh, Iron Man. Okay, last question. If you won the lottery tomorrow for $500 million, what would you do?

Speaker B: Wow, that's, that's a deep question. I think everybody's thought about that once or twice. What would I do? I will say This I don't. I think I know what I would do, but in all candor, I don't think anybody knows exactly what they'd really do until that really happens. But to answer your question, I would certainly create generational wealth buckets for different pieces of my family. I would. Family's also big in educational philanthropy, so I would make that a bigger priority and fund, uh, that in a deeper way. Probably have a couple new toys, of course. Right. Selfishly, I'd like to change up a couple things as far as, uh, material elements, but generally speaking, it would be more about experiential activity for me and others, trying to create a more robust, best lifestyle for me and many other people for generations to come. Yeah, I think that's what I would do.

Speaker A: Yeah. Good plan. Yeah. Just don't tell anybody if you win. Just don't. Don't, uh, tell a soul. There will be signs, but don't tell anybody. All right, well, is there anything else you'd like to promote or chat about before we end it?

Speaker B: Yeah. I'd like to thank you. It's been an enjoyable conversation. Again, there's ever, ever anything I can do to help you, you down that path, then, uh, please know that I'm here.

Speaker A: I'll take you up on that. Yeah. When you get hired, hopefully I can help connect you with something. But, yeah, when you get hired, send me job orders. How can people find you, Todd?

Speaker B: I'm, um, Most definitely on LinkedIn. That's the. Probably the easiest way. Todd Priest in Southern California. Although there are five Todd Priests in Southern California, I don't know how that's possible. Todd Priest onemail. If you want to send me a direct email, happy to connect with me with you.

Speaker A: Nice. All right, we'll end it there. And thank you for coming on. It's been great to have you on the show. A lot of good insights, and, uh, yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast. We'll do it again sometime.

Speaker B: I appreciate it, Blake. You have a great afternoon.

Speaker A: Likewise.