Masters of MEDDICC - How To Build A Diverse Winning Team With Josh Reiner

Josh Reiner: If you are at a point in time in your career where you may have just successfully progressed because you've done well, but you haven't really invested the time into learning your craft and understanding how uh, to build a repeatable go to market sales process in motion and get with people that can go do that. Come find a way to get into an organization. Be willing to have your ego take a step down because it's not a step down. You're investing in your career and your timeline. So if you're great, but you may not have the right level of experience or you might not have this, find a way based on a relationship that you have. We live in a small world. Find a way to have someone sponsor you into call, Find a way in because you're going to have to have that way to get in to have a shot. People follow other people because they get better. We're challenging people to be better versions of themselves. And when they have a challenge or obstacle we coach them together to brainstorm together on how to go fix it. As long as you keep that culture of training and development and getting better, usually those people stick with each other for a long time.

Andy: Welcome to Masters of Medic. Today I'm here with Josh Reiner. Welcome to the show. Josh, your VP amia at the rocket ship. And I know that word is used a lot in this industry but I think it's very true in this example, the rocket ship that is Wiz. Welcome to the show Josh.

Josh Reiner: Absolute, absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks Andy.

Andy: Good. For those that don't know you, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this wonderful world of sales.

Josh Reiner: Uh, well, so for those who don't know me, uh, I recently, well I guess now, five years ago moved over here uh, from the U.S. uh to EMEA. Uh, my first job when I came over here was to run the go to market uh, for Zscaler or Zscaler and did that for four and a half years and then uh, about just under a year ago, uh, took over the go to market responsibilities uh, for Wiz across emea. And uh, prior to that I worked at uh, in BMC software uh, and AppDynamics in the US uh, so that's short version of my career.

Andy: Love that. I was looking on LinkedIn and I noticed and you know those regular listeners know I'm not the strongest at maths or math as you would say.

Josh Reiner: Yeah.

Andy: Um, but I was looking that you were at uh, BMC. I think you started in the year 2000 I did, which doesn't take a math genius to work out. That means 25 years.

Josh Reiner: It is, yes.

Andy: How have things changed over those 25 years, if at all? Like what's, what's new, what's.

Josh Reiner: So, uh, a lot's changed over those uh, years, you know, especially now with the kind uh, of the burst of AI, especially how that's being integrated into how people prepare and get ready for sales and become knowledgeable about what they want to have done. Uh, so just, you know, over the years in the evolution of, you know, kind of technologies and tools and processes, I think the biggest thing that has changed is the amount of data and information that is accessible to us in a very short period of time. Uh, and that is positive and negative because there's, it's positive because there's a lot more information you can have, a lot more knowledge that you can bring to the customer, uh, about the problems they may be having, uh, and how your solution or product may be able to service them. But it's siftering through that noise and information to come out with a coherent message. I think that is, is definitely something that's changed, uh, over the years. Um, the mediums of which people use to outreach has also changed. Um, you know, again, dating the self, you know, email was the sole reason to get out there from uh, a digital perspective. I mean now, you know, BR and branding and digital, uh, you know, LinkedIn. To your point of just raising that up, uh, there's multiple ways and multiple touch points that customers use, uh, to survey you as a company or prospect even before engaging with you. So a customer's ability to understand the product and service you have, the amount of research they can do without engaging you is tremendously more than what it used to be. You used to have to go in and educate a customer or prospect, uh, about all the features and functionalities, the problem statements. And you were the sole guide of information a lot of the times. Now, you know, by the time they may reach out to you, they've already done 60 to 70% of what they think is the due diligence. And, and that uh, that's a really good thing because they're much more educated buyers. But it's also a challenge in uh, a lot of ways because uh, and I talk about this all the time with my team, when people come to you uh, with a, uh, a problem or a request, they already have formulated an opinion of how you can solve it. Uh, and our jobs at sellers is to make sure that they get the most out. Uh, I always use an example when I'm training my team. How much of you, how uh, much do you actually use of the Microsoft Office suite? And most people use email, maybe a little bit of Word and Excel, but that's such a powerful platform that a lot of people are using maybe a fifth of the value of. So how you get a company to embrace as much of the value of your platform is critical. So again, to kind of summarize, people can get a lot more information about what you can do, but it's always in context of probably one small piece of the problem they're having. So our jobs as sellers and working with them is to make sure maybe we broaden the scope of the organization of who can benefit from it and how they can actually get additional value from it, not just the initial pain point that they may see.

Andy: Yeah, I love what you said. That for us, we look at that from a perspective of like what you're talking about is the customer and their decision criteria. Right. And I think there's this, we talk about this a lot, but there's this sort of big divide in approach where it's, you know, as you said, the customers are so much more informed. Um, but as much as that is a good thing, like you said, unless you know, all they've been reading in your case is like Wiz is website and Wiz's PR and product marketing, that perspective they're coming to you with is going to be influenced by something or someone else, which, you know, in the best case scenario is going to be, you know, Ghana, which is good for you because I know, you know, you got to, you rate well there. Um, but could also be, uh, a competition or it could just be, you know, a bad opinion. Right. And I think like what's so interesting to, because you seem to have your finger really on the pulse of how customers are coming to you. How do you coach your teams to make sure that they aren't falling into a sort of a routine of following what the customer thinks is best for them and therefore aligning Wiz's solution to the preconception of what the best decision criteria the customer has for themselves.

Josh Reiner: So, uh, well, I think, and I'll tell the Wiz journey, uh, to a certain degree, uh, because one of the things that Wiz and the rocket ship that we're on, um, they have the most amazing PR and marketing team I've ever seen and experienced in my life from, uh, how they even branded themselves to be, you know, security and cyber doesn't need to be scary. It doesn't need to be swords and people in hoodies and falcons and evil stuff. It's you know, unicorns and rainbows and fun and it just, it kind of created this brand of how do we, how do we. It's fun like love, like people use the word love when they come and talk about the product, you know, all the time. So how, how that market and how that impression goes is kind of the first initial touch. So Wiz spends a lot of time getting the branding right. We've got 90 seconds and whiz in 90 seconds and what can it go do and how it can go do for it. It's really taking that down to the next level that's really, really critical of once they engage. So how we work together and as a digital and then a go to market, ARM digital and PR and marketing do the job to get the interest, highlight that the main statements. But when it comes to you then you have to make sure you build the team to operationalize it within that company because yes, the value is clear and the technology what it does but once you, how do you take that technology and get value from it? How do you, what are the use cases that are going to take cost out uh of the equation, reduce your, your risk profile and provide that benefit. So there has to be both to work. You can't just have great marketing and digital branding without people to help execute and operationalize to truly get the benefit from it. So us working with the uh, PR and digital, working with the field sales team and the engineers and the post sales team is a really, really critical handoff to extract the most amount of value you can.

Andy: I absolutely love that that makes so much sense. We, we, we would sort of describe what the, your PR marketing team is doing. There is they are taking not just the technical parts of decision criteria but also the relationship parts and they're bringing positioning. So they're kind of inspiring and seeding in the market's mind the sort of things that they should look for and expect from not just a technical perspective which is you know, obviously very important in a technical product, but also from a relationship perspective of you know, if you want to work with an organization, look at, look at what our customers think, look at the kind of the vibe we have. And yeah, that makes, that makes so much sense to me. I love that a lot.

Josh Reiner: Yeah, it's, you know I always uh, I always try to describe I've never, never worked at a company that customers love it so much. They Use the word love when describing our technology. And, and I think one of the main reasons, and especially in today's world, and the immediate gratification of where people are expecting and the time to value, uh, the fact that we can highlight somebody's gaps and risks and challenges that they may have and prioritize how they want to go through them. When they start remediating those challenges and they see their security posture improve and they get their criticals down to zero, that's, that's that they, they feel like they're doing a good job. And I think that's one of the things when I relate to any medic type selling or process or framework and how we communicate internally is everything still revolves around the champion that owns the initiative that you're working with. How are you empowering and enabling your champion to, to be better, to be recognized for the benefit that they're doing, that the reward for taking cost out of the business, the reward for increasing a company's security posture. So while we've got great technology that allows you to do things, helping the champions in our accounts be able to articulate back to the broader organization, here's the impact that I'm having and here's the benefit that it drives. It promotes them in their company and their career and that usually good things happen when, when people get promoted and start documenting the benefit they receive.

Andy: Yeah, I love that. One of the things you were talking about that way you were saying about, you know, customers loving the product and obviously there's the momentum that comes with all of that good stuff, having good product, customers that like you in the growth and you know, it's like a perfect sort of crescendo. Isn't that what I've seen happen before? And I've been part of a company where I felt like this was a potential risk as well, is that, um, sellers can almost find themselves sort of hurrying through. They almost need to like slow things down to speed them up. Do you know what I mean? How do you help your team not, um, get sort of, um, taken with the momentum of customers are like, well, I used you before in my last organization, I want you here. Or perhaps my best friend also is insecurity or is a CISO and loves you, you and says we need you. How do you make sure that your uh, teams and your leaders that are working for you kind of make sure it's almost like slow things down to make sure we really still get to planting that value.

Josh Reiner: It's, well, these are good problems to have. I Call them champagne problems. When your product is so good and people move from one company to the next company, they want to bring it in, that's a really, really good problem to have. And usually what I try to describe, um, usually a champion that you're working with that would come from one organization to another. We'll use a CISO as an example. They did a great job. You helped them, you know, fix all their misconfigurations in cloud. And so it drove a higher security posture for it. That's great. And then they go to a new organization and they want to do the exact same thing. But part of the benefit of any sort of solution drive is to get the most out of it. So yes, the CISO has a lot of value that you get because you're securing the environment. But the application teams that are building applications to release new functionalities to stay ahead of their competitors also get a tremendous amount of value. The people that are looking to triage incidents that are happening in the, in the wild or something's trying to attack them, they're also getting benefit. So when someone comes to you and they say, yeah, I want to bring you in, that's great, but so let's make sure that this gets adopted in your organization. Let's make sure we recognize you get recognized for all the great work that we're going to go do. And that starts with getting us access to these other people that are going to provide benefit from it. And let's go build a plan to understand their challenges. Document those like we did with you before. So we understand the before state and the after state and the impact that we're having both financially as well as, you know, security posture wise. And we pull that together as a comprehensive program to then roll it out. And then now you're getting benefit and then you're seeing even in a greater light because you've impacted multiple parts of the business. Now what that does to you as a seller is obviously you're providing more value to the organization. And generally when you provide more value, you can command a higher price point. Uh, because they're getting more from the solutions and technology and it's it, they're getting more value exponentially. So it's, it's a win, win on both sides of the house. So I always use this, this term and uh, most people that know me know it. I always say I hate leads. And what you just described there was kind of a lead. Uh, a person goes from one organ to the next, but you still can't shortcut the process. You still need to go in. Hey. Okay, so you're going to do something here not because you like me, because I can solve a problem. You think we can solve a problem together. So let's go investigate all the problem areas that we can go have in your organization. Really identify the pain and the implications of pain. You know, as we're keeping the medic as a common language framework here. So what is that? Okay, now that we understand that there's pain in these different areas or ways that we can improve, what are the metrics that we really need to go get down to document the before and after state? And once you start getting into that area, now you're building use cases that are going to document those criterias and you can look at the outputs. Now you can start showing those pieces back to the organization so they can represent back to the economic buyer. Here's the value that, here's the problem that we had, here's the statement that we released and technically how we proved it out to show the benefit, and here's the outcomes of what that is. So I always take a very simple approach. When I meet EBs and economic buyers, they really care about two things. Is the product or service that I'm buying, is it going to solve the pain that we have identified together? And is it going to be adopted in the organization? Is it going to be deployed and implemented correctly? So when I meet with, uh, him or her as an economic buyer, I always make sure that I articulate the problem statement, articulate the deployment plan, the structure that we're going to go do. And then I do one step further where I say 60 days after we do this deployment together, I'm going to come back to make sure that we're on track. And if we're not, we can pivot and we're going to go, but we will make sure that these benefits are realized. And here's the adoption plan to ensure that it's going to happen.

Andy: I love that. Absolutely love that. Well, uh, one of the things that kind of sticks out for me here is that what you're talking about is, uh, selling from a perspective of approaching opportunities with almost like an open mindset. And one of the things I talk about a lot is that, and I think this will resonate with everyone if you imagine the company you're working for now, even you working for Wiz, I think this would be very true when you were in the interviewing process, um, in those. Even though I imagine someone like yourself would have put a ton of Work, even with the connections you had inside of Wiz and the momentum that came with that, a ton of work upfront to do, you know, not just your research for the interview process, but also your due diligence. Right. But I'm pretty sure even with that, you might have had a tough time telling me about what Wiz costs. What the, you know, if I presented you with a typical customer, uh, and say, well, what's. What's this going to cost on an annual basis, you probably would have had a challenge. Right?

Josh Reiner: Yeah.

Andy: And that's somebody who's done in your case there, ah, uh, hours and hours of research and is actually in the industry. You're not far from Wiz, where you worked at Zscaler before. Right. So you should have a sort of a what? The point I'm making is a better understanding of the kind of cost that Wiz would likely to cost, uh, than a customer would. So the customer is. Either has no idea what the cost is going to be, or it's influenced by a competitor or another quote that had something like that. And what I find, um, salespeople often fall into the trap of doing is they go, well, this is what it's going to cost, and this is the scope. And it kind of falls back to what we're saying a moment ago about decision criteria. Whereas what you're talking about doing there is kind of going in. And it's your point about, you know, you don't like leads is going in with this mindset of, okay, well, I'm very confident we've got a great product, and I'm very confident that this great product can bring you value. But let's just sort of, let's just sort of pause on that one little, you know, problem you have over there. And let's take a broader view here. And I think the real point I love to make here is that it's not just about, um, finding, um, more value to make your, uh, proposition more compelling, but it's all around differentiation as well. Is that not just differentiation for value sake, but differentiation for customer trust and credibility sake? You know what you were saying earlier about building those champions? Well, if you can go in as Wiz and say, okay, well, I know you have that problem, let's look broad, let's look at the bigger picture. Let's look at some of, you know, some of the initiatives you have in play and what strategies they're supporting, what difference it would make if we can support, maybe there's a new product launch or something like that. Going on that Wiz can help to accelerate or make more efficient the launch of. Then all of a sudden, um, and particularly into your point in the economic buyer's eyes, all of a sudden you've not only differentiated yourself, created new value, but you've won this champion who's like, I can't wait to take Josh to meet my boss because it's going to make me look great. Uh, and all good things come from that. Right?

Josh Reiner: A lot to unpack there because you put out a lot of really good points. And uh, one of the things that I always try, uh, to train my teams with is don't fall into the trap of a budget. Don't fall into the trap of, you know, comparing yourself to something else. So I, uh, use this line all the time when I go in and meet, well, how much does your product cost? And I say, instead of answering the question with, you know, cost X, I say, I won't charge you a dollar more or a pound more or a euro more than the value that I can drive in a 12 month period. So let me run the process because we have to go find out first of all, am I the right solution for you? And I can't make that assumption that just because Wiz is great that it's great for you. So going through the process with somebody to really understand their pain points, to really understand. And back to your other point that you said that is really, uh, important. What I don't want to miss. Educated sellers help make educated buyers.

Andy: I love that.

Josh Reiner: So when you go in and you say, okay, you're a fintech, uh, trying to break in and compete against the HSBCs and the Barclays of the world, how are you going to go do that? Well, you're going to have to do that by releasing functionality faster and have different features that are capabilities that they don't have. And your advantage is speed to market and capabilities that they want to have. So to think that I can sell the same solution to both of those companies is naive on my part. So the first step that you want to go do is a, if you're an educated seller and you go into the organization, to your point, what are the business strategies that you've kicked off and what are the projects that are underlying those strategies that they need to implement to get to get done? So any seller in my organization, the first meeting that they have with a, uh, champion or a potential buyer, we go through what we call the value pyramid where we take a look at the corporate objectives, how they're tied to the business strategy they're trying to work on, what are the programs and projects that they have and what are the risks to deliver those. So when you start talking in customer terms and start, these are the initiatives, these are the projects, these are the concerns that you have. How, let's see how we can go relate to those. What are the requirements that we have to go meet those initiatives and then let's go run a proof of value to see if that it makes sense for you. Because if we come in, in this exercise and say your product is very expensive, I said, well it's expenses relative depending on the value that we're providing. So let's see if I can provide you enough value to justify the cost that we're going to go bring. And the only way you can do that is if you understand the initiatives that they're trying to accomplish and can you help them get the outcomes that they need to have with that? That is how uh, a truly educated buyer and seller should be engaging with the customer.

Andy: Absolutely love that. Yeah, I love that. I think one of the things that's funny is we, we, we, we talk value pyramid as well and we've actually internalized the value pyramid to be the way in which we, we operate. It's our strategy, we call it our codex. And so we have at the top level what you would say is corporate objectives, we call it our goals. So the top two levels, which is to have a winning team and then to help our customers to unlock their full potential in go to market. And then we have our strategies underneath which are things like that we have a big media part of our business and lots of other things having really, really, ah, beautiful, easy to use software as another part. So we have all the other strategies and then we have anything that we therefore do that would fall under an initiative. Um, you know, whether it's a new show, whether it's a new feature, like at the moment we're developing a playbook product that has to then align to those strategies that then should support that goal. And the reason why I mentioned that is because if somebody was to sell to us and they were to, you know, they wouldn't have to necessarily know that we use the value pyramid internally. And even if we didn't, um, we just loosely were doing these things, it would be an absolutely beautiful, wonderful, glorious experience for us as an organization because it makes it so simple. It's like we're, you're doing the, you're kind of doing half the champion's job, which is to sell internally, you're giving them the framework. We talk about champion decks, but if we get the value pyramid right, it is truly the, the pathway in which the how your champion can connect your proposition and the value it provides to the very top level, those corporate objectives, as you rightly said. And you know, it's almost, it's funny to me that um, that we have these tools, these plays, if we call them that, like value pyramids that aren't being sort of used every single time. How does that work in Wiz? From obviously somewhere that's renowned to have really high quality sales execution, you only have to look at the kind of caliber of person in the team. Is it a scenario where um, your leadership team is having to kind of encourage value pyramids or are they just part of the regular cadence? How does that work?

Josh Reiner: I wish we lived in a world where no one took shortcuts. Yeah, unfortunately we don't live in a world. And you know, one of the, again, champagne problem, uh, is when you have such great technology and such a market demand and such a need, uh, for what Wiz does, uh, sometimes you can take shortcuts and get away with it. And that's, you can only stay that way for so long. And the reason why I use that analogy is, you know, before Dolly and Mike and Dave and I and a lot of the people came here, they obviously run a rocket ship on their own and their technology in the space and problems they were solving were great. But the biggest part of the sales cycle before we came in here was when they showed the technology to getting a purchase order. And the reason why it was the longest period of time is because buyers didn't know how to buy. You showed them this unbelievable technology that could show all these, these risks and vulnerabilities and they, they were showing someone fire for the first time. Like they just get wide eyed and like, this is the greatest thing in the world. How do I buy this?

Andy: Yeah.

Josh Reiner: So part of working in an organization is to enable your company to buy a product to solve a problem because they're not used to buying and you have to help them with that process, facilitate that process. So the sales process, that medic kind of as a foundational framework started with, but now it's really a communication framework that goes into, you have to almost win that first sell with the person like I want to help you buy this so that it gets adopted, deployed and the value is recognized and that's getting into the process. So it starts by understanding, here's the initiatives that you're running. Okay, so now that we have these initiatives, how do we, you know, why are we doing anything and why are we doing it now? And why do we think Wiz is the right fit for that? So, and, but that's how people buy. People buy based on that thought process. What's my problem statement? You know, why am I going to do something now? And then why is this the right solution for that? So as we go through the artifacts that we use to, to run a buyer through that journey, it's all built on the buyer's mentality to make sure that they fully understand it, document it, and can deploy and adopt it in the organization. Because again, going back to the economic buyer, a lot of EBs have bought things over the careers that haven't gotten deployed. So the better you can communicate a plan to get it adopted and the value recognized. You have to follow the framework and structure. So again, back to Wiz's biggest challenge of showing great technology and not being able to understand how to quantify the problem, then that also means they don't know how to deploy it to get the recognized value out of it. So having and following that process enables organizations and your champion in the organization to recognize that value and socialize that value internally.

Andy: Yeah, I love that. And one of the things that's really interesting is Wiz is a great example of this, I think. You know, I forget how many records Wiz broke, you know, in the first sort of, I don't know, few years of the existence. Um, but then there's the moment when Dali came in and he said, like Mike yourself on this great, you know, just. It was almost like, you know, there was points. I don't know if this is, uh, something you folks talked about, but there's points from the outside in where we were sort of observing, going, well how long before that person joins. And it was almost became bits of, almost parody because then, you know, know it's one of the wonderful things about our industry is, you know, people follow greatness. And you never see it the other way around though. Do you never see like bad leaders follow bad leaders. They know no matter how bad they are, you know, not bad people don't follow bad people. So it's a wonderful thing to see. But one of the things I think is not talked about enough in our industry is we define winning and losing incorrectly in my mind because we define in particularly in sales, um, I guess it is a whole go to market motion. Uh, winning is closed one and losing is closed lost. Right. But um, what you were talking about there is, aligns with how we think the difference is winning is because, you know, you should never really lose a deal. You just shouldn't. Like if, if you're doing everything right, you should never lose a deal. You, uh, should qualify out of a deal. You see what I mean? Because you should, you should never come as a surprise unless something is misqualified at some point. You should. Yeah. So the point being, then what becomes winning and losing is did you win the best possible deal you could have won versus the worst possible deal? Right. And the thing that people think about then is they think, well, size of deal, which is, sure, that's obviously it's revenue, of course, but actually we look at it from a sales velocity perspective. So we would say, okay, well, not just the size of the deal, but how long did it take us to close it? Because that's the, like, the forgotten about metric that is as impactful as amount of opportunities is as impactful as conversion rate, and it is as impactful as the size of the deal. Because, you know, it doesn't take, uh, an expert to work out that if it takes you twice as long to close something, then it might as well be half the value, uh, closing for the same amount of time. And so it's those things about focusing on not just, you know, size of deal conversion rate, but the time to close that really make the difference. And I think that's kind of what you were talking about there.

Josh Reiner: Yeah. So, uh, again, I like using shock and awe statements. So one of the statements I've made is I've never lost a deal.

Andy: Okay. Yeah.

Josh Reiner: And what are you talking about? Well, you know, I will qualify out of a deal if it's not, if we're not set right, or uh, if the customer won't engage in a way that I know they need to engage to get the value out to make sure that it's going to be adopted, it's going to be brought around. Now, part of the challenges that we talked about early on were with all this data, with all this information, customers are really afraid to engage with companies because they fear a bad sales process, a bad experience. And no, no, uh, I'll do the research and you just tell me what to go do. The biggest sale that any person needs to make is convincing a customer or prospect that I want to engage with you the right way and then quickly find out if we're the right fit. You've done some due diligence now? I've done some due diligence let's see if we want to go together. And in that discovery phase where they're, uh, analyzing the problem statement, they're looking at the challenges that they want to have, they're articulating the criteria that needs to be met. That process, if you go through it early on in the process and you find out you're not a good match and then you back away, or if you get a customer that doesn't want to engage with you that way and you can't convince them to go into that process, then walk away because they're not going to get the value from it and they're going to lead. Even if they do buy you, you're going to probably get a low price point, it's not going to get adopted the way it should be. And they're probably going to have a bad feeling about that experience. Like, I bought Wiz, it was really expensive, it's not even really being used. No. So have the courage to sell the process of making sure that when a customer engages with you at an enterprise size and scale, that, that we have your best interests and hearts together and spend some time in the discovery process. Because if you do that well, if you understand and document and have the metrics that you're going to go do, and if you both think it's right, then you can execute in doing a deeper dive session. Now, the reason why discovery is so important in investing, that time there and kind of a slow down to speed up analogy, you're not really slowing down if you invest more time upfront to understand the criteria that you need. The long time is technology, the long time is POVs. The long time is when you start investing resources on both sides of that. But if you don't do a good enough job in discovery, how do you know if you're going to be successful? How do you know if it's going to be enough benefit? So do slow down up front. Spend more of that discovery qualification phase. Make sure you've got enough metrics and criteria that are impactful enough. Once you both agree, then you go into the validation stage.

Andy: Love that. I feel like you're describing, uh, discovery there from what we would call professional discovery. But I think the problem is with discovery is most of our industry thinks Discovery is a PDF that they download from a guru on LinkedIn that starts with ask these apparently silver bullet questions which we know don't exist. And I think what people miss. If I could really, really kind of implore people one thing, it's that discovery, uh, isn't a set of questions that you have written down to ask. It's not a script, it's not a call sheet. Discovery is curiosity. And for me, one of the things I'm a little bit afraid of, uh, for our industry is that one of the things that led to great discovery will always lead to great discovery is the research you do beforehand, uh, because it's so important that you're relevant with discovery, right? You have to ask relevant questions because like you said, you're trying to, that first instance, sell yourself to the customer who's jaded from being asked every time a sales person walks into their office, you know, what keeps them awake at night, or, you know, who else cares about us, whatever those other tired, uh, questions are. So credibility and, uh, relevance is hugely important. And the thing I'm a little bit afraid of now is that people keep preaching AI as a shortcut for that. And sure, don't get me wrong, you can definitely go and get, if you use AI, right, you can get to the, you know, you can get it to pull out topics from annual reports and things like that. But for me, the, the best discovery calls or meetings I've ever been in have come as a result of where I've been doing the research. But it's not necessarily the research that, um, has led me to be in the right frame of mind. It's the, it's the, it's where I go from that research. So I'll read something and my mind will start to wander. I'll think, well, that's a little bit like Vodafone when we were selling to Vodafone, um, who, you know, and I might be selling, you know, I might be preparing for meeting of hsbc. It could be completely unrelated, but there'll be something there about, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, finance to telecoms, be something there. And I start thinking, oh, that will be interesting. And I can. And I, you know, you go 1, 1, 2, 3 rows of removal away from the thing you were researching, and all of a sudden what you come into that discovery, uh, meeting with is a really strong, credible point of view that where the customer actually goes, oh, actually, okay, not only is this interesting, but, and this is something I think that's really important to be able to have got to that point of view. You must have put some work in ahead of this meeting, which tells me either you're stupid, which clearly you're not, because you've just come of a really strong point of view, or you Must feel very strongly, a confidence. You have a compelling reason why we should be talking. And so it's kind of that air of confidence that the doing the research does, um, gives you that comes across the customer and therefore they go, uh, oh, actually this person's a serious person. This is, you know, and it's, I always sort of liken it to, you know, the consultants, you know, the top tier consultants who do have a very similar job to an account executive in that they go into a scenario where an, uh, organization is trying to get to a better outcome. The difference is we get to the better outcome by charging for a technology typically. And, um, the consultants, the management consultants, they just come up with the idea of getting there and they almost sell like a bit. We put together a business case and we'll put together POCs, uh, and POVs and all that good stuff. We don't sell it, we give it for free in the hope that they therefore buy into our technology. But it's not that dissimilar.

Josh Reiner: So there's a few points that you raised there. And the first thing that I'll say is, um, data is your superpower. The more you know, the better off you are to service your customer. So what I do think, AI and some of the technologies, you know, back to the early days of dating me on the 25 years there. I appreciate that. Uh, you know, I had to read the 10Ks, I had to read the 10Qs, I had to read the annual reports, I had to, had to do a lot of research on what, you know, the organization cared about and the strategies. You can build that quite quickly. So there's shortcuts you can take in leveraging technology to make you more efficient, to have more meetings faster. But it doesn't shortcut the fact that you need to get the data and you need to have a point of view. You need to come in. And when we look at a sales process, obviously we start with the value pyramid and we come in and we articulate that as we discussed, the next phase of that is to getting into the three whys that we talked about. So when you sit down with someone, just want to make sure how do these business strategies that you're trying to accomplish in these programs you're trying to do you know, why, why is this important? What are the impact statements? How are we going to quantify these benefits to them? And I always, when someone gives me a three whys document or we do a deal review, I always look for names because people say they, well, who's they, I want Andy.

Andy: Yeah.

Josh Reiner: Does Andy care about this? What does a champion care? Why does Andy care about this? And you know, why are we doing anything? Is the most critical thing that you want to go do it, then that quickly translates into why now? And you know, we were talking earlier and one of the things that we talk about is again, people come to me, oh, this, this account's in so much pain. They have all this. Well, they've been living in that pain for so long. So what is the, what is the impending event that is going to finally get them to do, to take action, to break the inertia, to make a change and to drive some of those things? So again, I want educated sellers and educated sellers make sure that they're aligning to the outcomes of what the customer wants. They're ensuring that it gets deployed and going uh, into production so the value is realized. That solves so many other challenges and problems that you have. But it's all underlined by a common language and framework. And so what I like about medic starting as a qualification tool, now moving to a language is when you talk to anyone in my organization, regardless of what ecosystem team you're in, we're always talking to each other in the same language. Well, where are we in the process? Have we done, you know, uh, have we validated the decision criteria? That's a, that's a black and white question that you can go, well, no. Okay, let's go back and validate the decision criteria. Do we understand the decision process they're going to go through to make an evaluation? Do we have enough differentiating criteria in our favor that's unique to our platform or service that we're selling that is going to separate us that would justify doing a price proof of value because we can justify the price. Like those are the questions that we ask each other as leadership teams and sellers to make sure that it's the right fit. So going back to. I've never lost a deal. If you go through and you've got differentiating criteria that your product or service can, can only deliver and then you can prove it in the, in the opera, uh, in the, in the proof of value and deploy the technology, then the output for the EB that the mean that you have, they're going to go forward with it because they want that problem solved and they want that benefit realized.

Andy: Yeah, I love that. And the common language thing is an interesting one to get into with wiz because you know your channel first, right? So you're having those conversations you so aptly described there, how does that expand to your channel partners? Are you taking that same language to your conversations with them?

Josh Reiner: Uh, yes. So there's a, there's a couple pieces with, um, the channel that we'll talk about. One, uh, making a channel first commitment is a big commitment. Uh, shows that we are not going to use you for fulfillment partner. We're not going to use you as a convenience. We're using you as a partner to truly drive together. And the reason that that's important, uh, and you know, there's thousands and thousands of customers that are out there. I can't hire thousands and thousands of people to go service those customers. But if we partner correctly with regional based partners, with global system outsourcers, with, you know, cloud providers that are coming into the market, they do have the coverage. So there's not a customer out there that doesn't have a partner or a cloud provider because that's what will sell. Wiz sells. So they're already in there. So when I use medic and uh, the other shock and awe phrase and actually Mike didn't like this when I said it in front of the whole world. Sales training or the kickoff in San Antonio, I said, never call a customer.

Andy: Yep. Okay.

Josh Reiner: Never ever call a prospect. And he's like, what are you doing? You're leading sales, uh, leader, and you just told our entire sales team never to ever call a customer. And the reason I said that is if you're a channel first and you're going to go, uh, you're going to run your product sale through the channel, why wouldn't you want that person that intimately knows that customer already in the first new business meeting with you? Why wouldn't you make a lot of effort to understand with them already? Because they understand the strategies, they understand the projects, they understand some things and the nuances of the people that are in the organization. Use medic to help qualify. Here's why we should go in there together, because here's what you're doing, you know, channel provider, here's what the cloud provider is doing. Here's the initiatives they're working. The three of you go to a, uh, new business meeting together. What EB or what champion wouldn't want to have their cloud provider, their channel provider that they trust, and the product or service that we're representing jointly brainstorming at an outcome that we can all achieve together? We're coming. You have these strategies, you want to release these functionalities. Here's the outcomes we want to see if we can help you drive. Do you want to engage with all of us to see if we can have enough metrics and benefit to justify the cost of doing this? They love it. It's the uh, best way to go to market.

Andy: Yeah, I love that so much as well that what you're talking about because I think so often in channel we talk about co selling motions and of course, you know, to your point, Medic's brilliant for that because it's the common language. So we align, you know, even. And this is the thing, we work with a number of companies that have channel first strategies or very strong in the channel and they, you know, they see Medic as that common language for, for co selling but some of their partners don't have Medic implemented. But the beauty is it's so common sense that if I, if, let's say you've never heard of Medic before but I start talking to you about the champion, you will know what that means. If I start talking about the customer decision criteria, process, etc. You know what it means. So it works, we know as a beautiful, cohesive, succinct way of us communicating on the things that we know matter. But what I loved about what you were saying there is it sort of shifted to what we would class as moving from co selling, which is like this is the customer and we're communicating to how we're going to sell together to that customer to selling to the partner. So what you're describing there is basically what's in it for the partner because you know, many of your partners and probably the majority of your partners have other ISVs they can be working with. And so if you just as much as I'm sure most of Wiz's partners, if not all Wiz's partners put customer first, they still are a business and they still have their own interests. And so if they're, if you're approaching them with a perspective of I'm going to be talking to you about, you know, what, what pain you have as a, as a partnerships business. You're in your business, what pain you have. Wiz can help you sell. Do you know that our customers love us? You know, um, do you know that, you know, we are committed to um, a channel, you know, these are again relationship decision criteria things that maybe some of Wiz's competitors may overlook because they're not thinking about it as deeply as you are. They may be just thinking about the technical decision criteria or the economic decision criteria. Well, we're cheaper than Wiz. You get higher margins than wizards with not thinking about bigger picture like you are, uh, when you're, you're selling to these partners saying yes, okay, we've got the best product, we've got the, you know, the fastest development. We're going to, you know, we're going to broaden. There's going to be opportunities for you to expand with this organization. Not to mention the product really works. So you know you're going to have, not going to have unhappy customers, they're not going to have a uh, big sort of support issue or anything like that. And so I think keeping in mind that medic not just as a language to co sell to but also sell to partners will help help all channel teams to make sure they're just considering the interests of the partners as well. I learned this the hard way where without going into a long story short, I was working on a big transformation opportunity when I was at Oracle. And um, long story short, we had both Accenture and Deloitte um, backing our bid which was this, you know, this sort of best of breed lots. Yeah, I think there was something like 80 different uh, people would have been paid if we, if I'd closed my deal. It's one of those like you know, bits of stuff everywhere. And the alternative was a best of breed of at the time it was, you know, there were different companies so it was like netsuite, Salesforce and But it's funny, Salesforce have basically acquired all of the companies that were separate at the time going back to when this was and, but Accenture and Deloitte were on our side. They were bidding the Oracle bid and then uh, one of the vendors won't say which changed sides and um, it kind of obviously disrupted things a lot. And the um, VP for Emea for Oracle went for dinner with the partner that was part of the business business and suddenly tried to sort of win it back but basically got to the, you know, got into what went wrong and nothing had gone wrong. It was that in that consultancy uh, business they had, they were finishing a big project and there was going to be all of these Salesforce consultants that were going to be sat on the bench, um, who needed a, needed a

Josh Reiner: project as a home.

Andy: Yeah, they needed a new home. Um, and so the, you know, but the point there is that perhaps, perhaps there's more I could have done if I'd have um, made sure I had made it very, very clear the differentiation that Oracle had over the best of breeds and almost made it very difficult for that consultancy to switch Sides because they would be going back on the criteria that we have identified. The customer needs to feel the value that we had promised. But that's the best case scenario, worst case scenario, I would have just seen it coming and I would have been able to maybe double down more with the other partner or something like that. But the point being, it was a very hard lesson for me to take because I was like, that's not fair. I've done everything right.

Josh Reiner: Life, uh, you learn through the hardships

Andy: you see, you definitely do.

Josh Reiner: And you know the biggest challenge that a lot of people face in independent um, software vendors, ISVs is noise. And if you go to the channel, whether it's a value added reseller, whether it's a cloud native, whether it's a global system out there, there's 1500s. I had the opportunity to speak to the entire AWS, uh, go to market leadership team, uh, last week in Amsterdam and we were sitting down with uh, the geo lead for the DOC business and Allison for the UK business and she said we have 1500 ISVs that try to get our time. Why are we giving you time? And so just think about a customer or prospect, how uh, many CISOs are waiting for someone to call them, they get inundated with areas. So again you have to use the tools to distinguish and separate yourself from that. And part of the strategy that Wiz has and part of the strategy that we're going to market with is I send that channel first strategy. So part of that is a commitment to understand how the channel goes to market, how did they make money, how do we together create great outcomes for their customers that is mutually beneficial for the services or products that they're selling? Because if you don't understand how the channel makes money, how the value added reseller is going to profit from this, how this is going to grow additional areas and aspects for them, then you're not going to be able to align to them correctly because you haven't applied a medic qualification to that understanding and analysis. So just like you do a lot of research to get ready to talk to a customer, you have to do that same amount of research to talk to a partner. Now there is metrics there and one of the other things that I always encourage people is to think bigger. And Wiz sells based on cloud workloads. That's what we are doing today. Our target audience is uh, obviously companies that are consuming a lot of cloud. Now the cloud providers themselves like Wiz, because once Wiz comes in and provides a nice little security blanket over them. They can deploy new capabilities like AI to better further their business, or they can expand and release applications faster. So it's a really, really great thing for them. Now the cloud providers love it because customers start increasing their workload consumption by 20% faster than what they want. So Wiz customers, all of a sudden now the cloud provider is saying, wait, I want Wiz in every single one of my accounts. So we have that. So using that metrics and sitting down with these geo leaders, you have to stop talking about technology and start talking about outcomes. That's the great thing about Medic, because understanding the pain and the champion and the metrics that you want and tying that to the outcomes of what they want to achieve and those business strategies, if you can align the resources that I mean, Wiz's cloud provider channel a CPPO program and how we go to market. But whatever you're doing, whatever business you're in, what is the outcome of the people you're going to market with together? How do you jointly benefit and how do you drive the right outcomes to the customer? Use Medic as that common language and framework to get that documented. Once you have that documented, then you can start making sure that you're making progress in the right direction.

Andy: I love that. What's fascinating, and it was from the very first thing you said or how you described, uh, your roles as you were talking about the roles you took on for your career, you were talking about go to market. It was go to market. I took leave the go to market in this company, that company. And then as you started to talk about your impact in some of the anecdotes you talked about from Wiz, you're talking not just about go to market, but the entire customer life cycle. It comes across in everything you do. And it's interesting because we were talking about this internally in our company recently that in, I think it was 20, I forget if it's 2021 or 2022. But when we had our first Medicon, um, we were sort of announcing for the first of, uh, for us for the first time, where we were talking about, uh, how Medic should be a common language for the whole team. And we kind of came up against this sort of conundrum where we were like, is it the whole. Because we were saying it's more than just sales, when we were sort of saying it's the revenue team, because that's the word that everybody uses. But it's not the revenue team, it's the go to market team. And I think it was 2021, I might be 2022, but either way it was a few years ago. And I can remember this angst of if we call it go to market, that's the right thing to do, that's the right way to refer to it. But. But we also going to have to explain what that is. Do you see what I mean? And so it feels like in the last few years the term go to market has gone from a little bit of a, not a mainstream term, um, to being like a very strong almost on sort of, it's almost sort of bordering on buzzword now.

Josh Reiner: I can see that. So go to market to me is uh, you know, who the company hires to provide benefit to their customers in the process. So sales is always the tip of the spear. We're the one that has the number and has the quota attached to it. But your engineering team, your customer success organization, your professional services organization, your marketing organization, there's so many people that get brought together to go drive benefit and value and to ensure the products get delivered to what they want to get done and having those tight relationships, uh, with the go to market then span out to the broader parts of the organization. How are we tying into product, how are we capturing the requirements and the enhancement requests that our customers are commonly bringing into the table and how are we bringing those back to the table? So one of the things that we focus on is again communication and transparency is key. Generally people get afraid when they don't know. So the more you can communicate your strategy, the more that you can be transparent about what you're trying to accomplish, more that you can align to a common goal or North Star that you have. And then every time you interact with any one of the organizations, you interact with them in that language, in that North Star direction to where you're going. So the reason I'm reaching out to you product is because we're going to market and we're hitting a common uh, requirement that we're going to go through. This has this level of impact because we think we can drive this level of outcome, this additional revenue can come from it, this stream. But you're going back to them using Medic as a kind of a framework. What is the pain we're solving? What are the metrics that we need to qualify? What is the business case that you're taking internally to that team to prioritize your list? So the reason I like medications so much is it allows that communication vehicle to uh, enable you to collaborate and be transparent with one another. And they know I'm going to talk to them in that fashion. When I talk to them, I'm talking to them in terms of a medic framework, they're going to respond back to me because that's how, again, people buy, people look and rate those things.

Andy: Yeah, yeah. I love that we tie that into the decision criteria. So we would say that when you're ideating a product, you should be thinking about, rather than requirements or, or any of the language that product teams use, you should be thinking from a decision criteria perspective. Because by the time you pass that to product marketing, they then want to start surfacing that up as inspiring the market as to what is the specification, what are the requirements, but what is the decision criteria. The customer is going to need to be able to get that value. And the beauty, as you touched on there, is that once that's out into the selling motion, so we've gone from positioning the value to the selling motions, we can start to then see, well, where are we winning? You know what, why did we win that deal? Well, it was because we had this. Well, that's decision criteria. There's these things, decision criteria, which is very useful because it tells the product team their hypothesis was correct, but also it tells the marketing team, oh, we've got something here. Let's elevate it. Let's organize a webinar about that feature. Let's organize, um, some marketing spend behind it. Let's put some volume, some amplification behind that feature, or the complete opposite, which is, why did we lose that deal? It's because we didn't have that thing, product. If we can get this in, here's the pain it's going to solve, and here's the value we get from solving that pain. And it starts to bring that loop. And the way that we sort of see it is because we sort of roll these, we roll value into what we call M1s, M2s and M3s. The beauty of that is marketing teams can start to see, via use case, which use cases are resonating. When we position those use cases, how many clicks does it get on the website? Um, how often do those clicks result in leads? Uh, how often do those leads transform into opportunities? And then when we're actually in front of the customer selling that use case, as it were, how often does that then turn into one the customer is very interested in pursuing? So we end up doing POCs and POVs around it through to closing it. And then when we actually go to deliver that use case, what value Are we delivering? And so it becomes this full cycle to a point where Go to Market team is all together in one and it's um, for the first time, like I did say it was becoming a bit of a buzzword, but I think that's because everyone's kind of hearing it being said. But the way you described it is absolutely spot on. It's pretty. I think it's a, I think it's um, it's a big jump forward we've made where we can now start to bring teams together by removing what I think has been always a bit of a blocker, which is that each Go to Market team speaks the same thing in different languages.

Josh Reiner: You know, using a real life example. And Wiz was no different, uh, when I came here. Everyone wants to be great in what they do and everyone works tirelessly at this company. It's the one thing I don't have a will challenge at all actually. Maybe to have a couple people could take some breaks every now and then because they work so hard. But what they're lacking is going to cause uh, attrition. If we don't get it right, if we don't understand what somebody does and how they're going to market now, what impact that they're having, then they also feel they don't have that sense of satisfaction, that sense of completion. It's just like when I started to have the conversation. The biggest time was between when we showed the product of getting a PO because no one knew how to go buy something because they didn't go through process. If the marketing organization doesn't know how you want them to service you and what's the best strategy based on the decision criteria that you're trying to get into, how you want to go to market, the problems you're trying to solve, like they could be your biggest asset if you give them and help them point in the right direction. Take all that energy that they're going to spend regardless, leverage the medic framework as a communication vehicle to say here's where I, uh, want you to engage and why now all of a sudden that that energy is being well utilized, very efficient versus being inefficient, where you have all these people going off in their individual streams. Now you're all rowing together in the same boat, going much faster together and that's just enabled by a common language.

Andy: I love that there's a couple of things you said there. In the same boat, rowing together, everyone's sort of pointing the same direction, pulling together the forwards. I think is really, really important. But also everybody wants to be great. I feel though, that, as though something we don't talk about enough is how a players are driven primarily by greatness, by this insatiable appetite. This, this. It's not even an appetite. It's a, uh, it's a need, it's a requirement, it's a must have, it's oxygen to create, to, to. To achieve the version of themselves they aspire to be. So I think every, a player inside themselves has a aspirational goal of their potential that they are striving to become. And that, by the way, you never get there like you, you. You know, it's like the carrot and the stick on your head. You know, you're always, it's always going to be this far away from you, but you're constantly striving towards getting there. Which means, you know, which is all about, you know, coachability. It's all about constantly being improving and having that drive for greatness. And I think our industry gets this wrong because we think that people are motivated by money. I feel like money is the way we keep score of how well we, you know, it's a way of kind of sense checking I'm in on this mission at Wiz. You know, I'm getting what I need. I feel like I'm growing, I'm getting the reward, the satisfaction. Am I doing all right? Yeah. Okay. Salary, Salary checks out, commission checks out. I'm still on, um, you know, I can feel like I'm in the right lane. And that, that um, that inner drive and being able to achieve that is, is something that I don't think we talk about enough. But everything I've heard from talking to people in your team, everything I've heard from listening, things you've said before, says that you are like, like almost like, you know, if you were like Woody and you had a string on your back, your catchphrases would be all about coachability, all about your team, all about, you know, the sort of rising tide together. Have I got that right? Is that so?

Josh Reiner: A. Players don't care about money because they have it, because they, they constantly do the things that they need to get done to go do it. And, and you know, I only care about making people better. And uh, people that want to get better are generally a, ah, players because they push themselves into hard situations. They push themselves to be uncomfortable. Um, I remember, like. And it also requires a great leader. And you know, in my career I've had the luxury of having a great leader. Uh, In Dolly. And one of the things that Dali always pushed me whenever I started getting maybe a little too comfortable into the spot I'm in, he's like, I need to push you harder. You. You're getting comfortable, and so you need to go harder. So he's like, go from the US Go run uk, Ireland, and go figure that out. Because that's the challenge, you know, as simple as learning to drive on the other side of the road or learning new aspects of the, like, new challenges come. So A eight players want to have it. They're going to drive. They're going to constantly do the things that no one asked them to go do. They're the ones that do that extra little thing that no one asked for that just makes it better. Uh, and they're constantly trying to just be great. Now, if you combine that with a great leader that helps inspire them, that helps guide them, that works with them every week. And, uh, I always say, this time no one ever left a leader that makes them better 52 times a year because they're sitting them down every week making them better. That's what you need to have. So it's a mixture of both great drive mixed with great leadership and then giving the vehicle and the plan and the ability to execute, uh, a, uh, common language that we're talking about. Those are the main ingredients that you have. So recruiting great coachable people that want to challenge themselves, want to get better, leading them and retaining them by training them every day, every week. And then the output is revenue. And a. Players don't have to worry about revenue because they're consistently making their numbers because they consistently do the things that are not asked of them. They just do them because it's the right thing to do.

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. I have this saying that I came up with quite recently, which is a. Players are uncomfortable being comfortable.

Josh Reiner: Yes. I love that.

Andy: Yeah. And it's so simple, but so true. Right. And I think, you know, I'm sure, um, maybe you've not had that. I've had it in my career where, in fact, if you were to sort of take a, uh, data printout of my performance as an individual contributor in sales and to find the. Where I was the highest performance, it also correlates where I was the most unhappy. Um, and that had nothing to do with my performance, had everything to do with the environment I was in where I felt like, you know, um, I wasn't growing. I felt like an almost. Not just I wasn't growing a frustration that those around me were not like Your point about being in the same boat, rowing the same direction that they. I love being a part of a team where I feel uncomfortable because I'm looking around going, oh, that's a good idea. Why didn't I think of that? Or like, I'm not doing that. I need to do that. I want to strive to be the better version of myself. And if you can't see that around you, then, you know, that's. It's a little bit like a different way of looking about not being the smartest person in the room. Not saying I was the smartest person in that room, but I certainly didn't feel like I had the opportunity to look around and learn and sort of level myself up from it. So that was really difficult. I didn't even stay, I think in my first quarter I did my number and then left before finishing Q3. You know, it was just a. Wasn't the right environment. Even though financially and on the scoreboard, I was doing great. And I always think about that. I wonder if everyone else could have that same experience, whether they would sort of see things clearer, you know what I mean?

Josh Reiner: The only thing I'm sad about is you said that on a podcast and it's recorded. So that is your statement. I can't stick. I can't take it. Because great people, uh, are uncomfortably uncomfortable. Is exactly right. Yeah.

Andy: Yeah. And this, this is sort of an evolution of thought where I came to, from realizing that, um, in our industry we talk about imposter syndrome and you know, um, and what I realize with imposter syndrome is there's, there's kind of two parts. Parts you have to have to have imposter syndrome. One is growth. You know, you don't feel imposter syndrome if you're not growing. And the second is you have to be self. Aware. If you, you know, you could be growing, but if you're not self aware, then you won't feel imposter. You just feel like, I should be here. And, you know, there's something beautiful about imposter syndrome. It's, it's you in a gray area between where you are now and your potential. Right. And so I felt, and I, there's been a few times where I've gone from having, you know, as a first time CEO, massive imposter syndrome, to actually being like, like actually feel all right about it at the moment. And then you realize this is not a good thing. This is not a good thing at all. Being, you know, in a, in a, in a professional role without Imposter syndrome means that you're stagnating, you're not getting better. So I love, I thrive for it. I don't enjoy it, I don't think anyone enjoys it, but I need to have that. I need to thrive for that. I think we should talk about stuff like that more because I feel like, um, I feel like people almost use it. Not. It's not a stigma, there's no negativity associated with it, but people almost embarrassed to say it because I think they think it reflects, um, on a lack of confidence in themselves. But it's more just. I think I see it as a self awareness.

Josh Reiner: I couldn't agree more. I would like to change the word or, uh, the phrase or the meaning behind imposter syndrome. Syndrome is from a negative to a positive. Now again, because you're pushing yourself, you want to feel uncomfortable. And you also want leaders around you to push you in the right spots, to give you enough because too much is. You can fail. And so you have to be careful and educate on the leaps that you go do. So doing that with people that you trust is just as important to, yes, I'm going to push you to the next level. And you know, at Wiz, uh, you know, I recruited somebody that was an excellent frontline or excellent contributor for a long period of time. And I said, it's time. You're brilliant. You need to make the jump. And he's like, I'm nervous, I'm scared. I don't. Why would people respect anything that I go do? And I said, well, the good news is I'm not just going to throw you off the end of the dock and hope you swim. We have a framework that we're going to plug you into. You already know our process. You know how to do big deals, you know how to do this. Now I'm going to teach you how to become a great leader and to lead those other people to go do that. And six months into the job, he came back to me and he said, it's the best decision I've ever made in my life. And it's giving enough people, pushing them far enough to where they feel that imposter syndrome, but giving them the framework and trust, that development week over week to make sure that they can, they can do it. So it's not, it's never a big journey. And you know, I can't remember who you use this phrase, but, you know, shooting the elephant's easy. Eating it bite by bite is what takes time. So, like, how do you how do you do that week over week to make sure that that mountain isn't so insurmountable to climb or that goal is not that too big to accomplish?

Andy: Yeah, we first met at, uh, an evening that Wiz organized to fill some of the big opportunity that you have, um, finding new candidates. Um, and I talked a little bit there about how I see our industry as being a little bit like sports leagues and particularly the UK football leagues, where you have European football leagues. We have the Champions League, which is the creme la creme. The best two, three or four teams from all the leagues in Europe. If they finish the top two, three or four, they get to the Champions League, then you have the Premier League championship and so on. And what the point I was making there was that in your career you want to find a Champions League club and you want to sort of hit your cart to that or the players of that team. In this, in this analogy and wizard, for sure, uh, an example of a Champions League club, you only have to look at the numbers that you guys are putting out and all the growth that you're enjoying there. For someone listening to this, because I get asked this this all the time, but there's somebody a million times better to answer this than me sat here right now. If someone is listening to this and saying, you know, I know, I know there's, there's like levels to this game of sales and I want to, I want to make sure I attach myself to the highest level so that I can grow the fastest and fulfill my full potential. So for someone whether they're, you know, whether they're an sdr, whether they're maybe in their first or second AE role, maybe they've been an AE for a while, but they feel that they're, they haven't found that Champions League club, so to speak, like Wiz, what's your advice for that person so that they can kind of get your attention? First and foremost, what are the things they should be thinking about doing in their current role to sort of elevate their skill, experience, position to be able to find that, you know, that transfer to the Champions League club like Wiz?

Josh Reiner: It's a great question and I'll answer it in a couple different ways. Um, one, uh, make sure you have a good self assessment of, of who you are and what your strengths are, what training you've had to date. Um, you know, just two days ago I talked to an individual that was a second line leader and we spent an hour on the phone together and after the hour he's going to come in as an individual contributor because he knows he hasn't learned a process, he hasn't learned truly how to sell. Now he's a second line leader at a major company. But when we went down and talked about what his goals were and what he wanted to accomplish, he said I need to learn it from the ground. I need to learn, I need to run a sales process campaign from start to finish, following your process so then I can teach it to somebody else. So he was mature enough to say, I've gotten to this point in my career because I work hard. If I want to get to the next point in my career, I need to follow a process, I need to be really good at learning, then I need to be really good at teaching. So if you are at a point in time in your career where you may have just successfully progressed because you've done well, but you haven't really invested the time into learning your craft and understanding how uh, to build a repeatable, go to market sales process in motion and get with people that can go do that. Come find a way to get into an organization. Be willing to have your ego take a step down. Uh, because it's not a step down. You're investing in your career and your timeline now for, and I get a lot of the second one which are people trying to get into the organization because you know they want to be part of these, these, these you know, Champion League Club, um, the best ones. Find a way and it's no different than you finding a way into a CISO or a cto. It's relationships, it's understanding a pain statement. It's, it's finding a way in the door. And you know we teach a lot. We're, we, I like to thrive and we're a teaching based company and culture so we teach people how to recruit, we teach people how to retain and do one on ones. But when we, we teach people to, to come into an organization it's, I always don't, uh, I try not to have people recruit for the outliers but because I said the outliers always find a way. So if you're great but uh, you may not have the right level of experience or you might not have this find a way. Find a way based on a relationship that you have. We live in a small world. Find a way to have someone sponsor you into the call. Find a way in because you're going to have to have that way to get in to have a shot or you have to have the Experience to get there.

Andy: Yeah.

Josh Reiner: Either way, great ones always find a way.

Andy: Yeah. I was laughing because I couldn't agree more by the way. But I was laughing because I recently um, upset a bit of a hornet's nest on LinkedIn because I advertised we were hiring for a couple of account executive roles and I made the point of calling out what it clearly says at the bottom of our job description that uh, the easy apply button on LinkedIn will like, if you hit that you'll be ignored. Like we don't. We, I mean we're not, not whiz. Right. We're a 40 odd person company. Right. But we had over 750 applications for an AE role. 750, like it blows my mind. Right. Um, and, but we very clearly say, you know, ah, a big part of sale. I mean we say more articulate than I will now, but a big part of sales is standing out. We love people to capture our attention. We don't like people that take shortcuts. So if you hit the easy apply button it'll be ignored. Now some people don't like that and I understand if they read through the job description go, well, okay, I like the easy apply button. I'm not going to apply. Fair. Fair enough. You do you. But if you, the only other reason you could be upset about that is if you haven't read the job description and then you're just hitting the easy apply and you're upset that, you know, you've wasted your time clicking that button or you've been overlooked because you didn't, but you didn't read the. What does that say about your uh, your approach?

Josh Reiner: They're not good, they're not great. Yeah.

Andy: But to what you were saying there, those that. And so you know, if I think about, you know, we, we've got a great uh, new AE started from this campaign called Tom and he made sure he stood out, he went the extra mile and it's been the same with every candidate we've had that's made the mark and we actually do, we're not quite as harsh m with other roles but we do have that description in job description. And this would really upset the people on LinkedIn that knew this because people were kind of questioning our culture and things about this. But um, the best people we found they always make themselves stand out even outside of sales because it's, you know, we work in a um, tension economy and you know, we want to make sure we capture people's attention.

Josh Reiner: So it goes back to the shock statement That I say never call a customer.

Andy: Yeah.

Josh Reiner: Because you're calling a customer cold or applying cold, the chance of success is very minimal. So just taking a look at it from a uh, data perspective, how many emails get responded back to, it's 01% or something ridiculously low. So that's the easy button. But if you want to get your attention or my attention, you know, if you talk to Alice Carlisle who runs the UK for me and she says, Josh, you need to go meet with Andy White. I'm going to meet with Andy White because I trust Alice's opinion. So find a way to get to Alice, find a way to get to somebody just like you do any other way. So uh, it goes back to great people find a way because great people do the research. Great people find out who are my trusted advisors. Great people find out the things that are really important to me and they find a way into my diary.

Andy: Yeah. And you particular, I wouldn't say that's very hard to do because I look at uh, you only have to sort of look on LinkedIn, look at your leadership team here in Emea and you know I think, is it fair to say the majority of your leadership team you've worked with before, is that, would that be fair to say?

Josh Reiner: Uh, majority. It's about half and half but majority I've worked with and the majority are new ones that I'm going to work with forever as well.

Andy: And uh, this would be an interesting thing to look back on in years to come. I bet you, um, the half that are working with you for the first time will find out in the future they will work with you again if and when the next rocket ship comes along in many years to come. Of course I'm sure that'll be, that'll be a thing because people tend to follow people. What is it that both sides, what is it you think that um, uh, the likes of Alice, the likes of Marina, like those people that you've worked before, what is it that you think that will make them um, move from extremely successful roles they've had in their previous companies to following you to you know, a new rocket ship as we say.

Josh Reiner: So I'll use a real life story so I practice what I preach. I have one on ones with my leadership team. Uh and Alice is a direct report of mine running the UK and uh, speaking in the common language, she came in and she had a non negotiable on a peachy culture. We are going to pg. We're going to PG as a team and we're going to drive a pipeline generation culture across the business. And then she just started implementing our process in the non negotiables the process. Then she goes into, um, value pyramids. Every first meeting you go on, you have to have a value pyramid. And remember people that haven't learned the process or haven't seen it work, it's a big jump for someone to say, why am I spending all this time? The tech just works. Just show the tech. The tech is great. She insisted on it. And so, so she made what I thought was a little bit of a mistake. She took, uh, Pete Stedman, who I've worked with, uh, before, and he creates the Picasso of value repairments. It is, they're works, uh, of art. And so she had Pete show her entire team this work of art. And then she said, okay, who wants to go next? And everyone else was, I'm not following that. Like it's, it's too hard. And so like Alice was pushing, pushing, pushing people to get driving done. So when we sat down, she was frustrated. I was like, why are you frustrated? She's like, why, why can't they see the value? We know how important it is to understand your customer's objectives, to win their mindshares, to enter into the sales process. And I said, well, you have to make it their idea. So how do you make somebody on your team think that this is the best way to go do it? So how do you show them? How do you take them on a first meeting and then see the client's eyes light up when you talk about their business and what impact you can have and the areas that you want to explore further once you see something and then that builds up from the bottom up once it's their idea. Because people do 100% of what their ideas are, they may do 20 to 30% of what you tell them to go do. So that management coaching, that, that coaching atmosphere that we talk about, that runs throughout the entire organization. So, ah, again, people follow other people because they get better. Now you obviously have to enjoy one another to a certain degree, which I enjoy all the people that we've talked about before, but I, uh, also enjoy because we're challenging each other. We're that, that leader that. I use that dolly analogy where he pushed me to take that next step because I was getting slightly, maybe a little too comfortable. And that's what we do here. We're challenging people to be better versions of themselves. And when they have a challenge or obstacle, we coach them together to brainstorm together on how to go fix it. As long as you keep that culture, uh, of training and development and getting better, usually those people stick with each other for a long time.

Andy: Yeah, yeah, I agree with that totally. I love it. You've got quite a diverse leadership team.

Josh Reiner: I take great pride in that.

Andy: That is, that's brilliant. Is that something. How does that, you know, because it's, it's a. Obviously something we all know is extremely important. We know the upside and the benefits of having diverse teams, of course, goes without saying. How are, uh, for someone listening that feels the same but hasn't had the same success that you've had, what sort of advice could you give for that topic?

Josh Reiner: Well, a couple points there. Um, I'm the lucky father of three daughters. Uh, so having three daughters, uh, not practicing what I preach would be uh, a little bit hypocritical. Uh, but you know, Marina Ayton, uh, you know, she's, she's working and she's coming together and writing a, the female sales leader book for a couple people. And I've been lucky to work with her on some content, uh, on that. But you know, having a diverse team, just like any, any part of your career, it takes a plan. And we have a plan in place where we have to hire and see equal number of candidates from diverse backgrounds. So that way by default you end up with a very diverse team. And once you have a very good diverse team, it's easier to continue having a diverse team because that it perpetuates itself in perpetuity. Um, but I can't tell you the excitement you get when you have, uh, just wide variety of opinions that are coming in and challenges that you can overcome and different perspectives to look at. But uh, how do you want to be the best team on the planet if you don't have more ideas coming at you, more different thoughts and opinions coming at you. So if you want to be the best, you have to diverse higher to have the best.

Andy: Yeah, Yeah, I love that. I love that. Um, is there something that um, having a more diverse team has taught you that you perhaps wouldn't have had the benefit of knowing without getting to work with such a broad array of people.

Josh Reiner: Diverse, uh, team has taught me, uh, I always joke internally that uh, my family has trained me well to have a diverse team and just the passion and the challenges that come with it. I think the biggest thing that a diverse team teaches you is you have to make sure that your customers are diverse and they want to have that experience of working with a team that is going to be taking into considerations the work life balance, the things that they bring to the table that they're working with, an organization that they want to partner with. Uh, just like all companies want to have an ESG strategy to make sure that environmentally you're aware. Like we want to make sure that we're running a business that is respected, that is diverse, that is that providing good to a lot of the people in the organization and other people feel that when you, you bring that to the table as well, that's, that's a, it's, it's either it's a powerful and impactful thing that you can bring to the table that I think uh, if you don't have it and you're just singly focused, you're missing out on, on lots of different areas. But that diversity broadens that scope and makes life much more enjoyable.

Andy: Yeah. And that self fulfilling thing you talked about I think is very true. You mentioned Marina's book. Um, she's writing with Penny and Lucy as well. Female sales leader. That was a major, I think incentive for the book was that if we want to, there's a lot of great positive momentum about trying to get more women into sales. We know. But I think what we felt was missing was more women in sales leadership. And when we looked into the data that there wasn't um, as many women going into sales leadership as men even in the relative numbers. Um, and what we saw was that women would move into customer success, leadership and other roles as well as that. And I think one of the things we felt was that's missing is role models. You want to be able to see yourself in the job you want to do. And so I feel like what you're talking about self fulfilling there I think is fantastic. I think you've got, I know of at least a couple of extremely uh, talented, high performing AES in your team that perhaps you may not have, it may be fair to say that are female that you may not have. Should you not have such a diverse leadership team? Yeah.

Josh Reiner: Uh, if you, when you have a diverse team that you, if you just hire males you get 50% of the workload to go after. If you hire a diverse team, you have everybody to go after. And you highlighted the exact point like how much great talent do we have in our team because we have such a diverse policy and embracing culture to have that. Couldn't agree more. It definitely separates us from other competition.

Andy: Yeah. So one last point. I want to get in with you because you're kind of famous for, um, being a bit of an expert at how to write a resume or CV that captures somebody's attention. And I think this would be, to our point earlier, if there is a recent podcast such as this where you are giving the advice of how to capture your attention and it's almost like, ah, this is going to be a qualification tool for you because if somebody doesn't take the advice that I'm expecting you now to bestow onto the audience, um, then they haven't done enough research. So what are the things? Because I'm fascinated by this, because I think I'd probably never, I don't know, I mean, when it comes to writing a resume cv, I'd probably put what I think is the right thing, but I wouldn't know. I think I'll probably do a bad job. So I'd love to hear what you think kind of the key points and what you look for.

Josh Reiner: Uh, yeah. And again, back to a teaching culture. We teach how to read a cv, uh, and why and what to look for. Um, and the reason why we do that is because when we interview somebody, uh, and we're testing intelligence, we're testing character, we're touching coachability, uh, and we're doing that all based off of the CV itself. So the question funnel that we come up with to test someone's intelligence, test someone's character, has to be derived from the CV itself. So when I look at a CV and I train and teach people how to read a cv, uh, this is probably going to increase the number of CVs I get, by the way, uh, which is a good problem. Again, champagne problems. Um, I always read it from the bottom to the top. So I always look at education to start and even simple nuances of did they put their grade point average or their scores or not? If they didn't put their scores on there? One of the questions that I would ask during the interview would be, I noticed that you went to this university. Why didn't you put your attainment statistics on there for it? Because a CV has to have data and statistics because that's the meaningful metrics that we're gauging off of. So again, so you're taking a look at the CV for the data to then ask the right questions in the interview process. So if it's not on there, that would be a typical question that I'd ask. Then I start to take a look at does your CV logically make sense? So did you go to university as an engineer? And then the first job you had was in sales. Okay, well, what happened there? Like, what, what, what the difference was? So if you, you want to, if you come in front of me and you have deviations like that, you probably should have a really good explanation as to why you decided to change course or where you went to. So again, does the logic flow make sense of the progression from what you had and where you're going? Um, the, the success aspect of where I like to see, I do like to see, uh, stints of decent chunks of time in roles. Like if someone was an SDR for three months, then an AE for nine months, and then an RD for, you know, like, no, you're not, you're not learning anything and you're, you're going so fast or that organization is, is so fast. Like, I want to see people learn a craft. I want to see. Show them consistently when you come in, have you mastered your craft? And I think a lot of people, when they come in that, that, that fail eventually. Because if you don't learn something, eventually we'll catch up to you. You. So if you're an RD for a very short period of time and then you become a second line leader and you haven't really struggled as a first line leader, you haven't had someone quit on you, you haven't had, you know, a surprise happen or something, then you don't know how to handle that challenge. So, uh, again, I look for, have you stayed in companies for a long time in a position in that company for a long enough time to master it?

Andy: Yes.

Josh Reiner: And then once you've mastered it, then, okay, maybe you stayed there for seven years as a salesperson. Like, maybe that's a little too long to have there. So are you challenging yourself? Are you comfortable in the job and coasting a bit? Because maybe I don't want that because I like people that constantly get uncomfortable when they're comfortable. To steal my quote. Um, so those are the things I look for. So, uh, to, you know, education is the first step. Does that logically translate into your career? Does that career have a logical progression? So are you in the job that you're in as a, you know, using a sales profession? Do you start as an SDR? Are you in that job for six to nine to maybe 12 months? Because that's a shorter stint usually. Then do you get into an ae? Does that get you into the next level? Are you there for a year, two years? And then does that promote you to a senior A? Like, if I'm looking for the logical times there, then if you make a switch to another company. Why did you make that switch? So if I see you go from one company to the next company. Okay, uh, and again, we use me as an example. Like I've been in the same company with the same leaders for the last four years. Are you also. Are leaders taking with you, did you follow somebody because they went to somebody, or did you jointly go with somebody? That other question. So those are questions that I'm going to ask of when you progress through your career, why did you progress? What relationships did you build? What people did you take with you as you went along those journeys? So I can't give you all the secrets and tips and tricks of, uh, it. But essentially, good people master a craft before they get to the next craft. Good people generally follow and get promoted to the next role, and that's a good step up for them. Then they generally go to the next company, not because they were headhunted out. And this is another question I ask, uh, and this is going to spoil a lot of my interviews, so maybe I shouldn't ask it. But I always ask the question, how'd you get to be in front of me? And then they said, well, Ben Fairhall, uh, called me up and said, you got a great profile. We want to bring you in front of Josh and everything else. And then I, I say, so one of the most important decisions you can make in your entire life is the company that you work for and the people you work with. And you completely left that by chance if Ben Fairhell hadn't been the greatest recruiter in the world and got you in front of me. So you just completely led your life to chance. So what is your plan for your life? Where do you want to take your life? Where do you want to go? And, uh, everyone that has that feeling, they're like, oh, shoot, yeah, I just walked into that one.

Andy: Yeah.

Josh Reiner: But those are. The reason why I say those questions is because I do want people to have a plan for their life. I do want people to get better every week. I do want people to have that next level of earnings and careers and where they want to go. And so people that kind of meander through life and get lucky and maybe do some things, those are generally, either I can convince them to come into the process like we talked about, taking a second line leader, getting them to come into, to learn the craft with the people that they want to, or I want to find people that have a plan for their life, that are working with others to make that better. Those are people that I can have a massive impact with, versus having someone that just. Hey, I got a recruiter called me and I want you like, no, I want people that sought me out. I want someone that's done the research that's got in front of me that is making this part of their plan, not me making you part of my plan.

Andy: Wow. So, well, um, what an incredible conversation. Thank you so, so much.

Josh Reiner: I appreciate it as well.

Andy: We've said many a time on this rocket ship, you're always going to be looking for talent whilst that, you know, gaining altitude, so to speak. For those that, um, are wanting to. Well, I'm not going to give them the shortcut.

Josh Reiner: No, don't hit the easy button.

Andy: Don't hit the easy button. But, um, should people be looking to reach out to you, you know, what kind of roles, you, you, what kind of roles do you have open at the moment? In what locations and. Yeah, what, what's the opportunity?

Josh Reiner: So, obviously the major markets, uh, we already have uk, uh, in the, in Nordics and Benelux, we have Doc in Central, we'll be opening up an office and the Alpine region, uh, as well. We have France, we have Spain, we have Italy, and we're going to be opening up entities in the Middle East. So Pan Amea, we have, uh, growth and coverage models on. A lot of the roles are posted already. Uh, and I look forward to, you know, please apply for the job if you're interested in joining the rocket ship.

Andy: Just don't hit easy apply.

Josh Reiner: Just don't hit easy apply.

Andy: Thank you so, so much, John. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on and, um, yeah, I can't wait for people to see this. I think it's going to be an absolute.

Josh Reiner: It's been great. I like what you're doing, so thank you very much for your time.